This post is for the women who are enduring a husband or son or daughter and any other loved one who is into pornography or a sexual trap.
The biggest commandment in the Bible is to love God with all your mind heart and soul.  And the second is just like it:  And that is to love your neighbor as yourself.
So women, you get to love your husband or any one else when you discover that they are into pornography.  Love them yes.  Here is how you do it:

Have you ever had a fantasy in your mind that you are with a man that you find attractive?  Ever?  Be honest.  This man can be somebody at work or on TV or movies.  It does not matter where.  Do you fantasize romance with other men?  Have you ever?  May be another married man?  Have you fantasized this in the secret of your mind?
May be some co-worker?  Or the mail man?  Or someone at church who you think is not into pornography and in your subconscious mind you may think he is perfect?  Or better than your husband?
Do you have these fantasies?  Have you ever had them.  If you have or have had these fantasies, this is called pornography.  Jesus said get the beam out of your own eye first so you can help get the mote out of your brother’s eye.
No you say?  Praise God you have not been and do not have to battle this evil.  Now then . . . . . have you ever had any other type of addiction such as spending more than you make?  How about overeating?  Do you do that?  How about raising your voice and getting angry?
Look, all that I am saying is that if you want to really help your husband, take a good look at yourself first.  Yes he has hurt you.  Yes it hurts that he is looking a porn.  Yes, yes, yes..
But it is in these moments of hurt that you can make a decision.  A decision to be obedient to the biggest commandment to love your neighbor as yourself or not.
Your natural tendency may be to condemn, criticize, accuse, and blame your husband.  Now as I am writing this I can tell you that I love you even though I don’t know you.  So being obedient to the Word of God to love you as myself, I will tell you the following:  Are you ready?
If you blame, condemn, criticize and accuse your husband because of his pornography addiction, he is more likely to look at it and much more difficult for him to be set free.  This is the result of you bombarding him with your hurt.  Is this what you want?  Yes show him you are hurt but choose to love him while you are hurt.
Or do you not want a loving marriage?  You can have a loving marriage free of addictions if you choose to really love him in the midst of your hurt.
Forgive him.  Imitate God.  Jesus said that if don’t forgive, God won’t forgive you either.  Is this what you want?  Each of us blow it at times.
Your husband is more likely to come out of the addiction and be set free forever if you choose to really forgive him and love him.  Fight this evil together.  Get on his side.  Say something like “honey, what can I do to help you battle this?”  Be with him.
So……do you struggle with any sort of addiction?  Even if it is minor?  Be honest with yourself.  Now……get rid of it.  Get rid of overspending.  Stop overeating.  Stop raising your voice to your children.  Stop raising your voice to everyone.  Stop getting angry.  Stop having those negative thoughts.
Can you do this?  I just gave you some examples of things some people struggle with.  You know what you struggle with.  Can you just stop it?  Try it.  From now on be so loving even when others don’t do what you expect.  Don get mad or raise your voice.
If you think you can stop it, do it.  If you can’t quickly overcome this or any other thing that you struggle with, then you will understand your husband.

Jesus in The Bible says “love your neighbor as yourself”.  The ten commandments and any other law is in this commandment which first says to love God with all your mind heart and soul.
Love your neighbor as yourself.  Notice very carefully that Jesus did not qualify this statement.  He did not say love your neighbor as yourself only if they are not into pornography.
Or love them only if they don’t have a bad habit or addiction.  Jesus did not say love them only if they repent and once they repent then you can love them.  No, Jesus did not say that.  He said that the whole law, in other words, everything that the Bible is about is to love God and love one another.
God loves you so much that he sent Jesus to die on the Cross and give you everything.  He did not hold back anything.  He has given us peace, salvation, freedom, provision, healing and more.

