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One Flesh: What does it Mean?
<page 93>One surprising ability that the "Full Court Press" left me with was the ability to interpret some of my dreams. When I wake at night with a dream fresh in my mind, I write it down (using a pen with a light on it) so that I can remember it and try to interpret it. Often, I find that my dreams contain helpful insights into what is happening in my life.
As I explored my emotions, I had several dreams in which I was only using my left hand while playing basketball. That was unusual, because I am right handed. I considered whether the dreams were symbolic for something in my life.
A basketball player who can only play with one hand has a great disadvantage. Defenders only need to worry about him dribbling in one direction, so they can position themselves in a way that forces him to use his weak hand, and when he shoots, they can overplay the hand that they know will take the shot. By contrast, if an offensive player can use either hand, not only can he move in either direction, but he can also fake in one direction and go in the other. This makes him much more difficult to stop.
When I played basketball, I had an advantage over others. I was fairly ambidextrous (able to use both hands equally well), so I quickly developed a set of moves I could do with either hand, and this allowed me to choose which hand I would use based on the position of defenders. Because of this, it was not surprising that I used my left hand while playing in my dreams; what was surprising was that I never used my right hand.
I prayed about what that might symbolize, and I came up with the interpretation that my left hand was symbolic for my mind and will while my right hand was symbolic for my emotions. When I was young, it was as natural for me to rely on my emotions as it was for me to rely on my right hand. They carried me so strongly that they were difficult to resist. This was great when they led me in a healthy direction, but it was a disaster when they didn't. As a young man, my emotions developed several compulsive and destructive habits that, without the grace of God, could have destroyed me.
When I surrendered my life to Jesus, I gradually learned to devote myself to developing my mind and will to compensate for the craziness in my emotions. This became especially true once I embraced the "Full Court Press." I concentrated on studying and wise practice, which wasn't the most natural approach for me, but I found it kept me from getting lost in a maze of conflicting feelings. By using my mind and will, I was able to be productive and grow in situations where my emotions would have derailed me. This was similar to learning to use my left hand in basketball. It allowed me to do well in situations where opposition would have otherwise stopped me.
Although this was good, I had never learned to successfully mix some of my emotions with my mind and will. I dedicated myself to submission, discipline, and responsibility, but doing so caused these emotions to struggle in a stifling world that felt like forced obedience. I eventually had reached the point where if I didn't find some way to add them into the mix, my heart was going to pull itself apart.
I tentatively concluded this was what my left-handed dreams symbolized. I try to always be tentative with dream interpretation – symbols can be confusing, and who can say for sure if a dream contains a message from God? Nevertheless, I saw the dreams as a picture of the fact that I had been relying on my mind and will (my left hand) too much. The dreams were a <page 94>confirmation that God was leading me to get back to a more natural feeling strength He had designed into me – my emotions (my right hand).
Shortly after coming to this conclusion, I had another dream. In it, I dribbled down the basketball court with my left hand. Then I crossed over to my right hand, drove to the basket, and slam dunked the ball (an example of the phrase, "In your dreams!"). I knew the interpretation immediately. It was that God was teaching me what to do with my emotions, and the end result would be something amazing – like a slam dunk!
From the years 2000 to 2002, I examined my emotions to try to learn what God wanted them to be. I observed them, described them, and participated in them. I nonjudgmentally considered what I felt and sought how God wanted me to more effectively work with it. I didn't speak with others at first, but with the Lord I was dangerously transparent. At the same time, I controlled my actions. Even though I let myself feel like a crazy person, I didn't let myself act like one. I did my best to keep the ninety-percent rule working!
In 2002, I read the book Love is a Choice.[30] The Holy Spirit impressed its message on my heart in a unique and powerful way. I found it so helpful that I read some chapters four or five times to absorb what they were saying.
The book describes addiction, and it gave me a great deal of insight into the emotions I had been studying for the past two years. I found in it a set of ideas I could use to organize and explain what I had seen, and this helped me to understand what my heart was trying to do as it attempted to drag me back into sexual sin. The book shed light on how my problems had started, what kept them churning in me, and what I could do about them. My ability to work with my emotions took a huge leap forward.
