This episode is going to be a little different from past episodes in that I have some advice to share with regards to the COVID-19 pandemic. The advice comes from several assembly doctors who are paying close attention to the spread of this disease and have made recommendations specifically for assembly gatherings.  The Recommendations, Verbatim I am not a medical doctor. I do have a Bachelor of Science degree where I majored in Biology including the study of microbiology, but I am not going to embellish or provide additional commentary to what the medical professionals are recommending in this letter that they have provided for distribution below. The doctors who have assembled this advice are:  David Vallance MD (Livonia, Michigan) Scott Yaekle MD (Livonia, Michigan) Michael Renzi DO (Barrington, NJ) Ricardo Castro MD (Santiago, Chile) Alexander Higgins MD (Barrington, NJ) Lindsay Parks DO (Indiana, PA)  The Advice Here is the content of the document assembled by these doctors. The title reads, “Advice for Assembly Gatherings During the COVID-19 Pandemic”.  Many assembly Christians have had serious concerns about the COVID-19 or SARS-CoV-2 (2019 Novel Coronavirus) pandemic, which as of this writing has been confirmed in almost 100 countries, 38 US states, and Canada.  The situation is rapidly evolving, and public health authorities are not sure whether the outbreak can be contained by quarantine, or how long the pandemic will last.  As of March 2, the World Health Organization has estimated the death rate worldwide at 3.4% (by comparison, the death rate from influenza in the U.S. is 0.1%). While there has been much confusion about this virus, including misinformation, and media hype and hoax, the physician-authors of this article take this VERY seriously. The pandemic is spreading, and we all feel that this could be very significant, AND widespread. The Christian has a resource that is unmatched- faith in the God, Who controls the universe. He and He alone is our Rock, our Refuge, our place of safety and security. His promises never fail. He knows all about this, and this has not taken Him by surprise. Prayer, trust in His Almighty hand, and intercession for those affected, should be our primary and constant priority. Nahum 1:7  “The Lord is good, a strong hold in the day of trouble; and He knoweth them that trust in Him.” COVID-19 arose near Wuhan, China.  It is “novel,” meaning that no humans have been exposed to it before, and thus no one has immunity to it.  The infection typically begins with a sore throat, sinus congestion, and high fever (over 102 F, or 38.9 C).  A deep cough from bronchial or lung infection may ensue.  Nausea and vomiting are common.  While healthy people usually recover, those with chronic lung disease, heart disease, or compromised immune systems (e.g. from chemotherapy) may succumb to the pneumonia and its complications (e.g. respiratory failure, kidney failure).  The elderly are at greatest risk; thankfully, children have been relatively spared. In order to check the spread of the virus, government officials are imposing quarantines, which may affect some believers.  The best defense against contracting the illness is to avoid contact with infected people, to wash your hands frequently and thoroughly (at least 20 seconds with soap), and to use sanitizing wipes on your hands and on surfaces that are frequently touched.   No vaccine or specific treatment is yet available, although some drugs for influenza (a similar virus) are being evaluated.  Antibiotics are not effective, unless a secondary bacterial infection develops.  Those who develop symptoms should receive supportive therapy (e.g. acetaminophen for fever over 102 F / 38.9 C, and Gatorade for dehydration from fever and vomiting).  It is important not to spread the illness—if you are sick, stay home.  If you develop a deep cough or shortness of breath, seek medical help. Many believers are asking what assemblies should do in public meetings to help curtail the spread of this infection.  The following suggestions are made in good faith based on current evidence, and are not meant to be definitive.  Most are common-sense precautions to avoid spreading the virus. 1.	Wash your own hands often and thoroughly with soap and warm water for at least 20 seconds. 2.	Keep alcohol-based hand sanitizer (wipes or gels with at least 60% alcohol) at the door of the hall and use it liberally. 3.	Repeatedly wipe down all frequently touched surfaces—cellphones, door handles, countertops, keypads, etc.—with disposable wipes or the cleansing agents that are usually used for these surfaces. 4.	Provide tissues and no-touch disposal receptacles. 5.	Try not to touch your face.  The virus can enter through the mouth, nose, and eyes, and studies have shown that we touch our faces about 90 times a day. 6.	Do not greet one another with “an holy kiss,” as this will transmit the virus. 7.	Elbow bumps—or no physical contact at all—should substitute for handshakes. 8.	Stay home if you are sick and advise others to do the same. 9.	Always cover coughs or sneezes with a tissue or sleeve. 10.	Avoid close contact with people who are sick. 11.	The Centers for Disease Control does not recommend face masks to prevent infection.  However, anyone who shows symptoms of COVID-19 should wear a mask to help prevent the spread of the disease to others, including family members. 12.	Anyone exposed to a confirmed case should avoid contact with other people for at least three weeks (this is the incubation period, the time between contracting the virus and actually developing symptoms of the illness). What about holding assembly meetings if the COVID-19 virus is in your area?  First, if the authorities advise against public meetings, we should comply as long as the recommendation remains in place.  Otherwise, meetings can continue as usual, provided  that we follow the above precautions. The Scriptural practice of sharing the communal cup has raised concern.  The alcohol in wine is not strong enough to be a disinfectant (alcohol must be 60% or 120 proof to kill viruses).  In general, a person with a compromised immune system should receive the cup first, and a person who shows signs of infection should receive the cup last—or not at all.  Further, individual wipes should be available so that believers may wipe the cup rim before drinking if they choose to do so. More extreme measures may have to be considered by some assemblies, especially if authorities recommend them.  Such measures might include having a brother with gloved hands bring the bread plate and offering basket to each individual, or use a squeeze bottle to decant a small measure of wine into a disposable cup held by each believer.  These procedures would consume a lot of time in larger companies.  Currently, it is likely sufficient to use hand sanitizer after touching a common plate, cup, or basket. Visitors who come from areas where COVID-19 is endemic, or believers who return home after traveling to such areas, raise another concern.  As noted, the incubation period can be as long as three weeks.  Thus a person can be infected (and thus spread the virus to others) for up to three weeks before he or she becomes ill.  The wisest course for a person coming from an endemic area would be to self-quarantine for at least two full weeks. While these recommended policies are not strictly necessary to carry out in areas with no nearby cases of COVID-19, it may still be wise to adopt them until the pandemic is over.  Each assembly’s policy should be left to the judgment of its overseers.  With this threat as any other, we must look to the Lord for wisdom and protection and trust Him. Respectfully submitted, David Vallance MD (Livonia, Michigan) Scott Yaekle MD (Livonia, Michigan) Michael Renzi DO (Barrington, NJ) Ricardo Castro MD (Santiago, Chile) Alexander Higgins MD (Barrington, NJ) Lindsay Parks DO (Indiana, PA)  Conclusion That is the extent of the advice provided at the time of posting this article, which is on Wednesday, March 11, 2020. If you have questions please contact me and I will collect these questions for a day or two and then will obtain responses and issue another episode, if necessary so that we all can be informed. Good questions are helpful — please make sure that you have understood what has already been written and phrase your question in such a way that it can be clearly answered.

This episode is going to be a little different from past episodes in that I have some advice to share with regards to the COVID-19 pandemic. The advice comes from several assembly doctors who are paying close attention to the spread of this disease and have made recommendations specifically for assembly gatherings. <h2>The Recommendations, Verbatim</h2> I am not a medical doctor. I do have a Bachelor of Science degree where I majored in Biology including the study of microbiology, but I am not going to embellish or provide additional commentary to what the medical professionals are recommending in this letter that they have provided for distribution below. The doctors who have assembled this advice are: <ul> <li>David Vallance MD (Livonia, Michigan)</li> <li>Scott Yaekle MD (Livonia, Michigan)</li> <li>Michael Renzi DO (Barrington, NJ)</li> <li>Ricardo Castro MD (Santiago, Chile)</li> <li>Alexander Higgins MD (Barrington, NJ)</li> <li>Lindsay Parks DO (Indiana, PA)</li> </ul> <h2>The Advice</h2> Here is the content of the document assembled by these doctors. The title reads, “Advice for Assembly Gatherings During the COVID-19 Pandemic”. <blockquote> Many assembly Christians have had serious concerns about the COVID-19 or SARS-CoV-2 (2019 Novel Coronavirus) pandemic, which as of this writing has been confirmed in almost 100 countries, 38 US states, and Canada. The situation is rapidly evolving, and public health authorities are not sure whether the outbreak can be contained by quarantine, or how long the pandemic will last. As of March 2, the World Health Organization has estimated the death rate worldwide at 3.4% (by comparison, the death rate from influenza in the U.S. is 0.1%). While there has been much confusion about this virus, including misinformation, and media hype and hoax, the physician-authors of this article take this VERY seriously. The pandemic is spreading, and we all feel that this could be very significant, AND widespread. The Christian has a resource that is unmatched- faith in the God, Who controls the universe. He and He alone is our Rock, our Refuge, our place of safety and security. His promises never fail. He knows all about this, and this has not taken Him by surprise. Prayer, trust in His Almighty hand, and intercession for those affected, should be our primary and constant priority. Nahum 1:7 “The Lord is good, a strong hold in the day of trouble; and He knoweth them that trust in Him.” COVID-19 arose near Wuhan, China. It is “novel,” meaning that no humans have been exposed to it before, and thus no one has immunity to it. The infection typically begins with a sore throat, sinus congestion, and high fever (over 102 F, or 38.9 C). A deep cough from bronchial or lung infection may ensue. Nausea and vomiting are common. While healthy people usually recover, those with chronic lung disease, heart disease, or compromised immune systems (e.g. from chemotherapy) may succumb to the pneumonia and its complications (e.g. respiratory failure, kidney failure). The elderly are at greatest risk; thankfully, children have been relatively spared. In order to check the spread of the virus, government officials are imposing quarantines, which may affect some believers. The best defense against contracting the illness is to avoid contact with infected people, to wash your hands frequently and thoroughly (at least 20 seconds with soap), and to use sanitizing wipes on your hands and on surfaces that are frequently touched. No vaccine or specific treatment is yet available, although some drugs for influenza (a similar virus) are being evaluated. Antibiotics are not effective, unless a secondary bacterial infection develops. Those who develop symptoms should receive supportive therapy (e.g. acetaminophen for fever over 102 F / 38.9 C, and Gatorade for dehydration from fever and vomiting). It is important not to spread the illness—if you are sick, stay home. If you develop a deep cough or shortness of breath, seek medical help. Many believers are asking what assemblies should do in public meetings to help curtail the spread of this infection. The following suggestions are made in good faith based on current evidence, and are not meant to be definitive. Most are common-sense precautions to avoid spreading the virus. 1.	Wash your own hands often and thoroughly with soap and warm water for at least 20 seconds. 2.	Keep alcohol-based hand sanitizer (wipes or gels with at least 60% alcohol) at the door of the hall and use it liberally. 3.	Repeatedly wipe down all frequently touched surfaces—cellphones, door handles, countertops, keypads, etc.—with disposable wipes or the cleansing agents that are usually used for these surfaces. 4.	Provide tissues and no-touch disposal receptacles. 5.	Try not to touch your face. The virus can enter through the mouth, nose, and eyes, and studies have shown that we touch our faces about 90 times a day. 6.	Do not greet one another with “an holy kiss,” as this will transmit the virus. 7.	Elbow bumps—or no physical contact at all—should substitute for handshakes. 8.	Stay home if you are sick and advise others to do the same. 9.	Always cover coughs or sneezes with a tissue or sleeve. 10.	Avoid close contact with people who are sick. 11.	The Centers for Disease Control does not recommend face masks to prevent infection. However, anyone who shows symptoms of COVID-19 should wear a mask to help prevent the spread of the disease to others, including family members. 12.	Anyone exposed to a confirmed case should avoid contact with other people for at least three weeks (this is the incubation period, the time between contracting the virus and actually developing symptoms of the illness). What about holding assembly meetings if the COVID-19 virus is in your area? First, if the authorities advise against public meetings, we should comply as long as the recommendation remains in place. Otherwise, meetings can continue as usual, provided that we follow the above precautions. The Scriptural practice of sharing the communal cup has raised concern. The alcohol in wine is not strong enough to be a disinfectant (alcohol must be 60% or 120 proof to kill viruses). In general, a person with a compromised immune system should receive the cup first, and a person who shows signs of infection should receive the cup last—or not at all. Further, individual wipes should be available so that believers may wipe the cup rim before drinking if they choose to do so. More extreme measures may have to be considered by some assemblies, especially if authorities recommend them. Such measures might include having a brother with gloved hands bring the bread plate and offering basket to each individual, or use a squeeze bottle to decant a small measure of wine into a disposable cup held by each believer. These procedures would consume a lot of time in larger companies. Currently, it is likely sufficient to use hand sanitizer after touching a common plate, cup, or basket. Visitors who come from areas where COVID-19 is endemic, or believers who return home after traveling to such areas, raise another concern. As noted, the incubation period can be as long as three weeks. Thus a person can be infected (and thus spread the virus to others) for up to three weeks before he or she becomes ill. The wisest course for a person coming from an endemic area would be to self-quarantine for at least two full weeks. While these recommended policies are not strictly necessary to carry out in areas with no nearby cases of COVID-19, it may still be wise to adopt them until the pandemic is over. Each assembly’s policy should be left to the judgment of its overseers. With this threat as any other, we must look to the Lord for wisdom and protection and trust Him. Respectfully submitted, David Vallance MD (Livonia, Michigan) Scott Yaekle MD (Livonia, Michigan) Michael Renzi DO (Barrington, NJ) Ricardo Castro MD (Santiago, Chile) Alexander Higgins MD (Barrington, NJ) Lindsay Parks DO (Indiana, PA) </blockquote> <h2>Conclusion</h2> That is the extent of the advice provided at the time of posting this article, which is on Wednesday, March 11, 2020. If you have questions please contact me and I will collect these questions for a day or two and then will obtain responses and issue another episode, if necessary so that we all can be informed. Good questions are helpful — please make sure that you have understood what has already been written and phrase your question in such a way that it can be clearly answered.