Are you going to choose to imitate God or not?  If you choose to take a good look at anything you are struggling with, please get rid of that sin.  Then you will understand your husband.  Once you go through the process and find it very difficult to escape, then you will understand your husband.
You quit smoking.  You quit drinking.  Quit your bad habits and experience the struggle.  This way you are putting yourself in his shoes.
In my personal experience I will tell you that before God set me free from porn, I could not stand people who did things to hurt themselves.  Such as smoke, drugs, alcohol and so on.  But I was not seeing that I had a beam in my eye with pornography.
It was easy for me to point the finger and say something like “that idiot is smoking outside this building and I get to smell the smoke and smoking can kill him.  What an idiot”.
You see, I was not seeing the beam in my own eye but it was easy to see a mote in someone else.  I resented people who smoked or had other addictions.
However, it wasn’t until I had really tried to get out of porn addiction and found that I couldn’t, that I started having compassion for others with addiction.
I remember struggling to get our of porn and begging God to set me free but I was not free.  I begged, I cried, I did not want it.  “God, please take this away from me please” I would beg.  And I was not set free then.
Days went by and I was not set free.  Weeks went by and I was not set free.  Months went by and I was not set free.  “God why are you not removing this from me?  Why?  You want me to live with this for the rest of my life don’t you?”  I would think there was no way out of an addiction.

I had tried and given it all I had and come to the end of myself.  It was then…………that I started looking at addicts differently.  I was not condemning them any more.  Once I came out of a building and saw this guy that was smoking who looked stressed.
Instead of condemning him in my mind, I said to myself “may be he has tried or is trying to quit smoking and he can’t stop”.  Wow, I was having compassion for that person.  I started thinking that we are all the same in this world.
We all struggle with something and just because I overcame pornography by the Grace of God, does not mean in any way that I don’t struggle with other things.  I do, but I have compassion for myself and others and these are other trials I get to overcome by the Power of God.
Choose to forgive your husband.  Yes when you are the most hurt.  Right then.  Will you choose to do it?  Will you choose to do it?  Because chances are that he will come out of porn addiction quicker if you forgive him than if you blame him and condemn him.
What outcome do you want?  If you choose to forgive him, your health will improve.  There have been studies showing that your physical body gets healed when you forgive.  So by forgiving, you are probably saying goodbye to headaches, migraines, cancer, or any other decease.  Is this what you want?

Forgiveness is very healthy for your soul and for your physical body.  Is this what you want?  Or do you want to “be right” that your husband is wrong by being addicted to pornography?
Are you going to reject your husband?  If you do, this could lead to a lot of negative outcomes that you don’t want.  Separation, divorce, your suffering, his suffering, your kids suffering, other family member’s suffering.  The suffering is from now on and for many years to come.
Is this what you want?  If you choose to love your husband despite his addiction, you are choosing to love others who have done wrong things.  In other words, you are choosing to love your neighbor as yourself.
Is this what you want?  To be compassionate to others or do you want to continue to harden your heart?  Forgive unconditionally not just your husband but anyone else who has hurt you and continues to hurt you.  Forgiveness is for you to be free and for no one else.
Forgiveness is for you to be healthier.  Not someone else.

Please understand that everything I have said in this chapter does not mean that you should tolerate porn in your house and in your husband.  Porn is evil.  It hurts others.  Oppose it and resist it IN LOVE to your husband and violently in the spirit against that evil.

Love your husband and forgive him.  Pray and keep on praying.  You are in a battle with him weather you want it or not.  Weather you asked for it or not, you are in a battle together.  Pray woman.  Do not tolerate evil in you house.  Be loving towards your husband like God is loving to you and has forgiven you.
Then get mad to the evil in your house.  This is a spiritual warfare.  It is not a war against your husband but a war against unseen spiritual evil.  Which by the way, has already been defeated by Jesus.
You and your husband are victorious already.  So have faith that you have already overcome.  Trust in the unseen Jesus whose Holy Spirit dwells inside of you and your husband.  You can overcome.  Be patient and expect victory.

Meditate on Jesus all the time.

Hey readers,

I am glad to finally announce that I got married a few weeks ago and I have found it liberating in the path of sexual addiction recovery. I couldn’t help it but share that just after the wedding was over, God spoke to me in a dream and told me “it is finished”. The many years of burning in sexual desire had ended. And just like any path that ends, a challenging new beginning emerged; A high expectation from my wife for a life of bliss in marriage and love for one another sealed in God’s covenant and consummated in a joining of flesh.

