GYC 2015: Called. Chosen. Faithful.

Biblically Correct: How to be Male in the 21st Century

Scott Ritsema

Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

6. Review and Your Questions/Testimonies

This message was presented at the GYC 2015 conference called Chosen Faithful in Louisville, Kentucky.

For other resources like this, visit us online at www.gycweb.org.

Father in heaven, we come before you now as weak mortals.

We pray that we would be able to fix our eyes upon you.

Many times we feel that we cannot even look up like the psalmist said, but we know that you can give us and grant us a measure of faith, that you can grant repentance unto Israel, and we ask for that now.

We ask for clarity of thought, for conviction where that is needed.

May any hardened heart truly be broken through and cut to the heart by your spirit.

And may the discouraged and despairing find hope.

Last time we looked at how Enoch was a pattern or representative of us, all of us.

If you're living in the last days, which we are right now, then you are to live the life of Enoch.

Enoch was translated to heaven without seeing death, right?

And When Jesus comes, Lord willing, in our lifetime, we will be translated to heaven also without seeing death.

There are numerous things about Enoch that we pattern as well.

You can, by the way, listen to all of these sessions that we've been going through this week on AudioVerse or on GYCweb.org once they get that posted.

And the PowerPoints also will be posted as well.

But a couple of things I wanted to reemphasize about Enoch that were absolutely essential.

This might come as a surprise to some people, but Enoch actually perfected a righteous character.

That was actual words, word for word, perfected a righteous character, and there was, quote, not a thread of coarseness or selfishness, as page 3 and 41 in there.

So this man became perfectly matured in his character.

The kind of person that God is working in all of us to be.

The Bible says that he will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

But that makes me ask the question, is that even possible?

Whose actual experience in day-to-day life, certainly not mine, would say that this is something that is real and plausible and actually possible?

Well, we read in the book and first of all numerous, numerous scriptures point that out and if you missed the session on Friday do pick that audio up make sure to listen to it.

But remember the statement also in this book that said God is going to get each 1 of us if we consent.

He will get each 1 of us to the point where in doing His will, we are carrying out our own, do you remember what it was?

That's like being addicted to purity, right?

Being so habitually, compulsively accustomed to doing what God wants us to do that we become a new creation fully and completely.

We also saw that those who will be translated at the close of time will always be representing him in all their life practices, selfishness will be cut out by the roots.

So this is not only possible, my friends, this is necessary.

Enoch's life and character were so holy that he was translated to heaven without seeing death.

This life and character represents what the lives and characters of all must be if, like Enoch, they are to be translated when Christ shall come.

So did you hear what that was just saying?

Christ is going to do a work in all of us and it must happen before he returns and that is the finishing touches upon the character that He is forming within us.

And I know as soon as I start saying things like this, immediately we feel a sense of fear and insecurity and I couldn't do this, I couldn't pull that off.

That's actually a good impulse right there.

Because if we start saying, oh yes, the doctrine of sanctification, I can handle that 1, then we're in big trouble.

If we start saying, oh, a wretched man that I am, who can rescue me from this body of death?

And when we fix our eyes upon Him, He is the author of our faith and the what of our faith?

I'm not going to read the whole book to you, but this is a similar 1 here on page 59 that I wanted to share with you just to emphasize and underscore the point.

It says that when we are having this experience of sanctification, if you will, It was as if Enoch himself, he was a marked character, and many looked upon his life, many look upon his life, sorry, presently, we look upon his life as something above what the generality of mortals can ever reach.

So most people look at that, okay, that's 1 guy, oh and Elijah, 2 guys who really stood out in their development, their relationship with Christ, that they walked so closely with Jesus Christ that they got to the point where they could just walk right into heaven.

Well that's 2 and that's all there's ever going to be.

This is the experience all must have if they will be prepared to be translated when Jesus comes.

It says this here, Enoch's life and character represent the lives and characters of all who will be translated when Christ shall come.

Now to many people this sounds like bad news because they're going, well that means I won't make it into heaven.

You know what we're focusing on at that point?

You have to immediately turn the attention upon Jesus Christ who has all the power in the universe.

So some pretty awesome quotes there in the book.

But Enoch himself, he was a peculiar man.

And you've got to be pretty peculiar to be able to stand out as much as he did.

He didn't consult his own ideas of what to do.

It says Enoch and Elijah became very different from the world in their plans, and their objectives in life were also different.

As you're at GYC, at the beginning of a new year, thinking about the future of your life.

If somebody were to ask you, what is the aim and purpose of your life?

What motivates you every morning when you wake up?

Enoch's and Elijah's mindset was totally different.

It wasn't about, well, I'm going to carry on business and make a living doing this and I have some friends and, you know, just everyday run of the mill things.

No, they had a high, high purpose and calling and they surrendered and submitted that to God.