Advice for Assembly Gatherings During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Casual vs. Formal Wear

When I issued the overseer survey in late 2017, the third-highest concern from overseers was that they felt they were far too busy and did not have enough time to shepherd God’s flock. In this article, I do not intend to criticize or add to the guilt surrounding this issue but rather would like to help each of us understand how we get so overloaded and then offer possible solutions.  Before we proceed to our topic, the top two concerns from the survey were: #1, disengagement and apathy among assembly members and, #2, not enough teaching on assembly truth. You can check out the full report and my analysis at oversight dot today slash 2. Assessing Busyness Most of us likely have something of a love/hate relationship with busyness. We know idleness leads to poverty (Proverbs 10:4, 20:13), gossip (1 Timothy 5:13), disrepair (Ecclesiastes 10:18) and material loss (Proverbs 24:30-34). However, we also find ourselves in the plight of Martha and feel jealous of those who can sit and enjoy the Lord (Luke 10:38-42). Like Martha, we direct our flurry of activity towards legitimate tasks but this does not seem like the most redemptive use of our time (Ephesians 5:16). There are things we have to do and things we wish we could do. Often we immerse ourselves in the first group and rarely take care of the latter. In other circumstances, all the busy activity just feels like a heavy burden we can never put down. It becomes wearisome and discouraging and we crave a break from it all. When that happens, it is time to pause and assess before we have a major crash. Pause and Assess Amid challenging the believers in Ephesus to examine their walk, Paul touched on the use of one’s time: “Look carefully on how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil” (Ephesians 5:15-16, ESV). Take a moment to “look carefully on how you walk” with me. One of the best tools for scrutinizing this is the “balance wheel”. The Balance Wheel The Balance Wheel looks like a whole pie with the pieces already cut. The pie is your life. Each slice is one of the major domains or areas of your life and so some possibilities might be:  work or career family fitness God relationships rest finances assembly evangelism recreation self-care mental health  Download the Balance Wheel PDF and write down one domain beside each slice of the pie. Choose the most important domains of your life. Next, consider the centre of the wheel or pie a zero and the outer rim a ten. On a scale of 0 to 10, how well are you doing in each of these areas? If you’re doing far too little in that domain of life, you’ll give yourself a low score. If you are doing far too much or it is too consuming, you will give yourself a score close to or as high as 10. Draw a line across the wedge to represent that score. So if you gave yourself a 5 out of 10 you would draw a line across the wedge of that domain halfway from the centre. Do this for each domain, scoring each one individually. What you will probably end up with is a very lumpy wheel. Depending on your stage of life and the priorities you have accepted your wheel may look very different from how you wish it would look. If you’re married, review it with your spouse and discuss which of the slices need to increase and which you need to dial back. You can navigate directly to the article for this show by going to oversight dot today slash 25. If you are not a visual person — perhaps more of a spreadsheet kind of person — you could also list out the various domains of your life in one column. In the next column, give each domain a score based on how much time and energy each consumes where 0 is no time and no energy and 10 is an extreme of time and energy. That is a measure of your current situation. And then add another column where you identify how you believe the Lord would like you to invest your time and energy. However you do it, take time to pause and assess what is balanced or unbalanced in your life. Inevitably, the discussion will turn towards how to restore balance to a happy, Christ-centred level. Paul’s exhortations to the Ephesians is helpful here as well: immediately after his exhortation to make the best use of our time, he says, “Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is” (Ephesians 5:17, ESV). But before we turn to solve the problem, let’s spend a few more minutes looking at how we get so busy. How We Get Too Busy I doubt that any overseer plans to become too busy. I know for myself it often feels like something that just happens — as if I am the victim of an outside force — and yet when I get to that overwhelmed place I am confronted by the fact that I made choices along the way that brought me to that point. Typically, none of the choices were bad or wrong but the accumulation of them has brought on the distress of becoming too busy. How is it that these choices get made? Consider a few possibilities with me. Busyness As a Badge of Honour One real possibility is that I’ve taken on busyness as a badge of honour or as a mark of credibility. It is very alluring to bring myself into a place in life where many, many things depend on me. That makes me feel important and very much needed. Sure, most of those activities may be Biblically valid: assembly, family, community outreach. But it is all too easy to use busyness as a means to supply my personal need to feel aggrandized, important or valued by others. When that happens, dependence on Caleb takes the place of dependence on God. And instead of deriving my worth from the work of Christ I am pursuing my worth in activity and busyness. Suddenly I am on the treadmill of performance-based Christianity. The only way to feed that carnally derived sense of worth is to keep doing more and more and more until I burn myself out. Sure, people may see me and say, “You’re a busy man!” A little burst of dopamine in my brain confirms the reward of these words. And yet in the hype of proving our worth we lose the things that really matter:  Quiet time with the Lord Connection with our spouse Relationships with our children Creating a spiritual legacy  I know this is a real problem because I’ve been there myself and I am still vulnerable to it. What if, instead of taking “You’re a busy man!” as a compliment, we took the statement as concerned feedback? And feedback that warrants a serious review of our priorities? Saying “Yes” Without Saying “No” Another way we get too busy is by saying “Yes” to one thing without saying “No” to another. I cannot remember where I first heard this, but it has been most helpful. Even my wife now asks me, “If you say yes to that, what will you be saying no to?” When I add something to my life, I have to decide what else to remove. For too many years, I lived the myth that I could add things to my life without displacing other things. Just work harder and faster, plan more diligently, optimize your personal efficiency. To be frank, I got pretty good at this: I even believed I could beat the system by saying “yes” without having to say “no” to something else. For a time it appeared to work well. But I forgot one thing: I am finite. And finite in many ways. Mostly, I am ashamed to admit that what really was happening was I mostly ended up saying “no” to my wife and children. If not taking time from them then at the least I had no energy left over for them at the end of the day or week. I am just encouraging you not to make the same mistake. Do not think you can say “yes” to one thing without saying “no” to something else. No matter what you take on in life, you will give something else up to take that on. Sometimes that may be a good thing: a change in priorities, perhaps. Or even we may become too lazy and we need to say “yes” to more service for the Lord and say “no” to so much time on the couch. This is another reason Paul reminds us to “understand what the will of the Lord is” (Ephesians 5:17, ESV): we need to say “yes” to what the Lord wants and “no” to what he does not want. Guilt and Expectations I have had to get better at saying, “No” to some requests from others. In all fairness, we need to be candid that the saints have expectations of us. Frankly, some of those expectations are unreasonable. Someone comes up with an idea for outreach work: they sprinkle it with some guilt about how we’re not doing enough to reach the lost. They drop it in your lap as a responsible overseer and then they walk away. I used to think, “Man, I better get on that.” Now, I say, “That’s a great idea. Why don’t you spearhead it and let me know how we can support your exercise!” Sometimes I am more explicit: “That is not something I have the bandwidth for but I will support you in prayer.” This is not laziness: it is part of acknowledging my limits. I cannot do everything or involve myself in everything. While it’s good to have the support of the oversight in the various works of the assembly, this does not mean the oversight needs hands-on involvement in all of those works. Some we will directly involve ourselves in. Others we will occasionally drop in and encourage. Others we will pray for and inquire about from time to time. This is part of understanding what the will of the Lord is and recognizing our limitations. Other people have agendas for us as overseers. This does not mean we need to comply with those agendas. In fact, in those moments when I feel overwhelmed and just too busy it has often struck me that I am too busy simply because I’m doing what everyone else asks of me rather than just focusing on what the Lord is asking of me. Technology and Distraction This could easily be a topic on its own! Allow me to just say that the clamour of technology often makes us feel more busy. Emails. Texts. Alerts. Notifications. Interruption carries a significant hidden cost: it requires an inordinate amount of time to refocus on the task at hand. The solution is simple: turn off as many notifications as possible. I could say more but I’ll leave it there. How To Dial Down the Busyness What are some solutions to this problem of busyness that so many of us struggle with? Allow me to offer a few suggestions. You likely are familiar with all of these but the reminder of something that has worked well in the past is often a welcome refresher. As an aside, if you are looking for a good book on Biblical productivity and becoming focused on what matters, check out Matt Perman’s “What’s Best Next: How the Gospel Transforms the Way You Get Things Done” Loyalty to Christ There are a lot of good things for us to do in this world. But I believe the Lord also recognizes our finite capability. He will give us too much in order to make us dependent on Him (that’s a good thing!) but not so much that we cannot take care of what matters to Him. Again, God calls us to balance. The Lord has called us to seek first the kingdom of God (Matthew 6:33) but takes the responsibility on Himself of taking care of the other issues around that. Sometimes we get too busy because things distract us from our loyalty to Him. We follow our own will or the will of others. Could this be a time in your service for the Lord where you really need to pause and ask what are the top one or two or (at most) three things He wants you to focus on? Most of us juggle several projects at once but typically we are most effective when we narrow our focus. I believe it is normal to feel the struggle in our service for the Lord. But the struggle needs to be around our own weakness as we turn toward His fullness. Too often, the struggle comes because other things distract us from Christ or else distracted from His priorities for us. In his labour for the Lord, Paul admitted to struggling but also pointed out where he found his energy to serve: “For this I toil, struggling with all His [Christ’s] energy that He powerfully works within me” (Colossians 1:29, ESV). I have to ask: how much is His energy powerfully at work within me? Delegation Another feature of Paul’s service for the Lord was his willingness to involve others. He would send others on specific missions. He would ask others for favours. He willingly received help from those who offered it to him. Paul did not glory in being a one-man show. He was effective at delegation and willing to accept help and support. What can you or I delegate to others? What burdens of service can we assign to other men and women that God has equipped to do His work? Often we feel they may not do it as well as us. And perhaps they won’t. But how will they learn, or how will the succession of assembly leadership occur without your deliberate and intentional delegation of service to others? It may be flattering to leave a gap in the assembly when you pass on — but it would be far more effective for the long-term health of the assembly to leave a legacy of succession in your wake. Let us be more ready and willing to delegate to others — this is about saying “no” to some things in your life (through delegation) so you can say “yes” to what the Lord really wants you to be doing. Balance We return to the subject of balance. Given your balance wheel you have worked on: what do you need to do to restore balance to your life? Plan for Rest Again, this could be a topic on its own. But briefly: rest is an acknowledgment that I am not God. People who do not rest have too high a view of themselves. In our rest we admit our inability to do all that can be done, our need for God’s hand at work in our service, and our own finite nature. Rest keeps our hearts in check from the sin of trying to be like God by taking care of everything. A very helpful book I recently read in this area is David Murray’s “Reset”. Highly recommended. Grace Sometimes there are events and situations that come into our lives that make us too busy. A natural disaster. A health crisis (perhaps chronic). Family distress. Assembly troubles. In these moments, we may just need the grace to accept that we cannot do everything that life confronts us with. And in our weakness, we turn to our heavenly Father and cast these cares on Him. For older overseers with reduced capacity in smaller assemblies: this may be especially germane. You understand there is more that should be done and could be done but you find yourself no longer able to carry it all out. Sometimes we just need to lean on God’s grace and accept our limits. And we trust Him that this is His work: and in doing so we commend His work back into His hands. That’s not wrong: that is leaning on God’s great grace. In conclusion, we can dial down on busyness by getting our eyes back on our Lord: understanding His will for the days, weeks and the year ahead, by being willing to delegate, to do what needs to be done to restore balance, to plan for rest and to lean on His grace.