Love is a Choice also taught me that I needed to mourn the loss of sin in my life.[31] This was an unexpected and troubling insight. It almost sounded ungodly; shouldn't I be glad to give up sin?
I had to be honest, however; my attempts to joyfully repent had failed me. I had tried to force myself to peacefully accept a life away from sexual sin for decades, and the result had been a growing resentment against God. I had practiced the actions that I expected to produce joy …I studied the Scriptures, worshipped, prayed, enjoyed God's presence, worked hard, obeyed God's word, became a part of a church …I had tried everything I could think of. But I couldn't figure out what to do with the gnawing desires that continued to claw at my soul.
Love is a Choice taught me that what I felt was a natural result of turning from feelings that were as strong as death, as cruel as the grave, burn like a fire, feel unquenchable, and pull you to risk everything to satisfy them. When these drives were joined with my tendency toward emotional dysregulation, it made sense that I would experience intense mixed emotions about changing what felt like an unchangeable sexual orientation. God has created sexual desire to be so powerful that a husband and wife would leave their parents and never forsake each other. Didn't it make sense that if the same emotions were misled, they would form strong bonds in a <page 95>harmful direction? Isn't that the reason that Paul told us to flee sexual immorality (1 Corinthians 6:18)?
I was gaining a new perspective on my confused inner world. I was slowly becoming convinced that I needed to mourn the loss of sexual sin. Strong emotions, especially strong sexual emotions, don't generally change by an act of our will alone. We need to slowly process them and work through them over time. Even though my actions had been under control since college, I had never taken the time to feel the pain of the loss of my addiction. Doing so had seemed too dangerous.
I now reconsidered the danger, and I decided that God was calling me to walk with Him through the seemingly insane task of being honest about the mess in my soul. This was the next step in the growing "unveildness" I was learning to practice before Him. Doing so greatly increased my level of honest intimacy with Him.
I admitted how much it felt as if my sexual issues were just "who I was." I poured out my frustration, doubt, fear, sorrow, and anger over the pain of denying them. I had turned from a life of entrancingly simplicity, and I had replaced that with a life of perplexing difficulty. I had embraced faith and virtue, in which I painfully confronted myself with stark truths that required me to dedicate myself to tasks that felt impossible for me. I had added knowledge, self-control, and perseverance, where I day by day practiced wisdom that felt disconnected from my gut level identity. I had let myself be upended by godliness, in which changes in my understanding of God forced me to relearn all of life. I had chosen brotherly kindness and agape love, in which I sacrificed my own interests for the sake of others.
God had truly blessed me in all of this, but I had never faced up to the pain it had caused. I had never been honest about the shaken inner child within me who felt as if my security had been ripped away by my choice to follow Jesus. I had ignored my emotions, and I had expected them to automatically fall in line. I wasn't prepared to feel traumatized by obeying the word of God![32]
I now knew I could ignore them no longer. I was not going to be able to move forward until I brought them into the open and found God's answers to them.
Doing so was almost terrifying at times. Allowing my pain to surface brought with it the buried temptations associated with the sexual addiction I had previously used to medicate that pain. It stirred up feelings that I should turn back to sin. At an earlier time in my life, I would have considered these feelings to be the sin of lusting in my heart. I now embraced them as a part of me that God was transforming.
I couldn't really explain with conviction why I was allowing them to surface. I hadn't yet spelled out the theology I have described in this book. I was acting largely on intuition – mourning my tempting feelings just seemed to be the next step for me. I knew that it contradicted the counsel I had heard from Christians throughout my life, which told me to stay as far away from dwelling on sexual temptations as possible. What would people think if they knew I was choosing to bring them front and center at times?
I had tried the recommended counsel for many years, however, and it had never dealt with the root of my problems. I now sensed that God was showing me how to get to that root. He was somehow moving into the middle of my emotions as I honestly presented them before Him. I trusted that as He did, they would heal to the point where the temptations would lessen over time.
<page 96>This seemed to be the way forward – to transparently walk with God into an incredibly frightening area of my personality. So I faced the ways in which my temptations still felt precious to me. I despised where they led me, but a part of me still wished that I could somehow make them a part of my life. I looked for God to teach me His way to handle that.
