From jasnews at johnankerberg.org Mon Jun 11 09:27:11 2007 From: jasnews at johnankerberg.org (John Ankerberg Show News) Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2007 09:27:11 -0400 Subject: JAS News - News from the John Ankerberg Show Message-ID: <000401c7ac2c$39f31940$add94bc0$@org> Friends-- Our television ministry usually deals with topics that help people become Christians, presenting evidence for the Gospel and the truth of the Scriptures. But this month, we are going to apply Jesus' teaching to the battle every Christian is facing to remain pure in the real world of sexual temptation. Nearly every book in the New Testament instructs Christians to avoid sexual impurity, but many still struggle in this area. Are you one of them? To encourage and help, we have just made two new series. First, The Challenge Facing Every Man examines the battles every man deals with, whether single or married. And second, The Challenge Facing Every Woman examines these same issues from single and married perspectives. My guests for both series are best-selling authors Stephen Arterburn, Shannon Ethridge and Fred Stoeker. For these series I wanted guests who were real, who have lived in both defeat and victory and who base their guidance on God's Word. I think you will find them to be genuine. The problems facing young women and young men today are very real. Let's face it, over one third of all business on the Internet is pornographic. Today, there are 4 million websites devoted to pornography. In 2001, the Center for Disease Control reported that 45.6% of high school students in the United States have had sexual intercourse. According to a survey conducted by Seventeen magazine, of 722 male and female teens (ages 15 to 19) who were approached in malls, 49% considered oral sex to be not as big a deal as sexual intercourse, and 40% said it did not count as "sex." Casual sex is about as common on most college campuses as textbooks. 15 million new cases of STDs occur each year in Americans. Over 68 million people now have an STD in the United States. The challenge facing every young woman During our television program, Shannon Etheridge said, "If anyone had asked me when I was 12 if I wanted to remain a virgin until marriage, I would have said, 'of course I do.' At 13, I would've said, 'I think so.' By 14, I would've replied, 'maybe.' At age 15, my response would have been, 'I don't see how that is possible.'" Why is this happening? It's because of the constant message permeating our culture from secular music to movies, from the Internet to television programs, from books and teen magazines to advertisements and commercials. It is even taught in our schools. Shannon said, "I flirted with an 18-year-old boy behind my parents' backs and when he backed me into the corner and expected me to have sex with him, I did what so many women in this country do, I just silently and passively allowed myself to be date raped. I remember thinking in my mind, 'Well, I don't want him to think I am a tease, so I just decided to be a slut instead.' For many years I didn't tell anyone my secret." "After that I felt I had no reason to withhold my body from most of the young men I dated. Sex became a routine part of dating. I was wrong." The goal of these new programs is to say, whether you are sexually pure, hanging on to your virginity by a thread, or having sex regularly, you can maintain and/or reclaim your sexual integrity not just in your youth, but throughout your whole life. In our series, Shannon explains how young women can successfully cope with the pressures and battles they face and insure that their marriage will be all that God, and they, want it to be. The challenge facing every young man Our guests believe that today, most single men do not have a clear biblical picture of what healthy sex is. From their own personal experience, Fred Stoeker and Steve Arterburn talk candidly about fully integrating their sexuality with their Christian walk, and the importance of sexual purity for young men before marriage. Sadly, many young men think they can sow their wild oats now and such behavior won't affect their marriage later. They don't realize: The decisions you make today will impact everything in your future. The sexual desires you feed as a teenager will be the same desires you want to feed when you're 40. You likely haven't met your future wife yet, but know this: If you believe that today's sexual decisions are harmless to your future, compromising with sexual purity is rotting the roots of your future marriage right now. Fred and Steve talk about how all men are vulnerable to sexual temptation through their eyes, and how their mind can fantasize on what their eyes see. But they also explain how a man can train his eyes to bounce away from sexual images, and how it is possible to capture and control every thought for Christ. Those who are addicted and enslaved to pornography, masturbation, or sleeping around, can find freedom by deciding to act on the information presented in these programs. The challenge facing