So my thought ran up and down while in the honeymoon, what did God through Paul mean when he wrote 1 Corinthians 7:9. How is the flesh defeated by this great covenant of marriage? I did a bit of research and realized that God has destined me to worship him in marriage just as before with all my physical desires. See what John Piper says in his sermon-ette below.

I should say just one brief word about that infamous sentence in 1 Corinthians 7:9: “If they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion.” Remember, this is addressed explicitly to men and women (v. 8). And here is the one thing I want to say about it: When a person seeks to be married, knowing that as a single he or she would “burn with passion,” it doesn’t have to mean that marriage becomes a mere channel for the sex drive. Paul would never mean that in view of Ephesians 5.

Instead when a person marries—let me simply use the man as an example—he takes his sexual desire, and he does the same thing with it that we must all do with all our physical desires if we would make them means of worship—

1) he brings it into conformity to God’s word;

2) he subordinates it to a higher pattern of love and care;

3) he transposes the music of physical pleasure into the music of spiritual worship,

4) he listens for the echoes of God’s goodness in every nerve;

5) he seeks to double his pleasure by making her joy his joy; and

6) he gives thanks to God from the bottom of his heart because he knows and he feels that he never deserved one minute of this pleasure.

Listen to the Full sermon By John Piper. © Desiring God. Website: desiringGod.org

The last pointer #6 is the one that I relate to the most, after all that I had done outside marriage to the point that God had brought me to, I know that I didn’t deserve one minute of the pleasure that us shared in marriage with my wife, but God… In his mercies and grace gave me this gift and I am eternally grateful to the King of Kings and Lord of lords. Bless your name of Lord God almighty.

So I urge you my brothers, do not burn with passion but be quick to pray for God to gift you with a spouse. Then live in eternal worship to your creator for the gift he has given you.

God bless you,

Gathungu, iStopped

Man of Valor

James 1:2-4 – Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

If you are working through Every Man’s Battle, review pp. 61-70

Who we are, who we are becoming

Suggested: Peruse Judges 6-8; James 1:2-4

Page 70 of Every Man’s Battle makes the distinction between “maleness” and “manhood.” In our “maleness” we discover who we are simply by virtue of having been created as male human beings. As we live our lives, we discover needs and desires that are unique to our gender. Of course, our sexuality is no exception. There is nothing wrong with this part of ourselves. Every need that comes with being male is a God-given need, and is therefore good. Yet, not every avenue we would choose to try to get those needs met is good. “Manhood” is a different matter. In addition to the idea of maleness, the idea of “manhood” addresses who a male can become if he lives his life according to God’s ways. What the authors are expressing is the difference between how any male could easily live his life, left to his own devices, and how he could live his life if he were truly surrendered to God, which would enable him to reach his full potential as a created being. Maleness is self-directed, or even aimless, whereas manhood is purposeful, achieved only if one aligns himself with the vision God has for him. The first is a matter of being, whereas the second is a matter of calling. As the idea is played out in application, we never shed our maleness but we can see it reach it’s potential according to God’s purpose as it is transformed into manhood. We never cease to be creatures, but we must follow the Creator in order to become all He has created us to be.

When we follow, God leads us through trials and often uses our journey to bring us into maturity. Left to our own devices, we would generally avoid trials and because of this we would not fulfill God’s plan for us. We would not grow into the men He is calling us to become. James addresses this issue. James 1:2 instructs us to consider our trials with joy, not for their own sake, but because of what we know will result from them. God is growing us into the men He wants us to be. If we have His vision in our minds as our goals for our lives, then we can be joyful in knowing what is happening, even when it is unpleasant for a time. If we lose sight of that, thinking only of our present circumstances and seeking only pleasure, we will become increasingly discouraged.