Enoch did not mark out his own course or set up his own will as if he thought himself fully qualified to manage matters.

But then we saw yesterday also he spent much of his time in, do you remember?

Which he devoted to reflection and prayer.

And we read that God's messengers must tarry long with him, wait, remain long with Jesus, if they would have success in their work.

We read about the eloquence of, do you remember it?

He's got the answers right there, thank you brother.

And then we read not, oh this one's hard for me.

This is hard for those of us who are active minded people who like to think and make plans and dream dreams and do things and we are not to keep the mind in a continual state of excitement.

5. Addicted to Purity in a Pornographic World, Part 3

Father in heaven, we come before you now just asking for your blessing and your presence upon this meeting.

We ask that angels would be in our midst, that they would be encamped around about us and that Satan's temptations and Satan's deceptions would not be welcome here.

We just ask only for truth, the spirit of truth, that your Holy Spirit would govern and lead minds to Jesus today.

I wanna start with some hope, tremendous, tremendous hope, because I showed you some very scary brain scans the other day that you're going, wow.

Do you remember the 1, for those who weren't here, you'll see it on the DVDs, but the brain scan of a pornography addicted brain looks actually worse than a cocaine addicted brain in terms of the holes and areas of non-functionality in that brain.

And then I showed you this scan right here.

This is a normal human brain and the pleasure centers are nice and bright and deep orange there with lots of activity.

A normal person experiences lots of pleasure in life but somebody who's addicted to drugs and pornography functions exactly like a drug within the brain.

We had numerous quotes from scientists on that.

This drug abuser's pleasure centers are kind of numb, aren't they?

Do you see how it's, they're just not enjoying life as much.

The normal everyday pleasures to somebody who is addicted to hyperstimulation don't please, they don't stimulate.

It's kind of like that statement from Spirit of Prophecy that says that those who have trained their tastes to love worldly things, if they were to go to heaven, they would find it uninteresting.

The word is, the music of the harps of the angels and the voices of the angels would not satisfy them.

So basically there will be a lot of people who if they were to go to heaven would find it uninteresting and boring there and God's not going to torture them with that.

They're not going to be there if they wouldn't want to be there, right?

And so this time, this probationary time is a time period where we learn to develop our tastes and interests upon spiritual things and not worldly things so that we become the kind of people that would love it in heaven.

Brain damaged pleasure centers from hyper stimulating addictions like drugs.

After just 1 month of abstaining from drugs, look it's starting to come back.

You're starting to find pleasure in life again and not needing that drug to stimulate.

After 14 months of abstinence, there you have tremendous activity in the nucleus accumbens and the pleasure centers of the brain just like a normal human brain.

So if you're flat out addicted to pornography and engaging in self-abuse and these things we've been talking about, there is tremendous hope from science, not to mention from the Bible.

It says you can be transformed by the renewing of your what?

All those holes and areas of damage and non-functioning in the brain that we saw and you're just like, what have I done to my brain by engaging in these behaviors?

God has promised that you can have a renewed mind.

I'm not going to even show you the 1 with the holes in it again because we don't even want to dwell on that.

And so here you are moving forward with that kind of mind, the mind of Christ.

So I wanted to begin this session with hope because I know so many people are in the pit of despair and in the darkness of isolation and shame when it comes to this issue of pornography addiction.

And this session is not just for the pornography addict.

This is for anybody who wants greater victories in their lives because that's every single 1 of us, right?

If the brain is powerful enough to get you addicted to a behavior, then here's the exciting news.

It's just as powerful to get you addicted to a new behavior.

We went to the scriptures and saw that overcoming a habit is not the practice, it's not the exercise of letting something go and then just having vacancy in the mind.

No, Jesus said that if a demon is cast out and you just clean the house and put in an order, what's that demon going to go do?

Get 7 more more wicked than himself and come in and occupy that house.

So the process of overcoming is becoming, quote, addicted to a new behavior, a holy behavior.

What it says in Isaiah, do not remember the former things nor consider the things of old.

And so we talked yesterday about the process of rewriting and overwriting and rerouting the pathways in our brains that were so habitually, compulsively going down the path of lust, we're even just taking a second look at that attractive image or woman is something that can be totally overcome in our lives.

So what is our mental brain map filled with?

We looked at this statement from Romans 6 16.

Do you not know that to whom you present yourself slaves to obey you are that one's slaves whom you obey?

Whether of sin, So you can be a slave of sin, leading to death, or of obedience.

You can be a slave to obedience, leading to righteousness.

And that's the kind of addiction we want.

We want to be addicted to purity in a pornographic world.

Now we talked a little bit about some practical aspects of that.

This was at the end of session 4 after a long day clumsily sort of walking through this and we were all a little bit tired so I want to reiterate this.

When you're hit with a temptation, just a deep breath actually helps because There's a nerve in the back of the upper neck area that links into the limbic system where all the lust happens.

