Fornication and Pornography
by
Randy Shankle
Males have dealt with pornography lightly... as
if it’s understandable because we’re male and filled with
testosterone...and you know, it’s got to have an outlet...Let me
just say that if that is you, something is missing from your
relationship to Christ. Not only will the sin lead you into
sexual perversion, it will destroy your character, your
confidence, your relationships...It is an old adage but I will
repeat it here, "Sin takes you farther than you want to go,
keeps you longer than you want to stay, costs you more than you
want to pay. You cannot make a deal with the devil and come out
on top.
Go to 1 Corinthians 6:13-16:
13 Meats for the belly, and the belly for meats: but God shall
destroy both it and them. Now the body is not for fornication,
but for the Lord; and the Lord for the body.
14 And God hath both raised up the Lord, and will also raise up
us by his own power.
15 Know ye not that your bodies are the members of
Christ? shall I then take the members of Christ, and make them the
members of an harlot? God forbid.
16 What? know ye not that he which is joined to an harlot is one body?
for two, saith he, shall be one flesh.
The body is not for fornication (pornos) but for the Lord. If a woman
walks by and you "check her out", your eyes hit her rear-end and you
think, "Boy, I’d like to..." According to the Lord, you just did. In the
eyes of God, He sees according to the thoughts and the intents of your
heart. The moment you have any thought, He reads it. I am convinced of
this because the moment I stepped out of my body, my thoughts were
audible words. Your thoughts are read easily by God. Satan reads you as
well. If he sees you look her over, he tells the demons to watch you and
seize their opportunities to negotiate.
Pornography is nothing but fornication by proxy (substitution). You’re
substituting the real with the image. When you boot up your computer and
you select pornography you have to pay for that encounter with money and
more. When they bill your house you have to deceive and lie to just deal
with the bill without your parents finding out. The Scripture says this:
Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he
that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body.
Flee porno...he that committeth pornography sins against his own body.
It is a sexual sin against your own body. He says in 1 Corinthians 7:2,
"Nevertheless, to avoid fornication..." How do you avoid it? Get married
and have a wife. If you want to see a naked woman, get married.
We are sexual by nature but religion has always denied our humanity.
Religion always denies the good things of God and the things that God
has given us richly to enjoy (1 Tim. 6:17). God is not opposed to
husbands and wives making love; He is opposed to fornication and
pornography. Sex in marriage is recreational, it’s pleasurable and it’s
fun. The marriage bed is undefiled.
Now, we have to face some issues. Paul said that every man should know
how to possess his vessel unto sanctification. He said, "I keep under my
body." In other words, he was saying, "I make my body come under, and
keep it under subjection. Lest at any time, I should become a castaway,
or rejected from the very thing I am preaching." This principle is of
the manifest sons of God. I cannot preach or teach something and not do
it. That’s hypocrisy. The reason that we are having a lot of problems
with our teenagers is because we’re facing that now. As I deal with a
lot of our teenagers, I have to deal with the fact that they are angry
at their parents because of their hypocrisy. This is not about that old
adage, "Do as I say, not as I do." That is what causes rebellion among
youth. We are the sons of God and the Word became manifest and dwelt
among us. We are the living epistles, the Word has got to be made
manifest among us. I want my children to know that I have a very loving
amorous relationship with their mother. I want them to see it. I don’t
hide it from them. I don’t flaunt it in a perverted way but I’m always
loving on her around them. I want my girls to know that there is nothing
wrong or unclean with making love to their husband.
There are three loves: agape, phileo, and eros. Spirit, soul and body.
Both phileo and eros answer to agape. Christ was the first to use the
word agape – the love of God – He is agape, not phileo or eros. It is
the only true love that exists. It is not self-serving, self-seeking or
self-mastery love. This love is the love of somebody else at your own
expense. God so loved that He gave...He doesn’t get. Phileo and eros are
very self-centered in their root nature. Agape is not. If you get these
out of their right order it changes things.
Let me show you why Paul said that he keeps his under subjection. It is
the law of the temporal which could also be named the law of "repeat".