Our potential and our destiny are not mysteries to God. They are known and they are certain. Many times, when we are in the middle of a trial, we do not feel like the men He wants us to be. This is especially true when our trials have to do with the recovery process and with our struggle against sin. When we have a spotty track record and very little success, much fear and low self-esteem, the idea of fulfilling God’s will can be more discouraging than anything. We often feel like we will never get there, and that we are beyond hope. We see evidence of our failure rather than evidence of His design.

Scan through Judges 6-8 and reacquaint yourself with the story of Gideon. This story from the Old Testament actually gives us a wonderful picture of what identity is and whose opinion really matters. Gideon is a classic picture of someone who was fearful, who doubted what God would do through him. Despite this, when the Angel of the Lord addresses Gideon, He refers to him as a “valiant warrior” or a “man of valor” depending on which translation you read. God saw beyond Gideon’s present condition and behavior and knew who he would become and what he would do.

God had a calling on Gideon’s life, and He would enable him to do mighty things as well as bless the lives of many around him. As you read the story, you can see that God brought Gideon through many trials, things he would have never done on his own initiative. This is also a powerful illustration of one who could, like Paul after him, boast in his own weakness. Because of Gideon’s cowardice and uncertainty, God’s power working through him was all the more evident when it manifested itself as valor.

How are you like Gideon? What have you been called to overcome that you know you cannot do in your own strength? What do you see that needs to change, that you know you cannot change yourself? What trials are you avoiding? What trials are you walking through that you curse in resentment because of the present pain rather than walk through in joy for the potential results?

Remember who you are by God’s grace, valiant warrior, man of valor.

Choose from the following discussion questions, or create some of your own:

1 In what ways can you relate to Gideon? Are you hesitating or doubting that God can help you overcome major obstacles? What are they? Is your journey toward sexual purity one of those things?
2 What trials are you currently going through that you would rather not face to begin with? Who is there to support you while you go through it? Take some time to talk about your trials with each other. Don’t jump in with advice, or attempt to fix another person’s problem to soon, instead take some time to “mourn with those who mourn.”
3 When the time is right to discuss it, talk about what you think God might be doing in your life. How might going through these trials change you for the better? What is God’s vision for who He wants you to become?

Aaron Switzer, M.A. in Biblical Counseling

After graduation from school my pornography hunger grew and I was soon into self-gratification as well. I wasn’t aware but the devil was slowly moving me deeper into this sexual bondage and slowly tightening his grip on me. I lived with a girl in sin and began to experience things only married couples should. Even though we were committing fornication multiple times a day I still felt deep down inside a thirst for pornography and self-gratification. We lived together 2 years then got married. A couple years later we were having marriage problems, I was still into pornography and self-gratification and after 6 years my marriage ended. I got saved the same year my marriage ended which was 1983.

I was now alone again and I slid still deeper into pornography and self-gratification as the devil continued to tighten his grip on me. My addiction got worse after becoming a child of God. I served God in bus ministries and as a Sunday school teacher for many years.

I met a very godly woman who was much younger than I but we know it was the Lords doing and we married. My loneliness of 14 years ended, but my addiction to sexual sins still remained. I fought off and on throughout the years trying to get free of the addiction to pornography and self-gratification but never had any lasting success. The hook the devil put in me still remained.

We started having marriage problems and my wife wasn’t fulfilling my sexual needs and I know now looking back that I wasn’t fulfilling her needs. I was searching online at different Christian websites for information that would help to enhance our sex life and my pride wouldn’t let me admit that most of the problems with needs not being met was a direct result of my on going addiction to sexual sins I was involved in. My attitude had got bad and my anger problem increased, I wasn’t a happy or pleasant person to be near and I wasn’t happy with my actions or life either.

I was really disgusted one day and went online searching Christian websites again for help and I found a Christian forum and was reading a letter of a wife who was struggling with her husband’s addiction to pornography and self-gratification. The reply to her letter was from a gentleman who in his reply typed in the website: www.settingcaptivesfree.com and it had to be God who led me there and I felt I needed to check it out. Two days later I signed up not really thinking this would work because of all my past attempted failures.