When I issued the overseer survey in late 2017, the third-highest concern from overseers was that they felt they were far too busy and did not have enough time to shepherd God’s flock. In this article, I do not intend to criticize or add to the guilt surrounding this issue but rather would like to help each of us understand how we get so overloaded and then offer possible solutions. Before we proceed to our topic, the top two concerns from the survey were: #1, disengagement and apathy among assembly members and, #2, not enough teaching on assembly truth. You can check out the full report and my analysis at oversight dot today slash 2. <h2>Assessing Busyness</h2> Most of us likely have something of a love/hate relationship with busyness. We know idleness leads to poverty (Proverbs 10:4, 20:13), gossip (1 Timothy 5:13), disrepair (Ecclesiastes 10:18) and material loss (Proverbs 24:30-34). However, we also find ourselves in the plight of Martha and feel jealous of those who can sit and enjoy the Lord (Luke 10:38-42). Like Martha, we direct our flurry of activity towards legitimate tasks but this does not seem like the most redemptive use of our time (Ephesians 5:16). There are things we have to do and things we wish we could do. Often we immerse ourselves in the first group and rarely take care of the latter. In other circumstances, all the busy activity just feels like a heavy burden we can never put down. It becomes wearisome and discouraging and we crave a break from it all. When that happens, it is time to pause and assess before we have a major crash. <h3>Pause and Assess</h3> Amid challenging the believers in Ephesus to examine their walk, Paul touched on the use of one’s time: “Look carefully on how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil” (Ephesians 5:15-16, ESV). Take a moment to “look carefully on how you walk” with me. One of the best tools for scrutinizing this is the “balance wheel”. <h3>The Balance Wheel</h3> The <a href="https://oversight.today/wp-content/uploads/Balance-Wheel.pdf" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Balance Wheel</a> looks like a whole pie with the pieces already cut. The pie is your life. Each slice is one of the major domains or areas of your life and so some possibilities might be: <ul> <li>work or career</li> <li>family</li> <li>fitness</li> <li>God</li> <li>relationships</li> <li>rest</li> <li>finances</li> <li>assembly</li> <li>evangelism</li> <li>recreation</li> <li>self-care</li> <li>mental health</li> </ul> Download the Balance Wheel PDF and write down one domain beside each slice of the pie. Choose the most important domains of your life. Next, consider the centre of the wheel or pie a zero and the outer rim a ten. On a scale of 0 to 10, how well are you doing in each of these areas? If you’re doing far too little in that domain of life, you’ll give yourself a low score. If you are doing far too much or it is too consuming, you will give yourself a score close to or as high as 10. Draw a line across the wedge to represent that score. So if you gave yourself a 5 out of 10 you would draw a line across the wedge of that domain halfway from the centre. Do this for each domain, scoring each one individually. What you will probably end up with is a very lumpy wheel. Depending on your stage of life and the priorities you have accepted your wheel may look very different from how you wish it would look. If you’re married, review it with your spouse and discuss which of the slices need to increase and which you need to dial back. You can navigate directly to the article for this show by going to oversight dot today slash 25. If you are not a visual person — perhaps more of a spreadsheet kind of person — you could also list out the various domains of your life in one column. In the next column, give each domain a score based on how much time and energy each consumes where 0 is no time and no energy and 10 is an extreme of time and energy. That is a measure of your current situation. And then add another column where you identify how you believe the Lord would like you to invest your time and energy. However you do it, take time to pause and assess what is balanced or unbalanced in your life. Inevitably, the discussion will turn towards how to restore balance to a happy, Christ-centred level. Paul’s exhortations to the Ephesians is helpful here as well: immediately after his exhortation to make the best use of our time, he says, “Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is” (Ephesians 5:17, ESV). But before we turn to solve the problem, let’s spend a few more minutes looking at how we get so busy. <h2>How We Get Too Busy</h2> I doubt that any overseer plans to become too busy. I know for myself it often feels like something that just happens — as if I am the victim of an outside force — and yet when I get to that overwhelmed place I am confronted by the fact that I made choices along the way that brought me to that point. Typically, none of the choices were bad or wrong but the accumulation of them has brought on the distress of becoming too busy. How is it that these choices get made? Consider a few possibilities with me. <h3>Busyness As a Badge of Honour</h3> One real possibility is that I’ve taken on busyness as a badge of honour or as a mark of credibility. It is very alluring to bring myself into a place in life where many, many things depend on me. That makes me feel important and very much needed. Sure, most of those activities may be Biblically valid: assembly, family, community outreach. But it is all too easy to use busyness as a means to supply my personal need to feel aggrandized, important or valued by others. When that happens, dependence on Caleb takes the place of dependence on God. And instead of deriving my worth from the work of Christ I am pursuing my worth in activity and busyness. Suddenly I am on the treadmill of performance-based Christianity. The only way to feed that carnally derived sense of worth is to keep doing more and more and more until I burn myself out. Sure, people may see me and say, “You’re a busy man!” A little burst of dopamine in my brain confirms the reward of these words. And yet in the hype of proving our worth we lose the things that really matter: <ul> <li>Quiet time with the Lord</li> <li>Connection with our spouse</li> <li>Relationships with our children</li> <li>Creating a spiritual legacy</li> </ul> I know this is a real problem because I’ve been there myself and I am still vulnerable to it. What if, instead of taking “You’re a busy man!” as a compliment, we took the statement as concerned feedback? And feedback that warrants a serious review of our priorities? <h3>Saying “Yes” Without Saying “No”</h3> Another way we get too busy is by saying “Yes” to one thing without saying “No” to another. I cannot remember where I first heard this, but it has been most helpful. Even my wife now asks me, “If you say yes to that, what will you be saying no to?” When I add something to my life, I have to decide what else to remove. For too many years, I lived the myth that I could add things to my life without displacing other things. Just work harder and faster, plan more diligently, optimize your personal efficiency. To be frank, I got pretty good at this: I even believed I could beat the system by saying “yes” without having to say “no” to something else. For a time it appeared to work well. But I forgot one thing: I am finite. And finite in many ways. Mostly, I am ashamed to admit that what really was happening was I mostly ended up saying “no” to my wife and children. If not taking time from them then at the least I had no energy left over for them at the end of the day or week. I am just encouraging you not to make the same mistake. Do not think you can say “yes” to one thing without saying “no” to something else. No matter what you take on in life, you will give something else up to take that on. Sometimes that may be a good thing: a change in priorities, perhaps. Or even we may become too lazy and we need to say “yes” to more service for the Lord and say “no” to so much time on the couch. This is another reason Paul reminds us to “understand what the will of the Lord is” (Ephesians 5:17, ESV): we need to say “yes” to what the Lord wants and “no” to what he does not want. <h3>Guilt and Expectations</h3> I have had to get better at saying, “No” to some requests from others. In all fairness, we need to be candid that the saints have expectations of us. Frankly, some of those expectations are unreasonable. Someone comes up with an idea for outreach work: they sprinkle it with some guilt about how we’re not doing enough to reach the lost. They drop it in your lap as a responsible overseer and then they walk away. I used to think, “Man, I better get on that.” Now, I say, “That’s a great idea. Why don’t you spearhead it and let me know how we can support your exercise!” Sometimes I am more explicit: “That is not something I have the bandwidth for but I will support you in prayer.” This is not laziness: it is part of acknowledging my limits. I cannot do everything or involve myself in everything. While it’s good to have the support of the oversight in the various works of the assembly, this does not mean the oversight needs hands-on involvement in all of those works. Some we will directly involve ourselves in. Others we will occasionally drop in and encourage. Others we will pray for and inquire about from time to time. This is part of understanding what the will of the Lord is and recognizing our limitations. Other people have agendas for us as overseers. This does not mean we need to comply with those agendas. In fact, in those moments when I feel overwhelmed and just too busy it has often struck me that I am too busy simply because I’m doing what everyone else asks of me rather than just focusing on what the Lord is asking of me. <h3>Technology and Distraction</h3> This could easily be a topic on its own! Allow me to just say that the clamour of technology often makes us feel more busy. Emails. Texts. Alerts. Notifications. Interruption carries a significant hidden cost: it requires an inordinate amount of time to refocus on the task at hand. The solution is simple: turn off as many notifications as possible. I could say more but I’ll leave it there. <h2>How To Dial Down the Busyness</h2> What are some solutions to this problem of busyness that so many of us struggle with? Allow me to offer a few suggestions. You likely are familiar with all of these but the reminder of something that has worked well in the past is often a welcome refresher. As an aside, if you are looking for a good book on Biblical productivity and becoming focused on what matters, check out Matt Perman’s “<a href="https://amzn.to/2FmDuxG" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">What’s Best Next</a>: How the Gospel Transforms the Way You Get Things Done” <h3>Loyalty to Christ</h3> There are a lot of good things for us to do in this world. But I believe the Lord also recognizes our finite capability. He will give us too much in order to make us dependent on Him (that’s a good thing!) but not so much that we cannot take care of what matters to Him. Again, God calls us to balance. The Lord has called us to seek first the kingdom of God (Matthew 6:33) but takes the responsibility on Himself of taking care of the other issues around that. Sometimes we get too busy because things distract us from our loyalty to Him. We follow our own will or the will of others. Could this be a time in your service for the Lord where you really need to pause and ask what are the top one or two or (at most) three things He wants you to focus on? Most of us juggle several projects at once but typically we are most effective when we narrow our focus. I believe it is normal to feel the struggle in our service for the Lord. But the struggle needs to be around our own weakness as we turn toward His fullness. Too often, the struggle comes because other things distract us from Christ or else distracted from His priorities for us. In his labour for the Lord, Paul admitted to struggling but also pointed out where he found his energy to serve: “For this I toil, struggling with all His [Christ’s] energy that He powerfully works within me” (Colossians 1:29, ESV). I have to ask: how much is His energy powerfully at work within me? <h3>Delegation</h3> Another feature of Paul’s service for the Lord was his willingness to involve others. He would send others on specific missions. He would ask others for favours. He willingly received help from those who offered it to him. Paul did not glory in being a one-man show. He was effective at delegation and willing to accept help and support. What can you or I delegate to others? What burdens of service can we assign to other men and women that God has equipped to do His work? Often we feel they may not do it as well as us. And perhaps they won’t. But how will they learn, or how will the succession of assembly leadership occur without your deliberate and intentional delegation of service to others? It may be flattering to leave a gap in the assembly when you pass on — but it would be far more effective for the long-term health of the assembly to leave a legacy of succession in your wake. Let us be more ready and willing to delegate to others — this is about saying “no” to some things in your life (through delegation) so you can say “yes” to what the Lord really wants you to be doing. <h3>Balance</h3> We return to the subject of balance. Given your balance wheel you have worked on: what do you need to do to restore balance to your life? <h3>Plan for Rest</h3> Again, this could be a topic on its own. But briefly: rest is an acknowledgment that I am not God. People who do not rest have too high a view of themselves. In our rest we admit our inability to do all that can be done, our need for God’s hand at work in our service, and our own finite nature. Rest keeps our hearts in check from the sin of trying to be like God by taking care of everything. A very helpful book I recently read in this area is David Murray’s “<a href="https://amzn.to/2B5MJ2o" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Reset</a>”. Highly recommended. <h3>Grace</h3> Sometimes there are events and situations that come into our lives that make us too busy. A natural disaster. A health crisis (perhaps chronic). Family distress. Assembly troubles. In these moments, we may just need the grace to accept that we cannot do everything that life confronts us with. And in our weakness, we turn to our heavenly Father and cast these cares on Him. For older overseers with reduced capacity in smaller assemblies: this may be especially germane. You understand there is more that should be done and could be done but you find yourself no longer able to carry it all out. Sometimes we just need to lean on God’s grace and accept our limits. And we trust Him that this is His work: and in doing so we commend His work back into His hands. That’s not wrong: that is leaning on God’s great grace. In conclusion, we can dial down on busyness by getting our eyes back on our Lord: understanding His will for the days, weeks and the year ahead, by being willing to delegate, to do what needs to be done to restore balance, to plan for rest and to lean on His grace.