The law is this: whatever you do with your body, you will have to do
over and over again. It will never be enough. If you eat, you have to
eat again; if you sleep, you have to sleep again...there is no end to
it. True or not? Work out, brush your teeth, wash your hair...no matter
what you do, you’ll have to do it again. You’ll have to do it again and
again and again. So, is it really fulfilling? No. The Scripture words it
this way regarding a stand that Moses took , "...the pleasures of sin
for a season;" The pleasure of sin is only for a moment... a season.
But, is agape temporal or eternal? Agape lasts forever. You don’t have
to keep feeding it over and over again. It is the power of eternal zoe.
We have eternal light, life and love – the three "Ls" of His divine
nature. All three of those are eternal.
Although phileo can be temporal, it is also eternal – when it is
sanctified. The first two times that Jesus asked Peter if he loved him,
the word translated as love in English was the word agape. The third
time Jesus asked Peter if he loved him the word He used was phileo.
Peter, it is recorded, was grieved...Christ had found out his heart; his
love was only phileo, and the Lord knowing that, knew also that Peter
would betray him despite his profession of loyalty to the death. Only
the Apostle John had a revelation of the agape of God – He was the only
one that used that word. He was the disciple whom the Lord agapeo. (John
21:20) In all but one instance when the Scripture refers to John as the
disciple whom Jesus loved, the word love was translated from agapao. In
John 20:2 the word loved was translated from phileo. Jesus loved him
eternally, from the spirit, but he loved something about his
personality, as well. He was fond of John, he liked his temperament and
nature. Is that not true of all of us? We love all of our brothers and
sisters but there are some that we just love in personality and like to
be around. That’s phileo. It’s very good but it can also be very
self-serving. You choose your friends from those that are rich, from
those that bless you the most...it goes on and on. However, there is
also the "real" behind it. Phileo is dangerous...it can go in ungodly
ways. Instead of waiting for God to give you a wife to love you, you
love yourself. That is where the term "masturbation" comes from...it
means to be self-serving, to master yourself. You young men, wait for
your wife. Let her master your desire, your need, your drive.
This is how you keep under your body; this is how you possess your
vessel. You know that it is temporal and you treat it as if it is
temporal. You know that it has to repeat everything that it does. Treat
it like it does and be wise in how you handle it and how things operate
in your life. The body wants food and you give it way too much. It’s
gluttony. The body wants sleep and you give it way too much. That is
being a sluggard. In everything that you do, you have to sanctify it.
"... this is the will of God, (concerning you) even your
sanctification..."(1Thess 4:3). We should know how to sanctify this
body, keep it sanctified and in the honor of God.. We don’t overeat, we
don’t over-indulge, we don’t over-anything. We keep our body under
restraint at all times because, if you don’t, it is the one that will
demand what it wants again and again. There is no end to it. If you
smoke marijuana, you’ll do it again and again...you smoke "crack"
once...then, you’re out all night long, always trying to find more until
you get delivered from the power of serving your body and start serving
the Lord! Then, you become motivated, not by sex, but by agape.
Everything that a man does is motivated by love – the love of God, the
love of others or the love of self. Is money the root of all evil? Or,
does the Scripture say that it is the love of it? Man is motivated
toward money because he loves it. Does he agape it? Of course not. Does
he phileo it? eros it? Did you know that there are men that get
physically turned on by holding a lot of money in their hands? Did you
know that cars are used as sex objects? How in the world do you name a
car, "The sexiest car of the year"? Yet, people get in that car and
feel, "sexy". It is incredible but these things effect certain males..
There are two types of males here that are in trouble. There are those
that over-indulge in sex and those that are malakos (soft, tending
toward the feminine). We often wear military garb here. Why do we do
that? Some get offended by it here but they have no idea of the spirit
of what we are trying to do. Are we a militia group? No. Wearing
military attire is an apostolic strategy to bring forth manliness, to
bring out "maleness" in your behavior and the aggressiveness that is
manly. We dressed these men in something opposite to a dress so that we
would help bring something out in them. It is a strategy that we still
use to bring out maleness. It is a prophetic statement to principalities
that we are warriors. You are a warrior, a military man, trained to take
on and combat Lucifer.