I asked God for grace and pleaded with him to set me free and he broke me and then he healed and restored me. And NOW as of Jan. 20, 2005 I’ve been Totally and Completely Set Free by the Grace and Power of God for nearly a year. During the Way Of Purity Course God removed the sexual desires and lust from my heart and replaced it with a passion to help destroy the grips of pornography and other sexual sins off of others and to help them to get set free with God’s help. I feel God wants to use me to mentor others and help them to cut the head off the giant of sexual sin and to be able to experience true freedom that only comes from Jesus Christ. After nearly 40 years of trying to stop my addiction to pornography and self-gratification on my own God gave me the instrument www.settingcaptivesfree.com and through His saving Grace and Power delivered me completely even though I was in bondage to pornography and self-gratification for 39 years.

My wife and I are very active in our church, and I’m one of the deacons of our church and a part of the leadership as well, as of July 2nd 2004 I’ve been allowing God to use me in mentoring students with Setting Captives Free. Nov. 25th 2004 I completed the 120 day mentorship course and I continue to take on new students as God sets others free. I thank God, because before I found Setting Captives Free I did not know what God was calling me to do. I now know that I’m called to reach the countless others still in bondage to impurity and God has been using me as His instrument in reaching them.

See some of you all have bought the lie
That sex is what makes you a man
But that’s not what makes you a man
Anybody can go lay with a woman
What makes you a man is being defined
By who you say you are in Christ
If you have Christ you have all that you need
Everything you need is bound up in the resurrected Saviour

Sex is a gift from God but we’ve taken it and made it idolatry
We’ve taken it and put it in the place of God
And we worship it and so it comes out in all sorts of profane ways
And so we blame the women for what they’re wearing
And we blame the media for what they’re producing
But we never blame ourselves
For how we’ve twisted God’s gift to glorify us

Manning up is not just managing your sexual temptations
it’s not just managing your sin that’s not what it means to be a man
because you can try harder

And you can do better
and you can hang on longer

That’s not manning up
Manning up is our ability to lay down all of our effort
and all of our trying

And all of our strength

And say I trust in Jesus
I trust in his perfection

I trust in his power

I trust in his resurrection
because he’s the only one that can get me through this
and he’s the only one that can make me free

“Conviction of sin is one of the rarest things that ever strikes a man. It is the threshold of an understanding of God. Jesus Christ said that when the Holy Spirit came He would convict of sin, and when the Holy Spirit rouses a man’s conscience and brings him into the presence of God, it is not his relationship with men that bothers him, but his relationship with God – against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Thy sight.

Conviction of sin, the marvel of forgiveness, and holiness are so interwoven that it is only the forgiven man who is the holy man, he proves he is forgiven by being the opposite to what he was, by God’s grace. Repentance always brings a man to this point: I have sinned. The surest sign that God is at work is when a man says that and means it. Anything less than this is remorse for having made blunders, the reflex action of disgust at himself. The entrance into the Kingdom is through the panging pains of repentance crashing into a man’s respectable goodness; then the Holy Ghost, Who produces these agonies, begins the formation of the Son of God in the life. The new life will manifest itself in conscious repentance and unconscious holiness, never the other way about. The bedrock of Christianity is repentance. Strictly speaking, a man cannot repent when he chooses; repentance is a gift of God. The old Puritans used to pray for the gift of tears. If ever you cease to know the virtue of repentance, you are in darkness. Examine yourself and see if you have forgotten how to be sorry.” (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest, December 7th Devotional)

My thoughts from this text

This summarised how I feel every time I fall into sexual sin. I am in a constant spiritual battle to truly turn away from sin. I find myself going back to the same act after I have repented my sins to God almighty but it seems my foundation is weak and I need to work on it through true repentance. It’s not going to be easy but I have to do it if I want to be 100% delivered. May the Holy spirit give me the strength to go through true repentance, to cry, to moan, to pray for mercy before my saviour and detest every form of sexual sin.

Jesus died for our sins to be the slain lamb, the righteousness of our salvation. Check this video out.