All of the nine lines of defense I have described in this book were kicking in to keep me safe (avoiding temptations when it was wise to do so, faith, virtue, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly kindness, love). They were like the hockey goalie I mentioned in the previous chapter who kept the other team from scoring.
I was tentative and careful, and I believe this helped me to avoid painful mistakes. But I also embraced the risk of sometimes moving past the first line of defense. Doing so seemed to be the only way to learn about the emotions that refused to be forced into silence. I admitted the strength of those emotions and my inability to change them on my own. I examined the approaches I had taken that had failed in the past, and I explored new ideas that might help. I looked for the Holy Spirit to give me His wisdom to live a life I had never before experienced.
Scientists sometimes speak of the "Butterfly Effect." It is a metaphor for the fact that seemingly insignificant events can have great effects. The movement of a butterfly's wings in China may set in motion wind currents that result in a storm in the United States many days later.
In a similar way, seemingly random occurrences can set the course of our lives. A word spoken here, an unexpected happening there … pretty soon we find ourselves on a path we never expected. For example, a seemingly chance encounter with a caring teacher or coach may uncover gifts and abilities that form the foundation of a future career. A bit of encouragement or an insightful observation can determine the direction of a young person's life. On the negative side, a tragic event in childhood may derail a child's promising hope.
There was a "Butterfly Effect" event in my childhood, and it had set the course of my sexual issues. As is often the case with these sorts of events, I didn't understand how it had affected me. I could see the butterfly flap its wings (the event), and I could see the storm that resulted (sexual problems), but I couldn't see the relationship between the two.
While I was reading Love is a Choice, I heard someone tell the story of a young woman whose life had been knocked off course by a "Butterfly Effect" event similar to mine. I immediately noticed the parallels, and I also noticed that though the event in the young woman's life was unrelated to sex, some of the problems she experienced were sexual in nature. I had never before heard anything that so closely resembled my own story (and I have not heard anything since). I immediately recognized that God might have brought it to my attention to help me understand what had happened in my life.
I considered what He might be saying to me, and after going back and forth between several possibilities, an idea hit me that set the stage for a series of transformations that has continued for the past sixteen years. It was that both I and the woman in the story had been traumatized by the event we each had experienced. It was easy to see how she had been, because her situation was more severe than mine. Nevertheless, I concluded that there was something in my emotions that had caused me to be damaged in a similar way, and like the woman I had turned to sexual sin as <page 97>a way of medicating my heart. (I have since learned that this "something" that led to the trauma was a tendency toward emotional dysregulation.)[33]
I was forty-five years old when I saw this. For decades, I had wondered what had gone wrong with my sexuality. At last I believed I knew. It is difficult to describe what it feels like to have faced a difficult mystery for so long and to suddenly be able to say, "I think I understand."
Immediately after reading Love is a Choice and gaining the insight into the start of my sexual problems, I went through a period where I slowly came to grips with the resentment I felt toward God. I was fully mourning my issues now, and this brought me face to face with the anger and sorrow that had been pulling me toward an emotional breakdown. Why had God allowed my life to turn out as it had? I had worked so hard and been so committed to Him. I had grown up with visions of victory and powerfully sharing His good news. Why had my life instead turned into a story of surviving a strange sexual problem?
I ended up in the book of Job. I could relate to Job's anger against God, especially in verses like the following:
If I wash myself with snow water, and cleanse my hands with soap, yet You will plunge me into the pit, and my own clothes will abhor me. For He is not a man, as I am, that I may answer Him, and that we should go to court together.
Like Job, I wanted to take God to court. I had washed myself with snow water and cleansed my hands with soap. I had fought and largely won a difficult battle against sexual sin for over thirty years, and yet it had left me broken and angry. I expected more from Him! Why hadn't He given me what I felt I needed?! Why did my sexual issues continue to feel like a grace-destroying plague?! Why hadn't anything gotten down to the root of the problem and fixed it?!
Though I felt wronged by God, I also knew that in Job 42:5-6 Job repented. Obviously, I needed to repent also, but I didn't want to do that only as a decision of my mind and will. I had done "mind and will repentance" for years, and I still felt resentful. I wanted something that would reach down into my emotions. I wanted to repent because I felt that I really was the one at fault.
