Smash!
Last Thursday we celebrated the end of this semester's PURE group. PURE is an opportunity for men (there's a group for women as well!) to find encouragement and help to forsake sexual sin that has dominated them for years. God's done a wondrous work in their lives, as they've forsaken internet pornography, masturbation, and sexual activity outside of God's good design. Our world teaches that unbounded sexuality is the key to happiness. These young men found freedom and joy in their hearts as they've embraced God's design.
As a part of our closing ceremony, we had men share "two-word testimonies." Who they were before PURE and what they are now. Here's what I heard from these men...
Deceitfulness.... Truthfulness
Secretive..... Open
Zombie... Light
Denial..... Acceptance
Hell..... Hope
With these words come stories of struggle, hopelessness, and shame....followed up with light, truth, and healing. They wrote their old identities on pieces of wood and burned them, symbolizing their death to sin through Christ's death on the cross.
These men are putting into practice Paul's words from Romans 6:12-14...
Last Thursday we celebrated the end of this semester's PURE group. PURE is an opportunity for men (there's a group for women as well!) to find encouragement and help to forsake sexual sin that has dominated them for years. God's done a wondrous work in their lives, as they've forsaken internet pornography, masturbation, and sexual activity outside of God's good design. Our world teaches that unbounded sexuality is the key to happiness. These young men found freedom and joy in their hearts as they've embraced God's design.
As a part of our closing ceremony, we had men share "two-word testimonies." Who they were before PURE and what they are now. Here's what I heard from these men...
Deceitfulness.... Truthfulness
Secretive..... Open
Zombie... Light
Denial..... Acceptance
Hell..... Hope
With these words come stories of struggle, hopelessness, and shame....followed up with light, truth, and healing. They wrote their old identities on pieces of wood and burned them, symbolizing their death to sin through Christ's death on the cross.
These men are putting into practice Paul's words from Romans 6:12-14...
12 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness.14 For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.
We ended our time by allowing them to take some genuine, somber anger out on the devices that have enslaved them for so long. It was truly a solemn exercise...a joy to see them exercise their power as men, no longer as slaves but as masters. We then held each other up (literally!) and prayed for one another.
Please pray that God would continue to deliver university students from bondage to sexual sin. Pray that these six men would continue in purity, and would help others to find freedom as well.
Thanks for praying with us!
-Noah
Please pray that God would continue to deliver university students from bondage to sexual sin. Pray that these six men would continue in purity, and would help others to find freedom as well.
Thanks for praying with us!
-Noah