If you are going to be a soldier in the Body of Christ, in the war of
God, you’re going to have to endure some hardness. Young men have to
learn how to endure some things. That’s why we take them and put them in
sports. We’re doing it and they’re doing it in a different way. Every
sport that we get involved in is a contact sport. Our boys have got to
endure getting banged up some and some roughness. They come out loving
it because they get in touch with what is their true nature...the Zakar!
the Iysh! Then, he’s glorifying God, he’s not afraid of demons, he’s not
fearful, he’s not afraid of the dark. He’ll say to demons, "I rebuke
you, in the name of Jesus!" You’ll hear them... there are little guys
doing it now...laying hands on the sick, casting out devils, rebuking
them at night.
Listen, we’ve got a good life, brothers. If you get married at age
twenty, young men, you have three hundred and sixty-five days a year for
approximately sixty to sixty-five years to have sex with your wife. How
many times can you make love to your wife, if you want to, at a rate of
just once per day? You’re looking at twenty-two thousand times! Don’t
you think that’s enough? Sure, it is. You’re looking at reality here.
This is not about God trying to withhold from us. If you want sexual
pleasure, fun and recreation...talk to your wife.
This is not a time of pride or embarrassment; it’s a time of cleansing.
What will destroy your walk with God is if you hide it. You will be able
to sanctify and cleanse it, if you are honest about it. We have to be
cleansed. If you have any problem with pornography or fornication at
all, confess it and pray. All we’re going to do is pray for you. You may
say, "I really don’t look into it but it bothers me. I feel drawn to
it." You may not look at it but you feel drawn all the time...that’s a
power, there’s a power to it. We’re going to break the power of this.
It’s all about power, tonight. It’s not about pride, it’s about power.
It’s about how God anointed Jesus Christ with the Holy Ghost and power,
who went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed by the
devil...(Acts 10:38) Before I left the house tonight my wife asked me if
she could pray for me. What she prayed was for you...that God would
anoint me for you, to break the yoke of this unclean spirit. I am
encouraging you, right now, that you break this power over your life.
We’re all going to pray for that anointing. You pray for it. I am going
to pray.
Father, in the name of Jesus, I break the power of this unclean spirit.
I break the power, not just the fruit of it. The Lord Jesus is the
Master of our bodies. Sever the root, right now. Say, I no longer make
contact with pornography. My body is not for fornication, my body is for
the Lord! Father, we bring our bodies to you right now and ask you to
deliver our bodies from the power of sexual sin, sexual perversion,
sexual uncleanness. I ask you, God, to deliver this body right
here...cleanse your sons from sexual overactiveness, from the
imaginations, from image worship, the picture-pleasuring that takes
place. I rebuke you, Lucifer, in the name of Jesus! You unclean spirit,
you are cursed this night! You have no place! Out! in the name of Jesus!
Out! of every male who desires to walk with and in the presence of the
Living God! The power of this is broken, in Jesus Christ’s name! Father,
we thank you for it now. I want to thank you that this will no longer be
a torment to these young men. They are free from it, sanctified, fit for
the Master’s use and prepared for every good work. In the name of Jesus,
Father, thank You. It is an hour of deliverance. Thank You now, Father,
that they walk away from it. Let these young men be sanctified.
Thank God for the power of the blood of Jesus. You’ve been delivered by
the blood of Jesus from the power of it. Young men, I am sorry to say
that in this day you are going to see women’s nakedness
everywhere...You’re not going to avoid it but you can avoid the power of
it.
You young men, you’re not going to go crazy. You’ll be fine. You’re not
going to explode. Get involved in life. Your day will come...you will
marry and you will get all of the loving that you want in life.
I am encouraging you men to throw away the fantasies of your mind and
embrace the realities of Christ. Every woman has the same parts. How
many of the same thing do you need to see in life? Let’s go on with life
a little more sober and controlled. Amen?.
Young men, do what the Scripture says, forget your pride, and go to
someone in authority over you for help when you are struggling. Do you
think that this is all about divinity?...that God just thinks that we
are all just divine spirit beings? Do we have bodies and do we have
natural desires? Do we have sexual desires? I will tell you this as I
have told the teenaged boys : God is not opposed to sex – He made it to
feel good. If sex were just for procreation (to have children), it
wouldn’t have had to feel good. He intended for you to enjoy sex, but in
your time and season. When you are married, you can enjoy it all. You
can wait for your time. The Lord is with you to do it
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