As I considered Job, I realized that his faith had become selfish. He had started with a healthy fear of the Lord, which is basically a desire to be blessed by God, but his desire for blessings had morphed into a demand for blessings. When he didn't receive what he believed he should, he accused God of wrongdoing. He even justified himself, as if he could shame God into giving him what he wanted.
It is easy to sympathize with Job, because we know that most of us have complained similarly with far less suffering and far less ammunition for self-justification. The Bible, however, doesn't allow us to excuse Job. He was using his faith to try to control God, and God called him out for it.
<page 98>I looked at what I could learn from his story. I don't believe God allows suffering randomly, so I considered what reason He might have had for allowing it in Job's life. It occurred to me that before Job suffered, he obviously had the potential for selfishness sitting inside of him. If the potential hadn't been there ahead of time, the suffering wouldn't have brought it to the surface. It also occurred to me that if this potential had been allowed to grow in secret, it might have become far worse before it made its way to the light. I wondered, "Could God have exposed Job's weakness through suffering because that was the best way to save him from it before it developed into a serious problem?"
Consider the Pharisees in Jesus' day. Their selfishness had grown in secret to become a monster that misled not only them, but the entire nation. When Jesus confronted them, it was so strong that even His physical presence with them didn't root it out. Instead, it led them to crucify Him in the name of preserving God's blessings on His people! That is the height of selfishness in the name of serving God:
And one of them, Caiaphas, being high priest that year, said to them, "You know nothing at all, nor do you consider that it is expedient for us that one man should die for the people, and not that the whole nation should perish." …Then, from that day on, they plotted to put Him to death.
(John 11:49-50, 53)
Could Job have reached a similar state? To answer that question, I only needed to consider what we know about human nature. How easy is it for our hearts to be deceived by success and blessings? Job didn't have the gospel, the power of the Holy Spirit, the help of the body of Christ, or the complete revelation of Scripture. There is even a chance that he lived before Moses, in which case he didn't have the Old Testament law.
With that sort of lack of support, it would have taken a significant work of God just to keep him from becoming a hypocrite. Job was famous in heaven for his fear of the Lord (Job 1:8). Unfortunately, it is a short trip from a healthy fear to selfish religion. Healthy fear leads us to obey because we don't want bad things to happen to us. Selfish religion leads us to obey for the same reason, but our focus shifts. Faith becomes a form of manipulation. Rather than trusting and obeying God for His sake, we try to use our trust and obedience to force God to act for our sake.
It made sense to me that this was where Job was likely headed, and I suspected that God had used suffering to save him from it. He allowed the x-ray machine of Satan's attacks to display before the world the fact that even the best of saints, on their own, are not immune from the deceitfulness of the human heart (Jeremiah 17:9). Job's selfishness was flushed into the open, and it was safely removed before it became a malignant tumor.
Seeing this caused me to reconsider my own difficulties. Perhaps God had allowed my sexual troubles for a similar reason. I certainly had the potential to fall to selfish religion. I had believed the gospel the first time I heard it. I had surrendered to Jesus shortly after that. I had memorized scripture by the chapter as a teenager. I could teach the Bible, write songs, and zealously serve the Lord, all while working a job and laying down my life for my family. How difficult would it have been for those gifts to have led me into pride and selfishness?
<page 99>Yet there was always one thing in my life that contradicted any tendency toward pride – my sexual struggles. They were a thorn in my flesh that humbled me and kept me dependent on Jesus. I knew that if I expressed them in my actions, my entire life would turn into a joke. And the fact that I had to fight so hard to avoid this fate, something that seemed to come easily to many others, made it tough for me to think too highly of myself.
Seeing my struggles in that light touched the part of me that was resentful. I realized that the very issue over which I was angry at God might have been His plan to help me. If nothing else, it had pushed me beyond my human ability to endure and convinced me I had nothing good in myself. Apart from Jesus, I would make a mess of anything I touched. Nothing less than a real work of the Holy Spirit would produce anything truly worthwhile in me. I had to lay down my creativity, my intellect, my desire for peace, my reputation, and my willpower …. There was no room for demanding my view of how life should be. I had to follow Jesus day by day in order to find His view of life.