How To Dial Down the Busyness

A Primer on Working With Emotions

The Divorce & Remarriage Issue: Part 2

In Gospel Hall assemblies I think we have a pretty solid grasp on soul winning. The word “Gospel” is right on most of our buildings and we generally are pretty keen on seeing souls saved. But what happens after you win the soul? Well, we often fall flat when it comes to soul healing, despite the fact that this too is one of the provisions of the cross-work of the Lord Jesus Christ.  Soul Winning vs. Soul Healing A good part of that discrepancy between winning and healing may be due to how we see human nature: I believe our theology of human nature is Biblical, but perhaps Biblically incomplete. I do not need to make a case for sin and sins. We know that we are born in sin and that we commit sins because we are sinners. We know that in Christ, our old man is crucified but we still have the flesh. We attribute our ongoing acts of sin to the flesh. We hope to sin less and less frequently over the course of our lives through the work of sanctification: that transforming that comes through the renewing of our minds by the work of the Holy Spirit. This is all good theology and I would not change any of it. Where Are the Wounded? But if you look around our assemblies: we do not have very many addicts (or at least, we do not think we do). We do not have very many people living with severe mental health issues. We do not have a lot of people from highly dysfunctional homes and families. I am not saying we do not have any dysfunction — we have plenty, but very very few very dysfunctional families. I believe these people are not present because our theology is not comprehensive enough to embrace them. We don’t know how to love them, so God cannot bring them to us. And those of us who may fit into these criteria do not feel safe enough to speak openly of our own brokenness and dysfunction. So we are very good soul winners. But we tend to lose people who get saved from more broken kinds of backgrounds simply because we are not competent soul healers. These folks may come for a little while, but they soon figure out we do not have what they need: in our love for others, or in our teaching or in our shepherding. Sadly, at some level I think we are OK with this — and we may even admit we like it better this way if we are really honest with ourselves. But the problem is it is both un-Christlike and unbiblical. Allow me to explain. How is it un-Christlike? Think, for example, of the number of sexually broken women the Lord ministered to:   The woman at the well in John 4; The woman caught in adultery in John 8; The harlot in the house of Simon the Pharisee, crying and caressing his feet as she cleans them with her tears and perfume — if I was there, I would have been very uncomfortable. Even consider the mention of Tamar and Rahab into the lineage of our Saviour. Some tradition indicates Mary Magdalene, a close supporter of the Lord, was perhaps an ex-sex trade worker.  I don’t mean to imply any impropriety by the Lord Jesus Christ — rather, these women actually felt safe with him and that’s why they were there, and finding salvation, and finding healing in him. Coming to our times: consider the amount of sexual brokenness in our world today — compare the percentage out there to the percentage in here. Why are they not the same? Where are these women in our assemblies? Where are the men? I believe we miss out on a whole segment of the population because we have failed to observe and embrace the biblical concept of brokenness or brokenheartedness. This is a demographic that is ripe for the gospel. But when sin is our only explanation for things that go wrong, we may fail to notice, understand, and know how to respond appropriately to very broken people. Further, our ignorance of brokenness means we also really fail to understand our own personal needs and as a result, never really find our own healing in Christ. Is Brokenness a Biblical Concept? Is this just psychobabble? I asked myself the same question some time ago: is brokenness a Biblical concept? Or have I let my psychology training clutter my understanding of soteriology and hamartiology? So I searched the Scriptures for the word, “broken”. Here is what I found:  Job 17:1 (&amp; v.11) “My spirit is broken, my days are extinguished, the grave is ready for me.” Psalm 31:12 “I am forgotten like a dead man, out of mind; I am like a broken vessel” Psalm 34:18 “The Lord is near to those who have a broken heart, and saves such as have a contrite spirit” Psalm 38:8 “I am feeble and severely broken; I groan because of the turmoil of my heart.” Psalm 51:17 “the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart— These, O God, you will not despise” Psalm 69:20 “reproach has broken my heart…” Psalm 147:3 “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds” Proverbs 15:13 “A merry heart makes a cheerful countenance, but by sorrow of the heart the spirit is broken” Prov 17:22 “A merry heart does good, like medicine, but a broken spirit dries the bones.” Prov. 18:14 “The spirit of a man will sustain him in sickness, but who can bear a broken spirit?” Isaiah 61:1 “…He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted” Luke 4:18 quotes Isaiah 61:1  I take it from these Scriptures that there is a very significant aspect of human ruin that runs parallel to our own sin. Deep wounds that come often from the sin of others or ourselves, or come as a result of living in a sin-broken world. Sometimes I call this human brokenness. Sometimes brokenheartedness, sometimes just being broken. I believe these are all Biblical terms. They are theological terms and they are relevant to our world and we need to become conversant with them. In assemblies we make no pact with sin. We do not accommodate sin. Nor am I asking us to. But the refusal to accommodate sin and the accompanying lack of understanding of brokenness means that we have no idea what to do with people who experience addiction, self-harm, eating disorders, severe depression and anxiety, PTSD. We don’t really know how to help women who repeatedly find themselves in destructive relationships, or young people who fall into sin again and again, or even a brother who is a fine Christian but just cannot quite kick that cigarette habit. We cannot help them because we don’t understand brokenness. Take addiction: the acting out behaviour is sin. We love the testimonies that seem to show victory over addiction: the night I got saved I went to the liquor cabinet and poured every last bottle down the drain. Four years later the person is a bright shining testimony in the gospel: they’ve gained 60 pounds (that’s a food addiction) and preach the gospel a lot (they have an approval addiction) and they have a manic interest in gospel work and a busy career (that’s a work addiction). And we think this is great. It is. Kind of. But we’ve really only helped the person switch to a socially acceptable set of addictions. And we then continue to enable those addictions rather than confront them in a way that moves them towards soul healing while helping them discover how to do the work of God from a place of wholeness in Christ. Christ as Healer When our Lord proclaimed in the synagogue at Nazareth that he had come to heal the brokenhearted he was saying that he not only came to deal with the problem of sin, but to actually minister to the wounds of sin as well. Now do we start to see why Isaiah said he shall be called “Wonderful Counsellor”? It is true, as the Psalmist wrote so beautifully: “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” (147:3). Christ came not just to provide salvation from sin, but to provide healing from the wounds of sin for His followers. The question is: how does He provide this healing today? Consider the words of Isaiah 53: “Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows” — those verses very clearly indicate that part of the work of Christ was not only to cleanse us from sin, but to bear the consequences of that sin as well. He carried our griefs and our sorrows and in verse 5 the last phrase says “With his stripes we are healed”.  You don’t heal sin. Sin is cleansed or it is forgiven. Healing is for wounds: for brokenness.  More Than Judicial May God touch our hearts that the cross was not only a judicial process but it was also — can I say it? Therapeutic. Maybe that’s too uncomfortable. Let’s go for medicinal — he provided not only cleansing but also healing. Think of the story of Naaman as he dips in the muddy river seven times — not only is the leprosy itself cured and healed, but it says that his flesh was restored as the flesh of a little child. Not just elimination of sin, but of the wounds of sin as well. Consider the exhortation of James 5:16 “Confess your faults to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed.” Not “forgiven”, but “healed.” Now I am not asking you all to become therapists today in order to start helping each other heal. You already have access to the most profound healing agent on planet earth: divine love. You can see this in 1 John 4:18 “perfect love casts out fear” — adoptive parents here today will know about attachment theory. My colleagues think attachment theory (the science of love) was first studied and articulated in the 40’s — here is evidence of attachment theory from the first century.  It All Comes Down to Love Do you know what the single most important factor in effective psychotherapy is? Regardless of technique, regardless of what school of thought you were educated with, regardless of whether you have a masters or a Ph.D….the most important factor in effective psychotherapy is what we call therapeutic alliance with the client. Therapeutic alliance is all about the relationship that we have with the people who come to us for help: they need to know we are in their corner, we are not going to abandon them, and we are not going to judge them. Sounds…Christ-like. You can do this too. I think this is why in 1 John 4:20 and v.21 the apostle is so blunt: if you are a believer, love your brother. When you do that, your brother will experience Christ and your relationship — just by virtue of that high quality love — will become a place where the wounds of sin begin to heal.  Many believers can provide this context for healing. But I believe shepherds are gifted especially for this work: we feed souls so they can grow but we also we nurture them so that Christ can heal them. The bottom line in my exhortation to you today is not to underestimate the reach and redemptive of a loving shepherd. Be that the Chief Shepherd, or one of His under-shepherds. Your love and care, delivered in a consistent, safe, respectful, humble way will act as a healing agent in the lives of believers who God brings into your care. Let’s keep on soul-winning, but let’s also strengthen ourselves as channels of healing so that the work of Christ is not just about rebirth, but about growth and maturity as well. 