every married man Fred Stoeker said, "As a married man, by worldly standards, I was doing great. But by God's standard of sexual purity, I wasn't even close to living His vision for marriage. Even though I wasn't involved in physical affairs, my eyes scoped out women, and my mind fantasized using them until I had to masturbate to relieve the tension. My wife couldn't compete with the women in my mind. It soon became clear to me that I'd stopped far short of holiness." As a result, Fred said, "I was paying a heavy price in many areas of my life." 1. I was paying a price. "My prayer life was feeble. I had no faith in my own prayers because of my sins. If I lost a number of deals in a row to the competition, I could never be sure if those setbacks weren't somehow caused by my sins. I had no peace." 2. My wife was paying a price. "Because of my sin, I couldn't commit 100% to Brenda out of fear that she might dump me later. That cost Brenda in closeness. Further, Brenda told me she was experiencing frightening dreams in which she was being chased by Satan. Was my immorality causing spiritual protection to be taken away from her?" 3. My church was paying a price. "At church, I was an empty suit. I never arrived to minister to others. Of course my prayers were no more effective in God's house than anywhere else." 4. My children were paying a price. "My grandfather had run off from his wife in the middle of the Great Depression leaving her with six kids to raise. Then, my father had left our family to pursue multiple affairs. That same pattern had been passed to me, proved by my own multiple affairs in college. Though saved, I now found that I still didn't have the purity issue settled in my life, and I was scared by the thought of passing this pattern on to my kids. I finally made the connection between my sexual immorality and my distance from God. Having seen the prices I paid and my distance from God, I decided it was time to move closer to God and his standards." During our programs, Fred and Steve will explain how God helped them do this and gain complete victory. The challenge facing every married woman Men and women struggle in different ways when it comes to sexual integrity. While a man's battle begins with what he takes in through his eyes, a woman's begins with her heart and her thoughts. Because God made women to be emotionally and mentally stimulated, they must closely guard their hearts and minds as well as their bodies if they want to experience God's plan for sexual and emotional fulfillment. Men give love to get sex and women give sex to get love. Here are some myths about a woman's struggle for emotional purity- 1. There's nothing wrong with comparing myself or my husband to other people. 2. I am mature enough to watch any movie or television show, read any book, listen to any music or surf any website without being affected in a negative way. 3. It doesn't hurt anyone if I fantasize about someone other than my husband when we make love. 4. Thinking about what kind of man I'd like to have if my husband were to die is not a big deal. 5. Masturbation does not hurt me, my relationship with my husband, or my relationship with God. 6. Because I feel so sexually tempted, I must already be guilty, so why bother resisting? Shannon said, "Some women compare their husbands to other men and become disillusioned by their husband's failure to measure up. Because I lived with Greg -- my husband, I saw not just the good, but also the bad. Other men's warts, however, were out of my line of sight. I could look at them and see nothing but their shining qualities, the kind I initially saw in Greg but had lost sight of over the years because of all my comparisons. I felt distanced and disillusioned. Could Greg ever excite me like the other men did? Was I still in love with him? Could he ever measure up? Does this describe your marriage or someone else you know? Then this series is for you. Our guests explain how God led them to restore their marriages and regain their feelings of love and appreciation for their mate." So, in these two series, we will talk about the challenges facing every young man, every married man, every young woman and every married woman. I hope that you will stand with us as we address these issues, knowing they could be lifesaving to somebody you know -- maybe even yourself. Pray that God will use these programs in a great way. To order these on DVD, go to www.johnankerberg.org. We are also making available all four best-selling books written by our guests. Read the book describing the battles you face. But more importantly, read the book describing the battles your wife, your husband, your boyfriend or girlfriend face. We are very ignorant of how God has made men and women and how we should relate to our partners. Take it from me; these books are a real eye opener! Sincerely in Christ, Dr. John F. Ankerberg, President ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- Ankerberg Theological Research Institute (A.T.R.I.) P.O. 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