A short and powerful post from http://www.apocalipsis.org/jesus.htm

The Pit… A homosexual fell into a pit and couldn’t get himself out. A pharasaic fundamentalist came along and said, “You deserve your pit.” A psychologist came along and said, “Accept your pit. That way you’ll be happy.” An apostate liberal came along and said, “Your pit is God’s beautiful gift to you.” A gay activist came along and said, “Fight for your right to stay in your pit.” A researcher came along and said, “Discrimination against pits is illegal.” A charismatic came along and said, “Just confess that you’re not in that pit.” Respectable people came along and said, “We don’t associate with pit-dwellers.” His mother came along and said, “It’s your father’s fault you’re in that pit.” His father came along and said, “It’s your mother’s fault you’re in that pit.” His wife came along and said, “It’s all my fault you’re in that pit.”

But Jesus, seeing the man, loved him, and reaching into the pit, put his arms around the man and pulled him out.

Quoted from Deliver Ministries – Freedom from Homosexuality!

“I don’t agree with your theology; you are teaching here that I can lose my salvation, and I believe in eternal security. I believe that nothing can separate me from God not even my sins of sexual impurity.”

“Your course points me to my actions, or behavior, and asks me to examine whether or not I have salvation, but I am only supposed to look to Jesus, and the work He did on the cross, as my only assurance of salvation.”

Such are some of the comments that we receive from students at Setting Captives Free, so in an effort to clarify our position on some of these important matters we have put together this page. We hope you will find it a helpful resource.

As to our doctrinal beliefs at Setting Captives Free, we do not believe that anyone can lose their salvation. We believe in the biblical doctrine of perseverance of the saints; that is, Jesus will not lose one that the Father has given Him (John 10:28-29), and we who are Christ’s will persevere to the very end (1 Timothy 4:16). It is a great comfort to know that we are, indeed, held in God’s hand and cannot be taken out (John 10:29) or separated from His love (Romans 8:39) because we were chosen before the foundation of the world by Him (Ephesians 1:4).

However, we also understand that there are some who will believe themselves to be Christians who may not actually be born again (Matthew 7:21-23). These people may have a profession of salvation in Jesus Christ, but the fruit of their life, that is, their believing of lies that result in bondage to habitual sin, should cause them to question whether or not they are truly saved. It is indeed possible to be saved and to simply have fallen into a sin trap (Galatians 6:1), yet there is also ample biblical evidence to suggest that one who is truly captive to habitual sin may not be saved. At Setting Captives Free we take the issue of salvation very seriously, and we point out that deception in this area is a high possibility, and if you are enslaved to sin then you should test yourself to see if you are in the faith.

Please examine these Scriptures:

In the above passage, God presents the truth that He is against those who are at carnal ease. That is, those who assure themselves of their eternal safety while they are stubborn of heart and have idols in their lives. God promises to single this person out for calamity, for he is deceived and enslaved to idol worship, while professing to be a child of God.

Some say that this is merely Old Testament law, which does not apply to us today who are under New Testament grace. In so doing, they blunt the sharp edge of the sword, which is designed to cause us to examine our lives and see if we are truly “safe” (verse 19), and they deny that “ALL Scriptures are…useful for teaching, reproof, correction and training in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16-17). But, for those who prefer to hear the viewpoint from the New Testament, this passage says essentially the same thing:

This passage states clearly that the “unrighteous” (and then it goes on to define who are unrighteous) will not inherit the kingdom of God. It could not be clearer that those who are habitually involved in sexual immorality, idolatry (which includes all forms of impurity, according to Colossians 3:5), homosexuality, thieves, greedy, drunkards, etc. are not saved. Those who are saved are no longer involved in this type of activity, which truth is communicated to us in the above passage by saying, “Such WERE some of you…” Some of the Corinthians WERE sexually immoral, idolatrous, homosexuals, etc. but they are not now. Something happened. They were changed, cleansed, sanctified, washed, etc. by God.