In Gospel Hall assemblies I think we have a pretty solid grasp on soul winning. The word “Gospel” is right on most of our buildings and we generally are pretty keen on seeing souls saved. But what happens after you win the soul? Well, we often fall flat when it comes to soul healing, despite the fact that this too is one of the provisions of the cross-work of the Lord Jesus Christ. <h2>Soul Winning vs. Soul Healing</h2> A good part of that discrepancy between winning and healing may be due to how we see human nature: I believe our theology of human nature is Biblical, but perhaps Biblically incomplete. I do not need to make a case for sin and sins. We know that we are born in sin and that we commit sins because we are sinners. We know that in Christ, our old man is crucified but we still have the flesh. We attribute our ongoing acts of sin to the flesh. We hope to sin less and less frequently over the course of our lives through the work of sanctification: that transforming that comes through the renewing of our minds by the work of the Holy Spirit. This is all good theology and I would not change any of it. <h3>Where Are the Wounded?</h3> But if you look around our assemblies: we do not have very many addicts (or at least, we do not think we do). We do not have very many people living with severe mental health issues. We do not have a lot of people from highly dysfunctional homes and families. I am not saying we do not have any dysfunction — we have plenty, but very very few very dysfunctional families. I believe these people are not present because our theology is not comprehensive enough to embrace them. We don’t know how to love them, so God cannot bring them to us. And those of us who may fit into these criteria do not feel safe enough to speak openly of our own brokenness and dysfunction. So we are very good soul winners. But we tend to lose people who get saved from more broken kinds of backgrounds simply because we are not competent soul healers. These folks may come for a little while, but they soon figure out we do not have what they need: in our love for others, or in our teaching or in our shepherding. Sadly, at some level I think we are OK with this — and we may even admit we like it better this way if we are really honest with ourselves. But the problem is it is both un-Christlike and unbiblical. Allow me to explain. How is it un-Christlike? Think, for example, of the number of sexually broken women the Lord ministered to:  <ul> <li>The woman at the well in John 4;</li> <li>The woman caught in adultery in John 8;</li> <li>The harlot in the house of Simon the Pharisee, crying and caressing his feet as she cleans them with her tears and perfume — if I was there, I would have been very uncomfortable.</li> <li>Even consider the mention of Tamar and Rahab into the lineage of our Saviour.</li> <li>Some tradition indicates Mary Magdalene, a close supporter of the Lord, was perhaps an ex-sex trade worker.</li> </ul> I don’t mean to imply any impropriety by the Lord Jesus Christ — rather, these women actually felt safe with him and that’s why they were there, and finding salvation, and finding healing in him. Coming to our times: consider the amount of sexual brokenness in our world today — compare the percentage out there to the percentage in here. Why are they not the same? Where are these women in our assemblies? Where are the men? I believe we miss out on a whole segment of the population because we have failed to observe and embrace the biblical concept of brokenness or brokenheartedness. This is a demographic that is ripe for the gospel. But when sin is our only explanation for things that go wrong, we may fail to notice, understand, and know how to respond appropriately to very broken people. Further, our ignorance of brokenness means we also really fail to understand our own personal needs and as a result, never really find our own healing in Christ. <h2>Is Brokenness a Biblical Concept?</h2> Is this just psychobabble? I asked myself the same question some time ago: is brokenness a Biblical concept? Or have I let my psychology training clutter my understanding of soteriology and hamartiology? So I searched the Scriptures for the word, “broken”. Here is what I found: <ul> <li>Job 17:1 (&amp; v.11) “My spirit is broken, my days are extinguished, the grave is ready for me.”</li> <li>Psalm 31:12 “I am forgotten like a dead man, out of mind; I am like a broken vessel”</li> <li>Psalm 34:18 “The Lord is near to those who have a broken heart, and saves such as have a contrite spirit”</li> <li>Psalm 38:8 “I am feeble and severely broken; I groan because of the turmoil of my heart.”</li> <li>Psalm 51:17 “the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart— These, O God, you will not despise”</li> <li>Psalm 69:20 “reproach has broken my heart…”</li> <li>Psalm 147:3 “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds”</li> <li>Proverbs 15:13 “A merry heart makes a cheerful countenance, but by sorrow of the heart the spirit is broken”</li> <li>Prov 17:22 “A merry heart does good, like medicine, but a broken spirit dries the bones.”</li> <li>Prov. 18:14 “The spirit of a man will sustain him in sickness, but who can bear a broken spirit?”</li> <li>Isaiah 61:1 “…He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted”</li> <li>Luke 4:18 quotes Isaiah 61:1</li> </ul> I take it from these Scriptures that there is a very significant aspect of human ruin that runs parallel to our own sin. Deep wounds that come often from the sin of others or ourselves, or come as a result of living in a sin-broken world. Sometimes I call this human brokenness. Sometimes brokenheartedness, sometimes just being broken. I believe these are all Biblical terms. They are theological terms and they are relevant to our world and we need to become conversant with them. In assemblies we make no pact with sin. We do not accommodate sin. Nor am I asking us to. But the refusal to accommodate sin and the accompanying lack of understanding of brokenness means that we have no idea what to do with people who experience addiction, self-harm, eating disorders, severe depression and anxiety, PTSD. We don’t really know how to help women who repeatedly find themselves in destructive relationships, or young people who fall into sin again and again, or even a brother who is a fine Christian but just cannot quite kick that cigarette habit. We cannot help them because we don’t understand brokenness. Take addiction: the acting out behaviour is sin. We love the testimonies that seem to show victory over addiction: the night I got saved I went to the liquor cabinet and poured every last bottle down the drain. Four years later the person is a bright shining testimony in the gospel: they’ve gained 60 pounds (that’s a food addiction) and preach the gospel a lot (they have an approval addiction) and they have a manic interest in gospel work and a busy career (that’s a work addiction). And we think this is great. It is. Kind of. But we’ve really only helped the person switch to a socially acceptable set of addictions. And we then continue to enable those addictions rather than confront them in a way that moves them towards soul healing while helping them discover how to do the work of God from a place of wholeness in Christ. <h2>Christ as Healer</h2> When our Lord proclaimed in the synagogue at Nazareth that he had come to heal the brokenhearted he was saying that he not only came to deal with the problem of sin, but to actually minister to the wounds of sin as well. Now do we start to see why Isaiah said he shall be called “Wonderful Counsellor”? It is true, as the Psalmist wrote so beautifully: “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” (147:3). Christ came not just to provide salvation from sin, but to provide healing from the wounds of sin for His followers. The question is: how does He provide this healing today? Consider the words of Isaiah 53: “Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows” — those verses very clearly indicate that part of the work of Christ was not only to cleanse us from sin, but to bear the consequences of that sin as well. He carried our griefs and our sorrows and in verse 5 the last phrase says “With his stripes we are healed”.  You don’t heal sin. Sin is cleansed or it is forgiven. Healing is for wounds: for brokenness.  <h3>More Than Judicial</h3> May God touch our hearts that the cross was not only a judicial process but it was also — can I say it? Therapeutic. Maybe that’s too uncomfortable. Let’s go for medicinal — he provided not only cleansing but also healing. Think of the story of Naaman as he dips in the muddy river seven times — not only is the leprosy itself cured and healed, but it says that his flesh was restored as the flesh of a little child. Not just elimination of sin, but of the wounds of sin as well. Consider the exhortation of James 5:16 “Confess your faults to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed.” Not “forgiven”, but “healed.” Now I am not asking you all to become therapists today in order to start helping each other heal. You already have access to the most profound healing agent on planet earth: divine love. You can see this in 1 John 4:18 “perfect love casts out fear” — adoptive parents here today will know about attachment theory. My colleagues think attachment theory (the science of love) was first studied and articulated in the 40’s — here is evidence of attachment theory from the first century.  <h3>It All Comes Down to Love</h3> Do you know what the single most important factor in effective psychotherapy is? Regardless of technique, regardless of what school of thought you were educated with, regardless of whether you have a masters or a Ph.D….the most important factor in effective psychotherapy is what we call therapeutic alliance with the client. Therapeutic alliance is all about the relationship that we have with the people who come to us for help: they need to know we are in their corner, we are not going to abandon them, and we are not going to judge them. Sounds…Christ-like. You can do this too. I think this is why in 1 John 4:20 and v.21 the apostle is so blunt: if you are a believer, love your brother. When you do that, your brother will experience Christ and your relationship — just by virtue of that high quality love — will become a place where the wounds of sin begin to heal.  Many believers can provide this context for healing. But I believe shepherds are gifted especially for this work: we feed souls so they can grow but we also we nurture them so that Christ can heal them. The bottom line in my exhortation to you today is not to underestimate the reach and redemptive of a loving shepherd. Be that the Chief Shepherd, or one of His under-shepherds. Your love and care, delivered in a consistent, safe, respectful, humble way will act as a healing agent in the lives of believers who God brings into your care. Let’s keep on soul-winning, but let’s also strengthen ourselves as channels of healing so that the work of Christ is not just about rebirth, but about growth and maturity as well.

Soul Winning vs. Soul Healing

Most Elders Are Lonely (and Will Die Earlier Than Their Peers)

