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    Pure Eyes (XXXChurch.com Resource): A Man's Guide to Sexual Integrity
    Pure Eyes (XXXChurch.com Resource): A Man's Guide to Sexual Integrity
    Pure Eyes (XXXChurch.com Resource): A Man's Guide to Sexual Integrity
    Ebook213 pages4 hours

    Pure Eyes (XXXChurch.com Resource): A Man's Guide to Sexual Integrity

    By Craig Gross and Steven Luff

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    About this ebook

    When it comes to sex and sexuality, men often find themselves in a losing battle against temptation. Whether it's overt pornography or simply oversexualized images of women, media can be a man's worst enemy. In this straightforward book, Craig Gross and Steven Luff help men understand and embrace the true purpose and role of sex in their lives. Whether single or married, all men must cope with sexual temptation--sometimes on a daily basis. This honest treatment of an uncomfortable issue will free men to experience forgiveness and renewal.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBaker Publishing Group
    Release dateSep 1, 2010
    ISBN9781441213044
    Pure Eyes (XXXChurch.com Resource): A Man's Guide to Sexual Integrity
    Author

    Craig Gross

    Craig Gross founded Fireproof Ministries and XXXchurch.com and is the author of several books, including The Dirty Little Secret and Questions You Can't Ask Your Mama about Sex. He currently lives in Pasadena with his wife, Jeanette, and two kids, Nolan and Elise.

    Read more from Craig Gross

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    Pure Eyes (XXXChurch.com Resource) - Craig Gross

    church.

    1

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    The First Step

    Acceptance

    More than ever, we have big houses and broken homes, high incomes and low morale, secured rights and diminished civility. We excel at making a living but often fail at making a life. We celebrate our prosperity but yearn for a purpose. We cherish our freedoms but long for connection. In an age of plenty, we feel spiritual hunger.

    David G. Myers, The American Paradox:

    Spiritual Hunger in an Age of Plenty

    Alex had a problem, but it wasn’t clear to him until his girlfriend of two years left him. His pornography use, as much as two hours per day, had begun to interfere with their relationship, destroying their intimacy and clouding their future.

    In this day and age, stories like this are nothing new. Many men have lost their girlfriend or spouse to their pornography addiction. They’ve worn out the goodwill of the very people who vowed never to leave their side. Unfortunately, it often isn’t until men lose these loved ones—or opportunities and hopes and dreams—that they realize the extent of their problem and their need for help.

    For Alex, the loss of his girlfriend was tragic. I loved her, he said. She was beautiful, talented, and loving. She was the one who brought me to Christ. When I lost her, I had to open up my eyes and realize that something had to change, that I was addicted to pornography, and that only God could give me another shot at having a woman like her if I cleaned up my life and sought healing.

    Three Important Footholds

    Alex’s healing process has been similar to that of many other men who have rid their lives of pornography through self-examination and prayer. It always starts with acceptance. First, he had to realize he had a problem, that pornography use did nothing to enhance his life and had instead gutted his soul. From there, he had to figure out a personal system that would offer him the footholds to climb out of a very slippery pit.

    Most men understand. They get it. Deep in their mind they know what we mean when we describe a very slippery pit. Despite your good intentions, despite how much you desperately want to get to the top of that pit and into fresh air, the walls of the pit are just too steep and too slick to gain any sort of traction. Sometimes you don’t even know which way to climb.

    While we aren’t going to start your climb out of that pit just yet, we are going to start building some very powerful footholds that will help your ascent. If you don’t know which way to climb, recognize this: your admission of your problem and your desire to seek help are indications that you are going the right way. Keep believing. Keep looking up.

    After Alex realized his problem, he had to start rebuilding his mind and the way he thought about both pornography and himself. Alex had to create three mental footholds to get him on his way:

    1. An acceptance of the word sobriety in the discussion of abstaining from pornography use.

    2. A personal and vocal commitment to sobriety.

    3. An understanding of his God-given purpose.

    While Alex did not automatically articulate these three footholds, especially in that order, he did trip, stumble, and finally land on them at different moments during his healing. His climb was muddier, dirtier, and bloodier than perhaps it needed to be, but he made it. Our goal here is to make your ascent from the pit of pornography use cleaner, smoother, and hopefully quicker than his.

    Sobriety

    Pornography is like a drug. Similar to other substances of abuse, it alters our brain function, and in that sense, it is a drug. In her 2003 report prepared for the Department of Justice, researcher Judith A. Reisman wrote, [Pornography] is an endogenously processed poly drug providing intense, although misleading, sensory rewards.[1]

    While we may not ingest or inject pornography into our systems to get a high (like we would with, say, cocaine or heroin), pornography use triggers the brain to produce neurochemicals that give us highs similar to other drugs. Pornography, Reisman writes, kick-starts endogenous LSD, adrenaline/norepinephrine, morphine like neurochemicals for a hormonal flood, a ‘rush’ allegedly analogous to the rush attained using various street drugs.

    This may not come as much of a surprise to many men who use pornography. If there were no rush, no thrill in either seeking it or viewing it, then there would be no purpose in pursuing it. It would lose its meaning and become pointless.

    Pornography is a drug, and as a drug it can become addictive. In this sense, pornography should be placed within the same category as other substances of abuse, including methamphetamine, crack, cocaine, or

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