My resentment began to fade into gratitude. I chose to see my struggles in the light of Jesus saving me from myself, and this helped my emotions to surrender to Him. I accepted the fact that if He decided it was best for me to suffer, I could be OK with that. I repented from my insistence that He free me from the emotional hold of my sexual issues. It was more than enough that my actions were under control. That was an amazing gift all by itself, even if my emotions never followed. I would trust and hope for more, but if all I did for the rest of my life was to survive, I would make the most of that by His grace.
In 2003, I joined an online Christian support group for recovering sex addicts. I expected to find other men like me – men who had found victory in their actions but needed to work through emotional issues. Instead, I found men who were fighting for their lives. Their problems made mine seem small, so I began to write out my story in an attempt to help them. My writing eventually turned into The Exchange Glory Series of books.
After about a month, I decided to post to the group some of what I had written. Before I did, however, I posted my basic testimony. It was the first time since college that I had honestly unveiled my heart in this way. I told my story to say, "This is where I am at. I will share what I have with you, and I hope you will do the same with me."
The next day, I sensed the Holy Spirit move on me in a way that had never happened before and has never happened since. I am not sure how to describe it other than to say that it was as if He took me into an emotional time machine in which I felt almost as if I was back in my childhood. I was at the point where my sexual problems had started, and the insights I had gained from hearing the story about the woman whose childhood experience was similar to mine were front and center in my mind. Those insights had mostly been intellectual up till this point; the time machine moved them into my emotions.
I sensed that God was giving me a chance to revisit the feelings that led to the worst decision of my life. As an adolescent, I had decided to embrace a warped sexuality that gave me an escape from my dysregulated emotions. Now I was able to see the same experience as an adult, with all of the wisdom I had gained over the years. It seemed like I was going to be able to make a different choice, and that this would somehow affect me deeply.
<page 100>The experience went on through one day and into the next. Then I sensed it was time to make my decision. At that point, all sorts of temptations came upon me. It was as if a seductive woman was speaking to me: "Remember the amazing times we have had; you might lose the possibility of returning to them. You have turned me down for a long time, but do you really want to change the inner drive that makes me possible?"
It was alluring, but it wasn't a tough choice. There was no way I was going to turn God away at the moment when He might give me what I had sought for decades. I humbled myself before Him and told Him that, to the best of my ability, I chose what He was offering, but I suspected that this wasn't going to be enough. I needed Him to take care of whatever else was necessary to make my commitment an emotional reality.
Then the experience was over. I wasn't sure if anything lasting had occurred until the next time I saw a tempting sight. I looked at it and checked to see how my emotions reacted, and I discovered that they had changed. Where previous temptations felt as if denying them forced me to give up who I was, I now saw the sin as something I could go back to, but it was no longer as close to the core of my identity. I could resist it without feeling like I was giving up on the real me.
For the first time in a long time, something significant had shifted in my sexual emotions! And that experience was just the start! Many other changes have followed in the past sixteen years. There has still been no quick miracle, but my marred clay has been slowly reshaped. The result has been something that matches the dream I mentioned earlier – a slam dunk. I have encountered Jesus as the one who helps me to honestly work through even my most damaged emotions, transforming them at the deepest level.
I couldn't help but notice the timing of this turning point. It had come the day after I had entered into the same sort of unveiled relationships with others that I had during my last semester in college (Chapter 11. Hail Mary Pass). God had brought me full circle to where I had been during that previous time of change, and this time I had much more wisdom about how to make it a permanent part of my life. I also had the internet to make it easier for me to find others who were interested in sharing the journey with me.
Seventeen years earlier, in 1986, I had given a teaching on sexual issues (the one I mentioned in the introduction to this book). One of the scriptures I had taught on was 2 Peter 1:5-8 (add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge …). In the years after that teaching, I had done my best to walk out the principles I shared. The full court press I mentioned in Chapter 13, especially, was my attempt to be diligent to add virtue, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly kindness, and love to my faith.
I was now experiencing a deeply fulfilling example of the fruit of that. God was making me neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ (2 Peter 1:8). He was reinforcing an array of lines of defense that provided an environment for healing. He was holding me in His arms and writing His laws on my mind and heart. By His mercy, with unveiled face I was beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, and He was transforming me into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord (2 Corinthians 3:18).
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