I have been working with porn addicts for a decade now. I am embarrassed to admit that one thing that took me several years to catch onto was the incredibly devastating effect that pornography has on spouses. Well, I knew it was devastating, but I did not know what to do about that. I just thought if I could help the addict stop then the spouse would no longer be upset and everything would settle down. As it turns out, it is rarely that simple.  While the subject of helping the spouse of a pornography addict is part of my Pornography Recovery Plan series, I did not want to give this article a step number in the plan. The reason being: your care for the spouse ideally will happen concurrently with the recovery of the addict. In fact, in some cases the spouse will come to you before the addict has even begun recovery. To make writing and reading simpler, I am going to assign the male pronouns to the addict and the female pronouns to the betrayed spouse for this episode. I acknowledge the stereotype fully. Of course, you may find yourself supporting the betrayed husband of a female addict but many of the same principles apply. Different Starting Points It is a little challenging knowing where to start this article because you, as the overseer, may be intervening to support the spouse at a variety of different potential starting points:  the addict has just disclosed his problem and she is in shock and trying to figure out her first or next step she has discovered the pornography and has not yet confronted the addict. He doesn’t know that she knows she has confronted the addict but he is defensive and in denial, even blaming the problem on her the addict has been exposed by another family member and the betrayed spouse is collaborating with the addict in an attempt to do damage control the addict has come to you and asked for help, but is asking you not to tell his wife. He wants you to collude with him on keeping the addiction a secret this is a problem they have both known about for a number of years and have been struggling (unsuccessfully) to overcome and finally they are asking for help  The diversity of starting points and experiences require a flexible, dynamic approach. I am going to try to give you some general principles and guidelines to help you on your way. Support the Addict’s Spouse Whatever happens, you need to believe the spouse. Keep in mind that the addict, as part of the addictive persona he has adopted, is likely to be suave, persuasive and charming while the spouse is coming off as crazy, irrational and extremely disturbed. Her upset and his calmness could become a point of manipulation to get you as an overseer to back off from the situation so that he can continue unchallenged in his addiction. Do not take the bait. Your best support for the spouse, especially if she is in crisis, is not found in some complex, therapeutic intervention on your part. No, all you really need to do — at least initially — is believe her and validate her. Be explicit about this: “I believe you. Something is wrong here, I can see that too. Trust your gut: if your gut says something is off, something is off.” Also, it is very helpful to get some resources into the hands of the betrayed spouse. Shattered Vows by Debra Laaser is one I have recommended and have had good feedback on. I also suggest you send a link to my marriage podcast and blog, and in particular to an episode I did, entitled What To Do When You’ve Just Discovered Your Husband’s Porn Habit. Assess the Porn Addict While you are providing that initial support to the spouse, you also need to be simultaneously engaged in assessing the extent of the pornography addiction. You’ll want to determine an adequate level of care for the couple: not just for the purpose of figuring out assembly discipline but for the purpose of understand the full scope of care required to help the marriage and, possibly, the family as well. Discipline may need to be considered and will likely be something one or both of them are concerned about, but you also need to understand that pornography may just be the tip of the iceberg as far as marital difficulties. If that is the case, referral to a professional is needed. To assess the addict, you want to start by asking about the extent of the pornography problem. How long have you been using pornography for? How often have you been viewing it in the last few months? Have you been viewing child pornography? Keep in mind that if you ask the last question (and you should) you may have a duty to report to the authorities if the answer is affirmative. I would also recommend you ask if he has gone beyond pornography: chat rooms, hookups, affairs, prostitution, massage parlours and so on. You may fear to ask: but one full disclosure up front is less harmful to the spouse than a prolonged trickle of devastating news over a number of months. Of course, if you discover there is far more going on than just a classic pornography addiction, you need to find Certified Sex Addiction Therapists for both the addict and the spouse and recommend a formal disclosure process in order to mitigate the emotional devastation of the betrayed spouse. Please feel free to reach out to me if you’d like to consult on how to best work through the complexities of this situation. Along these lines, if this is a sex addiction and minors are involved then you have a duty to report. Also understand that if the victims are inside, or connected to, your assembly or in other assemblies then a more comprehensive approach is needed: one that provides support for the victims, the families of the victims, the Lord’s people in the assembly of the offender, the spouse and family of the offender and the offender himself. This is a very complex situation and one that most assemblies have struggled to handle appropriately. Please contact me for more information on how to respond to this situation: there are good resources available to guide in these most distressing circumstances. For the purposes of this article, I will proceed on the assumption that you are merely dealing with a spouse betrayed by a classic pornography addiction. The Experience of a Spouse of a Porn Addict The spouse will have been experiencing a variety of possible behaviours depending on how much she has learned of the addiction and how long she has been confronting or calling out the addict for. If she has been in the situation for some time, there is a good chance that her world feels completely disorientated. Crazymaking In an attempt to cover his addiction, the addict has likely resorted to gaslighting tactics. Gaslighting is about trying to convince your spouse that something she thinks is real is not. It is found in words like: “This is just in your head” or “Every guy does this, you are the only person who would freak out over something like this”. Over time, these kinds of responses become extremely disorienting for the spouse. By the time she gets to you, she may not even know if pornography is right or wrong. It is insane how effective crazy making can be. She may wonder if porn is just something that she should accept: all guys do this, right? To you or me, this is unbelievable. But if her addicted spouse is an effective manipulator, she may hardly even know which way is up. That being the case, part of your approach is to provide a calm but assertive perspective on objective realities. Say things like, “Pornography is wrong and is a betrayal of your trust”. “You are not crazy: you have every right to object to his behaviour.” “It is not your fault that he masturbates instead of being intimate with you.” You’ll need to help re-orient her to the truth and get her feet back on the ground. Your voice of reason will be an anchor amidst the disorientating, crazy making messages she has been receiving and even believing. Denial and Defensiveness She likely has been dealing with an incredible amount of denial and defensiveness. Perhaps years of lies or hearing the addict minimize his problem. Because the addict has been trying to deny or minimize, the spouse often will increase the volume and intensity of her reactions. Thus, she often comes off as crazy or out of control. She may even feel a great deal of shame around how she has treated or reacted to the addict. But these extremely intense behaviours must be seen through the lens of someone who has been incredibly betrayed by a trusted person and is trying to restore safety and sanity to her life. Your support and validation of her sense of betrayal is important. She needs you to be an ally with truth even if her anger with the addict has gone too far. Revenge A spouse may have even acted out in revenge or considered having an affair with another man. She is often bewildered by such feelings, never having had any reason to consider straying from the marriage. Typically, when I put judgment to one side and talk through this with the spouse, it ends up coming out that she wants the addict to know how painful his betrayal is. What is the best way to make him feel her pain? Betray him. She believes that if he truly saw her pain by experiencing it himself, he would stop. Her revenge affair (or thoughts of it) is really an attempt to create safety. You can imagine how extreme the feelings of betrayal would have to be in order for a faithful Christian wife to consider such an option. A great deal of compassion is required in our response to this and a clear acknowledgement of how much she is hurting. Typically, she already will know this is not the right thing to do and so there is not a great risk of this occurring but it needs to be addressed compassionately if it is brought up. Utter Lack of Trust In some cases, the spouse has been lied to for so long, despite witnessing the evidence of his addiction, that her trust in humanity has been completely undermined. She may not even trust you. A gentle conversation about who might be a safe person for her to talk to is in order. That may be another sister in the assembly or someone who has been through the same experience or even a counsellor. This takes time to heal. Rejection The spouse has also very likely been feeling a deep sense of rejection. It is a profound insult to one’s sexual self-expression, sense of worth, and attractiveness to discover that your husband has been taking his sexual needs to pornography. This is a deeply painful wound. I have worked with the odd spouse who has a solid grasp that the addict’s problem is the addict’s problem — she understands and believes that she is attractive and worthy. But, most of the time, the impact of rejection has eroded her self-esteem and sense of worth in significant ways. When talking through this with the spouse, you’ll need to help her see that the addict went to pornography not because of a deficiency in her, but because of a deficiency in himself. He may well have blamed it on her: “You don’t give me enough sex anyways, what am I supposed to do?” or even more devastatingly, “Since you put on 30 pounds after our children were born, I’m just not attracted enough to you to get aroused.” It takes a long time and slow, gentle work to help her regain a healthy view of sexuality, attractiveness, and self-worth. Involve your wife in this work. A Spouse’s Profound Betrayal While I have talked about a number of different ways the spouse is impacted, I’d like to look specifically at betrayal for a moment. I have often heard the spouse say, after the dust has settled on the disclosure of digital unfaithfulness, that it was really the lies that were the most damaging, not the pornography and masturbation itself. The latter hurts and creates issues with self-esteem but it is the dishonesty that really cuts the deepest. Remember that one’s spouse should be the safest, most trustworthy person in one’s life. When she discovers that this person has been living behind a charade of lies for some time, that shakes the foundation of her world. It is a betrayal of trust at the hands of someone she thought she could trust completely. Her safest, most trusted partner in life has become her betrayer. Not only is the spouse completely betrayed, but the stigma of such an event provokes a different response from one’s support network. If something tragic happens in an assembly — perhaps a sudden death of a family member — the assembly circles the wagons. Casseroles are made and baking is brought over. Folks come to visit and they sit and they listen and they mourn with those who mourn. But when a spouse discovers her husband is a porn addict, she is facing a traumatic event that she wants to take to the grave without having anyone ever discover it. It is so shameful. Because of this, if you know what is going on you may be her only support. Again: bring your wife in on this. She needs someone who can be there regularly to talk to and process this through with. She will not want to go to her mother or sister or even her best friend. She often does not want others to think ill of her husband because she recognizes they’ll make it through this but others’ perceptions of him may never change. Your support is critical. Betrayal Trauma About 70% of spouses will develop most of the symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. This is a reflection of how deeply violated the sense of safety and security is in the spouse’s world. Further, the triggered reactions of the traumatized spouse will exacerbate her feelings that she is going crazy. In this situation, you are best to monitor how she is doing over the first 30 to 60 days. If she continues to be triggered despite the fact that the addict has been living a holy life then she may need to seek professional help for the betrayal trauma. Again, here are links to a couple useful articles or podcasts about this on my marriage site:  Post-Infidelity Stress Disorder How To Recover From Betrayal  Suicidality Watch for suicidal thoughts. It is not at all uncommon, especially if the addict is continuing in denial or not taking his recovery seriously, for the wife to become suicidal. If you run into this, call your local suicide hotline or in situations where she is clearly in danger, dial 911. What Does the Spouse Need to Know The more details the spouse is given, the more likely she is to be traumatized. There is a delicate balance here. Because the addict has been hiding and lying for so long, for you to come alongside and also suggest that she be given very limited information would very much appear to be collaborating with the addict. It often helps to just be up front and tell her that the more detail she asks for, the more trauma and hurt she is incurring. For her sake, it is more important to talk about feelings than facts. Nevertheless, she likely should know:  when he usually looks at pornography how (i.e., where is the source) how often he has been using it  She may ask to know the kind of pornography he looks at. Or if he has fantasized about women she knows. She will likely want to know going forward every time he looks at an image or has a lustful thought. Often, she is just trying to create safety for herself by asking these questions. However, they are likely to just lead to more trauma and fear. Other than disclosing the bulleted above, I would recommend that a two-tier accountability system be set up. The addict should contract to regularly meet with and disclose to an accountability partner thoughts or behaviours such as:  lust objectification early links in The Chain  The accountability partner and spouse should be informed if he:  looks at pornography looks at pornography and masturbates  Often, with the other recovery work you are doing with the addict, the pornography and masturbation will stop fairly quickly. Not always. But the other behaviours will take a number of months to really overcome. Even then, the addict will need to work at staying on top of those issues for the rest of his life. What happens is that the milder behaviours can be triggering for the wife and are nearly as emotionally significant as a complete relapse. Consequently, one small misstep and the addict is terrified of speaking to her. So what does he do? He keeps it a secret. Before long, a few secrets start to build and then shame and then a disconnect because he is hiding. However, he has not yet relapsed: but it is the perfect setup for one. The addict needs someone to talk to about these smaller behaviours until he can really get this part of his flesh mortified and have power over this through Christ. The person to talk to about this is someone who can help, who is the same gender AND who is not going to feel personally betrayed by these sins. When I have explained this to wives and made it clear that we are not trying to hide anything but we are trying to really overcome the finer parts of this problem, they come on board. They understand. And often they have gotten fatigued and weary of the constant tiny admissions and the repeated distress that hearing of these matters causes. Typcially, they are happy to hand it off to someone else. Typically, I will also promise to tell her that if there is a relapse, she will be informed. The addict needs to know that you are not going to collaborate with him to keep secrets from her. You can imagine how doubly devastating it would be to not only have your addict living a double life during a relapse but to find that one of your overseers was colluding with him on this. As such, the agreement as to what she is told or not told must be a collaborative arrangement between the three of you. Summary Treating a single person is often easier. When there is a spouse in the equation it becomes more complicated. When there are older children who become aware of the distress in the home when the addiction is discovered, this becomes even more complicated! A great deal of grace and wisdom is required to know how to navigate these situations. Thankfully, an increasing number of resources are coming available to support those affected by pornography addiction. As always, if I can be of any help feel free to reach out. The Pornography Recovery Plan:The Pornography Problem in Your AssemblyPornography Recovery Step 1: Safety BarriersPornography Recovery Step 2: Identify The ChainPornography Recovery Step 3: Fantasy Reflects BrokennessPornography Recovery Step 4: Emotional DriversPornography Recovery Step 5: Yearning for RelationshipPornography Recovery Step 6: Healthy IntimacyHow To Support the Spouse of a Porn Addict