We have many people come to Setting Captives Free who are practicing a lifestyle that is specifically mentioned in the above passage, yet they are fully convinced that they are saved. They point to a time when they said a prayer, were baptized, or raised their hand during some altar call as their point of salvation. But we know the truth from Scripture that if anyone is in Christ then he is a new creation-the old has gone, the new has come (2 Corinthians 5:17)-and yet these people continue in their old sinful lifestyles, despite their profession of faith in Christ and their assurance (falsely) that all is well with their soul. They are described in the Deuteronomy 29 passage above as those who say to themselves that they will be safe, though they walk in the stubbornness of their hearts, and are instead singled out by God for calamity.

Friend, there is a great possibility of self-deception in the area of habitual sin. The 1 Corinthians 6 passage begins, “Do not be deceived…” because of the very real possibility of deception in those who are ensnared in sin. At Setting Captives Free, we are very concerned for those who are deceived and it is our desire that each one that comes to this site would follow the instruction of 2 Corinthians 13:5

Some want to say that there is no reason to test ourselves, for after all, we “made a decision,” we “prayed a prayer”, we have been baptized, etc. therefore we are assured our place in heaven, no matter if our lives evidence to the contrary. Why do I need to test myself if I have prayed to accept Christ? And yet the Apostle Paul, in the above verse, declares that it is possible to fail the test, thereby revealing that one is not in the faith. It is not that this person could lose salvation, it is that he or she never had it. Therefore, he calls us to both examine ourselves and to test ourselves to see if there is evidence of our salvation from sin.

Now notice Galatians 5:24,

The above verse does not say, “Those who belong to Christ Jesus have prayed a prayer of repentance” or “those who belong to Christ Jesus have walked an aisle, making a public profession of faith in Christ.” No, it says, “those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.” Those who have thus crucified the flesh, and so belong to Christ, have some evidence in their lives of crucifixion. Jesus showed Thomas His scars, and invited examination of His body, as evidence that He had been crucified and had risen from the dead to new life. Those of us who belong to Christ should be able to show evidence in our lives of how we have crucified our flesh with its lusts and passions. If we are yet alive in sin, living in the lusts and passion of impurity, what evidence do we have that we belong to Christ? A few words that we mouthed years ago? God forbid. Oh friend, we must remember that the kingdom of God is not a matter of talk, but of power to crucify the flesh and walk in newness of life (1 Corinthians 4:20).

At Setting Captives Free we believe fully in eternal security, or rather the biblical doctrine of “perseverance of the saints.” But our point is to cause people to question whether or not they are saved, since the issue at stake is so critical, and since there exists a high probability of deception. And it is good, and right, and biblical for us to call people who come to study with us to an examination of their lives and see if they may be one who is deceived and enslaved, and headed for hell while claiming safety, or whether they are truly converted but have, for a time, fallen into a sin trap but are now quickly repenting and finding freedom in Christ.

If you are walking in purity, we welcome your comments. However, if you are in this course because of being involved in impurity then you are not in a good position to be correcting doctrine because your bondage to impurity is obscuring your view of truth. Note the following passage:

We note from verse 11 that “whoredom” or in other versions “adultery”, is that which takes away the understanding. We may be serious Bible students, we may be seminary trained, we may have degrees in theology, but if we are involved in habitual sins of pornography, masturbation, or any other forms of heart adultery, our understanding has been removed. We may have knowledge, but true understanding of God and His ways only come to those who are not involved in impurity.

So, if you have come to Setting Captives Free to find freedom from habitual sin, you are not in a position to correct theology. The most important thing you can do is to find freedom. Those who come into purity by the grace of God, have clear sight and accurate views of God. Jesus stated this in Matthew 5:8:

We note that it is the pure in heart that are able to see God. Those defiled by habitual sin are skewed, not only in their understanding of the Bible, but also of their view of Who God is. Purity removes the filter between us and God and, like laser eye surgery, corrects our previously poor vision of God.

So, the best thing any sin captive can do is to humble themselves, ask questions of those who are free in Christ, seek to learn how those who are indeed free got out of the prison of sin, and then apply what they learn to their own lives.

If you still have questions about this teaching, please look at your life to see whether you are walking in personal purity. If not, we request that you wait until you have been sexually pure for 60 days before writing to us with suggested changes.

Ref: http://www.settingcaptivesfree.com/resources/article/sin-and-salvation/