How To Support the Spouse of a Porn Addict

How to Model Vulnerability and Authenticity in Your Assembly

There are things that you or I may take for granted as adults in healthy marriages. Fundamentals of trust, vulnerability, respect, mutuality: the things that make up healthy intimacy. For the recovering porn addict, he or she may not really know what healthy intimacy even looks like. So we need to be prepared to educate them about this.  The Need for Intimacy When I use the word intimacy, I am speaking of relational closeness. With God, this is a spiritual and emotional relationship. With one’s spouse, it it is emotional, relational, sexual and spiritual (ideally). With a same-sex friend, intimacy would be emotional, relational and spiritual; there may be an appropriate level of physical closeness for closer friends, such as a warm hug upon greeting. I am also working from the assumption that intimacy is an essential part of our human experience. In fact, I believe that it is one aspect of the image of God expressed in humanity, though greatly disturbed by sin. As a triune God, our God is fundamentally relational. It was God who declared in the Garden of Eden that “It is not good that the man should be alone…” (Genesis 2:18, KJV). When it comes to the matter of pornography addiction, some who work in the field have described it as an intimacy disorder. I don’t feel this description is the best, but it offers the very helpful suggestion that there is an intimacy problem in the life of every porn addict. Indeed, it has been my experience that the porn addicts I have worked with usually do not have any intimate relationships. I think I could probably say — though this is just anecdotal observation — this is universally the case with male addicts. With females, there is often a close friend or sibling although they would not usually be aware of the addiction. It is definitely more of an issue with men. Consequently, what God said is actually true: it is not good that the man should be alone. Now, let me state very quickly here that the solution is not marriage. Please: underscore this reality with your addicts. A real sexual partner is not the correct antidote for virtual sex. Getting married does not stop the addiction. Contrary to what the addict may believe, it is not the lack of sexual intercourse that drives pornography and masturbation. No, it is a combination of faulty beliefs, neurological reward pathways, a shame-based identity, the flesh and lack of healthy intimacy with others that leaves a person unable to break the grip of this sin. I have a lot of addicts tell me that they expected the addiction to stop when they got married, and it did not. As I’ve mentioned in other parts of my recovery plan, this is not a libido problem. So giving the libido an appropriate outlet does not resolve the addiction. In fact, it is more likely to cause more profound intimacy problems. This is why Step 5 of my plan involves a lot of work helping the addict find appropriate intimate relationships: with God, with good same-sex friendships, and, if present, with his or her spouse. Let’s look at each of these more deeply and help the addict understand what their goals should look like in these areas. Same-sex Friendships I keep emphasizing same-sex friendships for a couple reasons. One is that there is a risk that the addict will take this closeness idea and run with it and end up somewhere inappropriate with someone of the opposite sex. The other is that it is far more difficult, and far more worthwhile, to learn to create intimacy in a friendship where sex is never on the table. This would actually leave the addict better prepared for heterosexual intimacy should they already be married or have the opportunity to get married. You see, creating intimacy when sex is not on the table forces the addict to confront their loneliness and isolation in a genuine, relational manner. This is probably going to be a new experience and require a new skill set for the addict. It will require some investment of time and energy but should help meet the yearnings for intimacy in the addict’s heart. A healthy same-sex friendship can look much closer than what is accepted in our culture today. We often speak about the need to be counter-cultural as Christians: here is an opportunity in the realm of friendships. Let us look at this in case of David and Jonathan. How comfortable are you with this statement of intimacy? “I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan; very pleasant you have been to me; your love to me was extraordinary, surpassing the love of women” (2 Samuel 1:26, ESV). Is that healthy intimacy? Yes and no. I think it shows the potential of a healthy same-sex friendship. At the same time, in David’s case I believe it is a reflection of problems in his marital intimacy. Consider the fact that his friendship with Jonathan started before marriage. That’s great. It seems that David would likely have been an isolated, lonely young man prior to this. Now he grows very close to Jonathan after defeating Goliath in 1 Samuel 17. He soon marries Michal but as Saul becomes jealous he must leave her behind and eventually, he is cut off from Jonathan as well for the sake of his own safety. Though David now becomes a outlaw with a band of followers, no close friendships are seen as he evades Saul through the next several chapters. However, in chapter 25 he begins to try to fill that intimacy deficiency by taking Abigail to wife, and then Ahinoam. A few chapters later, his best friend is killed in action. David is anointed king and in 2 Samuel 5 we read that he took more concubines and wives from Jerusalem. It is interesting to note that while he has his mighty men and, later, advisors there is no replacement for Jonathan. Further, we see in 1 Samuel 6 that he has no intimate connection with Michal — the early disruption in their marriage is never healed. If you’ll allow me to ask a somewhat blunt question to prove the point: is David the King having sex? Yes, he is. Even outside his marriages. But does he have intimacy in his life? There is no evidence to suggest he does. How interesting is it that after the loss of Michal and Jonathan (where there was some genuine love/intimacy) David begins a moral decline by taking more wives, concubines, and eventually, an affair partner? I think I have made my point: healthy, same-sex friendships are an essential component of recovery from pornography addiction. Emotional &amp; Relational Intimacy What David gained — and then lost — in his friendship with Jonathan (and possibly his marriage with Michal) is emotional and relational intimacy. Emotional and relational intimacy are characterized by the sharing of personal feelings and personal information in a safe relationship. Here is a helpful definition: A process in which an individual expresses personal feelings and information to another and as a result of the other’s response comes to feel known, validated, and cared for. Most theorists use the term to refer to a process that incorporates affection, warmth, self-disclosure, closeness, and interdependence. Distance, in stark contrast to intimacy, is associated with anger, resentment, criticism, insensitivity, and inattention.   Most addicts, particularly men, will not have had a relationship like this before. Your work with them to date has given them a taste of what it is like to be known and accepted. You have validated their feelings, shown care for them by shepherding them and you have not rejected them despite hearing about their most shameful moments. Now, if possible, it is time for you to help them find a friend who can do the same thing. Granted, if you are an a smaller, isolated assembly, you could be that friend. But there is probably a significant age difference between you so if you are in a larger assembly, it may actually be most helpful to have the addict find another friend. You will guide him on this journey. It is easy for “Messiah complex” to come in here and for you or I to think, “I’ll be your friend!” Perhaps you yourself are lonely. However, if your addict is not the same gender as you then this depth of intimate friendship is inappropriate. Even if you are the same sex, there is a power differential between you and it may be more suitable for the addict to find someone of the same sex in his own generation who he learns to become friends with and, eventually, to be emotionally and relationally intimate. This process is very important to the development of healthy intimacy in the life of the addict. Addictive vs. Healthy Sex If the addict is married, then you amy need to educate him or her about healthy sexuality. Again, there is a cautionary note that it would be unwise for you to engage in sexual coaching of an addict of the opposite gender. Especially if the terms of your engagement are not clearly defined, as they would be in a formal counselling relationship. Working with your wife or with the addict and her spouse is recommended. It is important to know that the pornography your addict has been watching has distorted his or her view of sex. This impact is so severe and so damaging that educators are trying to counteract this distortion in young people. The sexual education curriculum in Denmark is moving towards showing pornography to students. Why? So the students, 92.5% of whom have watched pornography by age 16, will know the difference between normal human sexuality and what is depicted in the porn they’ve been exposed to. Now, I do not endorse this approach! However, the point is there: what is normal and healthy has been distorted and needs to be restored. This reality is particularly evident if the addict has been watching hardcore pornography (depictions of sex acts) and not just soft porn (depictions of nudity). Things that you may take for granted in sexuality are foreign to the addict: respect, loving touch, gentleness, focusing on connection and not just genital stimulation. These kinds of things are missing in the world of pornography. Here’s a table that outlines some of the essential differences between addictive and healthy sexuality. Addictive Sexuality Healthy Sexuality   Feels shameful Fosters positive self-worth   Is illicit, stolen or exploitative Has no victims   Compromises values Operates within a value system   Draws on fear for excitement Uses intimacy for excitement   Reenacts childhood abuse Cultivates a sense of being an adult   Disconnects from oneself Fosters sense of self   Creates a world of unreality Expands reality though being in touch with the present   Is self-destructive and dangerous Relies on safety   Uses conquest or power Is mutual, consensual, and equal   Serves to medicate and kill pain Fosters self-regulation of emotions   Is dishonest or requires a double life Originates in integrity and authenticit   Becomes routine, grim or joyless Is spontaneous, fun and playful   Demands perfection Accepts the imperfect   Suffocating, demanding, clinging or disengaged Is respectful of boundaries, accepting and intimate    * I have to apologize; I have lost the source from which I obtained this table. It was material related to my CSAT training. But My Wife is Overweight Some difficult but useful conversations will flow from broaching sexual intimacy with the addict. You will need to teach him or her that emotional intimacy is a necessary precursor to sexual intimacy. He must learn to touch his wife’s heart before he touches her body. However, since the addict has been living in a fantasy world, his views are probably so distorted that he may question his attraction to his wife. This is a delicate conversation and one best handled one on one with the addict. Quite possibly, she has been very wounded by things he has said. If so, he will need to make amends once he is grounded in a healthy, biblical view of marital sexuality. The primary task for the addict in this area is to move past fantasy and realize there is a world of amazing pleasure to be enjoyed within marriage that is not shameful, sinful or displeasing to God. The addict must be taught that his brain is capable of loving his wife as a whole person: body, soul and spirit. God has designed the human brain to make this possible. Pornography says that younger, leaner bodies provide a better sexual experience. However, reality teaches that older, married, intimate couples are having fantastic sex! How is it possible that the quality of sex they experience is improving while their bodies are not improving? As part of this process, he must unlearn the lies that pornography spreads. One lie is that a better body results in better sex. This is due to the objectification that exists in the pornography world. However: it is totally unrealistic to think that God would create the world so that only a tiny subset of men, who happen to married to ideally endowed women, are having great sex while the rest of the world of men are living in disappointment. This notion is also based on the assumption that you have sex with a body, not a person. It is flawed at so many levels and must be uprooted from the belief system of the addict. The addict will also have likely bought into the lie that a greater variety of sexual partners is more sexually satisfying than sex within a monogamous, long-term relationship. However, the research shows that long-term, monogamous marriage is where the best sex is happening. The idea that more partners is better is a lie. There is also the lie in more recent pornography that some violence, bondage or use of force increases sexual pleasure. This is not true either. Typically, this belief either has resulted from the addict connecting anger to sexual arousal or because the addict came to a place where ordinary, vanilla pornography was no longer stimulating enough and has had to seek out something more intense to reach the same highs. At this point, if the addict cannot overcome the link to anger it would be prudent to refer him to a qualified therapist. The lies go on and on. It would be healthy just to ask the addict: what are the lies you have come across in pornography that you need to undo or refute in your mind? Erectile Dysfunction and Other Problems In your work with pornography addicts you may come across sexual disorders so that the addict cannot properly engage in sexual intimacy with his spouse. The admission will likely carry a lot of shame with it. Your best bet is to acknowledge how difficult that must be and to refer him to a qualified therapist, preferably a sex therapist or a Certified Sex Addiction Therapist. Intimacy with Christ We have discussed the full spectrum of intimacy. However, the most important relationship in the addict’s life is with God. With the Father, and the Son. Most addicts, and I think most believers too, have never realized that an active intimacy with God is a real possibility in our day to day experience. I know I forget this for vast stretches of time, too. The same activities are necessary as in a human relationship: sharing personal feelings and information to another. Teach your addict to converse with God. To pray throughout the events of the day about details great and small. To share feelings and information with God. To pray through the reading of Scripture so that God can respond to him or her as well. The ultimate intimacy is not sex with one’s spouse. It would be difficult for most of us, but we could actually survive without marital intimacy (I mean the whole spectrum: physical, spiritual, emotional and relational). However, it would be impossible to survive separated from God. Separation is death. This is the ultimate intimacy: relationship with God. And in every addict’s soul is a desire for the infinite. Shepherd them toward a real, active, thriving relationship with God. That is the ultimate healing. The Pornography Recovery Plan:The Pornography Problem in Your AssemblyPornography Recovery Step 1: Safety BarriersPornography Recovery Step 2: Identify The ChainPornography Recovery Step 3: Fantasy Reflects BrokennessPornography Recovery Step 4: Emotional DriversPornography Recovery Step 5: Yearning for RelationshipPornography Recovery Step 6: Healthy IntimacyHow To Support the Spouse of a Porn Addict Bibliography   		{1627924:U6S9B4KG} 		chicago-author-date 		default 		asc 		no 		 		 		 		 		 		 		 		 		 		 		607    Baker Encyclopedia of Psychology &amp; Counseling. 1999. 2nd ed. Baker Reference Library. Baker Books.

There are things that you or I may take for granted as adults in healthy marriages. Fundamentals of trust, vulnerability, respect, mutuality: the things that make up healthy intimacy. For the recovering porn addict, he or she may not really know what healthy intimacy even looks like. So we need to be prepared to educate them about this. <h2>The Need for Intimacy</h2> When I use the word intimacy, I am speaking of relational closeness. With God, this is a spiritual and emotional relationship. With one’s spouse, it it is emotional, relational, sexual and spiritual (ideally). With a same-sex friend, intimacy would be emotional, relational and spiritual; there may be an appropriate level of physical closeness for closer friends, such as a warm hug upon greeting. I am also working from the assumption that intimacy is an essential part of our human experience. In fact, I believe that it is one aspect of the image of God expressed in humanity, though greatly disturbed by sin. As a triune God, our God is fundamentally relational. It was God who declared in the Garden of Eden that “It is not good that the man should be alone…” (Genesis 2:18, KJV). When it comes to the matter of pornography addiction, some who work in the field have described it as an intimacy disorder. I don’t feel this description is the best, but it offers the very helpful suggestion that there is an intimacy problem in the life of every porn addict. Indeed, it has been my experience that the porn addicts I have worked with usually do not have any intimate relationships. I think I could probably say — though this is just anecdotal observation — this is universally the case with male addicts. With females, there is often a close friend or sibling although they would not usually be aware of the addiction. It is definitely more of an issue with men. Consequently, what God said is actually true: it is not good that the man should be alone. Now, let me state very quickly here that the solution is not marriage. Please: underscore this reality with your addicts. A real sexual partner is not the correct antidote for virtual sex. Getting married does not stop the addiction. Contrary to what the addict may believe, it is not the lack of sexual intercourse that drives pornography and masturbation. No, it is a combination of faulty beliefs, neurological reward pathways, a shame-based identity, the flesh and lack of healthy intimacy with others that leaves a person unable to break the grip of this sin. I have a lot of addicts tell me that they expected the addiction to stop when they got married, and it did not. As I’ve mentioned in other parts of my recovery plan, this is not a libido problem. So giving the libido an appropriate outlet does not resolve the addiction. In fact, it is more likely to cause more profound intimacy problems. This is why Step 5 of my plan involves a lot of work helping the addict find appropriate intimate relationships: with God, with good same-sex friendships, and, if present, with his or her spouse. Let’s look at each of these more deeply and help the addict understand what their goals should look like in these areas. <h2>Same-sex Friendships</h2> I keep emphasizing same-sex friendships for a couple reasons. One is that there is a risk that the addict will take this closeness idea and run with it and end up somewhere inappropriate with someone of the opposite sex. The other is that it is far more difficult, and far more worthwhile, to learn to create intimacy in a friendship where sex is never on the table. This would actually leave the addict better prepared for heterosexual intimacy should they already be married or have the opportunity to get married. You see, creating intimacy when sex is not on the table forces the addict to confront their loneliness and isolation in a genuine, relational manner. This is probably going to be a new experience and require a new skill set for the addict. It will require some investment of time and energy but should help meet the yearnings for intimacy in the addict’s heart. A healthy same-sex friendship can look much closer than what is accepted in our culture today. We often speak about the need to be counter-cultural as Christians: here is an opportunity in the realm of friendships. Let us look at this in case of David and Jonathan. How comfortable are you with this statement of intimacy? “I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan; very pleasant you have been to me; your love to me was extraordinary, surpassing the love of women” (2 Samuel 1:26, ESV). Is that healthy intimacy? Yes and no. I think it shows the potential of a healthy same-sex friendship. At the same time, in David’s case I believe it is a reflection of problems in his marital intimacy. Consider the fact that his friendship with Jonathan started before marriage. That’s great. It seems that David would likely have been an isolated, lonely young man prior to this. Now he grows very close to Jonathan after defeating Goliath in 1 Samuel 17. He soon marries Michal but as Saul becomes jealous he must leave her behind and eventually, he is cut off from Jonathan as well for the sake of his own safety. Though David now becomes a outlaw with a band of followers, no close friendships are seen as he evades Saul through the next several chapters. However, in chapter 25 he begins to try to fill that intimacy deficiency by taking Abigail to wife, and then Ahinoam. A few chapters later, his best friend is killed in action. David is anointed king and in 2 Samuel 5 we read that he took more concubines and wives from Jerusalem. It is interesting to note that while he has his mighty men and, later, advisors there is no replacement for Jonathan. Further, we see in 1 Samuel 6 that he has no intimate connection with Michal — the early disruption in their marriage is never healed. If you’ll allow me to ask a somewhat blunt question to prove the point: is David the King having sex? Yes, he is. Even outside his marriages. But does he have intimacy in his life? There is no evidence to suggest he does. How interesting is it that after the loss of Michal and Jonathan (where there was some genuine love/intimacy) David begins a moral decline by taking more wives, concubines, and eventually, an affair partner? I think I have made my point: healthy, same-sex friendships are an essential component of recovery from pornography addiction. <h2>Emotional &amp; Relational Intimacy</h2> What David gained — and then lost — in his friendship with Jonathan (and possibly his marriage with Michal) is emotional and relational intimacy. Emotional and relational intimacy are characterized by the sharing of personal feelings and personal information in a safe relationship. Here is a helpful definition: <blockquote>A process in which an individual expresses personal feelings and information to another and as a result of the other’s response comes to feel known, validated, and cared for. Most theorists use the term to refer to a process that incorporates affection, warmth, self-disclosure, closeness, and interdependence. Distance, in stark contrast to intimacy, is associated with anger, resentment, criticism, insensitivity, and inattention.  </blockquote> Most addicts, particularly men, will not have had a relationship like this before. Your work with them to date has given them a taste of what it is like to be known and accepted. You have validated their feelings, shown care for them by shepherding them and you have not rejected them despite hearing about their most shameful moments. Now, if possible, it is time for you to help them find a friend who can do the same thing. Granted, if you are an a smaller, isolated assembly, you could be that friend. But there is probably a significant age difference between you so if you are in a larger assembly, it may actually be most helpful to have the addict find another friend. You will guide him on this journey. It is easy for “Messiah complex” to come in here and for you or I to think, “I’ll be your friend!” Perhaps you yourself are lonely. However, if your addict is not the same gender as you then this depth of intimate friendship is inappropriate. Even if you are the same sex, there is a power differential between you and it may be more suitable for the addict to find someone of the same sex in his own generation who he learns to become friends with and, eventually, to be emotionally and relationally intimate. This process is very important to the development of healthy intimacy in the life of the addict. <h2>Addictive vs. Healthy Sex</h2> If the addict is married, then you amy need to educate him or her about healthy sexuality. Again, there is a cautionary note that it would be unwise for you to engage in sexual coaching of an addict of the opposite gender. Especially if the terms of your engagement are not clearly defined, as they would be in a formal counselling relationship. Working with your wife or with the addict and her spouse is recommended. It is important to know that the pornography your addict has been watching has distorted his or her view of sex. This impact is so severe and so damaging that educators are trying to counteract this distortion in young people. The sexual education curriculum in Denmark is moving towards <a href="https://www.salon.com/2015/03/18/this_danish_professor_wants_his_students_to_watch_porn_in_class_partner/" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">showing pornography to students</a>. Why? So the students, 92.5% of whom have watched pornography by age 16, will know the difference between normal human sexuality and what is depicted in the porn they’ve been exposed to. Now, I do not endorse this approach! However, the point is there: what is normal and healthy has been distorted and needs to be restored. This reality is particularly evident if the addict has been watching hardcore pornography (depictions of sex acts) and not just soft porn (depictions of nudity). Things that you may take for granted in sexuality are foreign to the addict: respect, loving touch, gentleness, focusing on connection and not just genital stimulation. These kinds of things are missing in the world of pornography. Here’s a table that outlines some of the essential differences between addictive and healthy sexuality. Addictive Sexuality Healthy Sexuality Feels shameful Fosters positive self-worth Is illicit, stolen or exploitative Has no victims Compromises values Operates within a value system Draws on fear for excitement Uses intimacy for excitement Reenacts childhood abuse Cultivates a sense of being an adult Disconnects from oneself Fosters sense of self Creates a world of unreality Expands reality though being in touch with the present Is self-destructive and dangerous Relies on safety Uses conquest or power Is mutual, consensual, and equal Serves to medicate and kill pain Fosters self-regulation of emotions Is dishonest or requires a double life Originates in integrity and authenticit Becomes routine, grim or joyless Is spontaneous, fun and playful Demands perfection Accepts the imperfect Suffocating, demanding, clinging or disengaged Is respectful of boundaries, accepting and intimate * I have to apologize; I have lost the source from which I obtained this table. It was material related to my CSAT training. <h3>But My Wife is Overweight</h3> Some difficult but useful conversations will flow from broaching sexual intimacy with the addict. You will need to teach him or her that emotional intimacy is a necessary precursor to sexual intimacy. He must learn to touch his wife’s heart before he touches her body. However, since the addict has been living in a fantasy world, his views are probably so distorted that he may question his attraction to his wife. This is a delicate conversation and one best handled one on one with the addict. Quite possibly, she has been very wounded by things he has said. If so, he will need to make amends once he is grounded in a healthy, biblical view of marital sexuality. The primary task for the addict in this area is to move past fantasy and realize there is a world of amazing pleasure to be enjoyed within marriage that is not shameful, sinful or displeasing to God. The addict must be taught that his brain is capable of loving his wife as a whole person: body, soul and spirit. God has designed the human brain to make this possible. Pornography says that younger, leaner bodies provide a better sexual experience. However, reality teaches that older, married, intimate couples are having fantastic sex! How is it possible that the quality of sex they experience is improving while their bodies are not improving? As part of this process, he must unlearn the lies that pornography spreads. One lie is that a better body results in better sex. This is due to the objectification that exists in the pornography world. However: it is totally unrealistic to think that God would create the world so that only a tiny subset of men, who happen to married to ideally endowed women, are having great sex while the rest of the world of men are living in disappointment. This notion is also based on the assumption that you have sex with a body, not a person. It is flawed at so many levels and must be uprooted from the belief system of the addict. The addict will also have likely bought into the lie that a greater variety of sexual partners is more sexually satisfying than sex within a monogamous, long-term relationship. However, the research shows that long-term, monogamous marriage is where the <a href="https://www.onlyyouforever.com/best-sex-happens-inside-marriage/" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">best sex</a> is happening. The idea that more partners is better is a lie. There is also the lie in more recent pornography that some violence, bondage or use of force increases sexual pleasure. This is not true either. Typically, this belief either has resulted from the addict connecting anger to sexual arousal or because the addict came to a place where ordinary, vanilla pornography was no longer stimulating enough and has had to seek out something more intense to reach the same highs. At this point, if the addict cannot overcome the link to anger it would be prudent to refer him to a qualified therapist. The lies go on and on. It would be healthy just to ask the addict: what are the lies you have come across in pornography that you need to undo or refute in your mind? <h3>Erectile Dysfunction and Other Problems</h3> In your work with pornography addicts you may come across sexual disorders so that the addict cannot properly engage in sexual intimacy with his spouse. The admission will likely carry a lot of shame with it. Your best bet is to acknowledge how difficult that must be and to refer him to a qualified therapist, preferably a sex therapist or a <a href="https://www.iitap.com/therapists-search/" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Certified Sex Addiction Therapist</a>. <h2>Intimacy with Christ</h2> We have discussed the full spectrum of intimacy. However, the most important relationship in the addict’s life is with God. With the Father, and the Son. Most addicts, and I think most believers too, have never realized that an active intimacy with God is a real possibility in our day to day experience. I know I forget this for vast stretches of time, too. The same activities are necessary as in a human relationship: sharing personal feelings and information to another. Teach your addict to converse with God. To pray throughout the events of the day about details great and small. To share feelings and information with God. To pray through the reading of Scripture so that God can respond to him or her as well. The ultimate intimacy is not sex with one’s spouse. It would be difficult for most of us, but we could actually survive without marital intimacy (I mean the whole spectrum: physical, spiritual, emotional and relational). However, it would be impossible to survive separated from God. Separation is death. This is the ultimate intimacy: relationship with God. And in every addict’s soul is a desire for the infinite. Shepherd them toward a real, active, thriving relationship with God. That is the ultimate healing. <h4>The Pornography Recovery Plan:</h4><a href="https://oversight.today/pornography-problem-assembly/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a><a href="https://oversight.today/pornography-problem-assembly/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Pornography Problem in Your Assembly</a> <a href="https://oversight.today/pornography-recovery-step-1-safety-barriers/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a><a href="https://oversight.today/pornography-recovery-step-1-safety-barriers/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Pornography Recovery Step 1: Safety Barriers</a> <a href="https://oversight.today/pornography-recovery-step-2-identify-the-chain/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a><a href="https://oversight.today/pornography-recovery-step-2-identify-the-chain/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Pornography Recovery Step 2: Identify The Chain</a> <a href="https://oversight.today/pornography-recovery-step-3-fantasy-reflects-brokenness/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a><a href="https://oversight.today/pornography-recovery-step-3-fantasy-reflects-brokenness/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Pornography Recovery Step 3: Fantasy Reflects Brokenness</a> <a href="https://oversight.today/pornography-recovery-step-4-emotional-drivers/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a><a href="https://oversight.today/pornography-recovery-step-4-emotional-drivers/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Pornography Recovery Step 4: Emotional Drivers</a> <a href="https://oversight.today/pornography-recovery-step-5-yearning-relationship/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a><a href="https://oversight.today/pornography-recovery-step-5-yearning-relationship/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Pornography Recovery Step 5: Yearning for Relationship</a> <a href="https://oversight.today/pornography-recovery-step-6-healthy-intimacy/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a><a href="https://oversight.today/pornography-recovery-step-6-healthy-intimacy/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Pornography Recovery Step 6: Healthy Intimacy</a> <a href="https://oversight.today/support-spouse-porn-addict/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a><a href="https://oversight.today/support-spouse-porn-addict/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">How To Support the Spouse of a Porn Addict</a> <h4>Bibliography</h4> 		{1627924:U6S9B4KG} 		chicago-author-date 		default 		asc 		no 		 		 		 		 		 		 		 		 		 		 		607 Baker Encyclopedia of Psychology &amp; Counseling. 1999. 2nd ed. Baker Reference Library. Baker Books.

Pornography Recovery Step 6: Healthy Intimacy

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The Divorce & Remarriage Issue – Adultery – Part 1

Did you ever wonder where to start with helping someone break free from a pornography addiction? This post describes the first step towards freedom.

Pornography Recovery Step 1: Safety Barriers

Enjoyed listening to this very practical, Biblical and relevant presentation. Keep up the good work!

Very practical and biblical help.

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