And if you breathe a deep breath, it calms that nerve.

So whatever the temptation, just a deep breath, how about this statement from Spirit of Prophecy, a good respiration soothes the nerves.

And so you get more oxygen to the prefrontal cortex, which is where you have your executive centers of self-control, and so that's going to help you in this battle.

Now, none of these individual things is the solution in itself.

Just breathing properly is not going to be the solution.

The New Agers will tell you that emptying your mind and just having meditation and breathing is going to solve all your problems.

We're going to get into the ultimate solution.

But we also talked about this concept of bouncing into holiness, where Satan throws you the temptation and you say, I'm going to actually use this bad situation.

God says I work together for good for all those who love me.

And We can draw ourselves into a closer relationship with Jesus Christ because of the temptations and challenges we face in our life.

That God is using these to develop our character.

And so that means that when that temptation comes, you remember, oh yes, God has created me with a sexual nature And that means that that was intended to be used for my future spouse or my current spouse.

And so you dwell upon the fact that marriage is a reflection of God's relationship with the church and the male-female relationship is an image-bearing relationship of God.

Because God is relational, 3, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, in a relationship, male, female, in a relationship.

And so all of a sudden you're thinking of high, holy, theological things instead of the debasing channels in the brain that we're used to going down.

You actually end up defeating him instead of just being neutral.

So more electrical energy, this is new information today, more electrical energy is needed in the brain to reroute the circuit.

The brain is created for habit because it just makes life easier.

Can you imagine tying your shoes every day as if it was the first time you ever tied your shoes?

Do you remember how torturous that was when you were a small child, like figuring out how to hold the bow there and you're just like, imagine if you had to tie your shoes like that every day.

God made it so that We have habits and the brain remembers things that it has done.

But the flip side of that is if you have a bad habit, it takes a lot of energy to end that bad habit and go down a new neural pathway, a new circuit in the brain to forge a new path.

It's kind of like taking a machete and going into the jungle and you've got to be like working really hard to get through and create a path.

If it's a well-worn path that people have walked for years and years, you go down without any effort whatsoever, right?

So what do we do to get more energy in the brain?

Yes, I do need to talk about health, because this is not just some optional thing that's like, more or less, it doesn't really matter.

I come from churches where health didn't matter at all, and I never considered it's a moral issue, and maybe you've never really considered your health and your diet to be a moral issue, but I'll tell you something.

The more you are eating of unhealthy foods, and you name it, go down the whole list, the more that's going to cause your brain to be foggy, to be not able to have as much power and energy in this battle.

And so the more you're eating up healthy, whole foods, your fruits, grains, vegetables, nuts, legumes, all of these plant-based foods, these are super good for brain energy.

4. Addicted to Purity in a Pornographic World, Part 2

Father, we come before you once again to ask for your teaching to come through.

We ask for open hearts that we would receive your word and your spirit that we would come away with decisions today.

People have wondered, does the Bible talk about pornography?

Does the Bible talk about these issues that we're dealing with this afternoon?

It's translated as fornication, various different things in the English, but we'll just call it porneia.

In Matthew 15 verse 19 it says that porneia proceeds from the heart.

Jesus, by the way, in Matthew 5 said that you can practice adultery in your mind even while just lusting after a woman who is not your wife.

And so this takes place in the mind, in the heart.

It's not only a behavior, it's not only a website, It's also what happens in the heart, the desires of the heart.

1 Corinthians 6.18 says we are to flee from porneia.

1 Corinthians 6.18 also says that by practicing porneia, you're sinning against your own body.

So Here's a good term or euphemism for sexual sin that Spirit of Prophecy employs as a euphemism for masturbation.

Self-abuse because it's a sin against your own body.

First Thessalonians 4 verse 3 says that we should abstain from porneia.

Revelation 9 verse 21 identifies those who are receiving the 7 last plagues as among them are users of porneia.

Revelation 17 verse 2 and verse 4 and 18.3 and 19.2 identifies porneia as the analogy of unfaithful religion or Babylon, if you will, the harlot of Babylon into the fornications or the porneia spiritually.

So those are just some Bible verses on the issue.

Now we're taking on this issue more deeply and what the Bible says specifically about masturbation.

Because I had a unique experience a few years ago to sit in a classroom at a Christian school and the Christian teacher was doing sex ed, sex education for the children that day.

And the teacher literally got up in front and said, I'm going to talk to you now about masturbation.

And I know that this is something that many of you are engaged in.

And I want you to know that as a Christian this is something that you can rightly engage in and you can behave in this manner and there's nothing wrong with it and those of you who have not begun to do it will and this is normal, acceptable and expected human behavior for an adolescent in a Christian school.

So we are totally confused in our culture about this as just as much as we are confused about pornography in general.

Wired for Intimacy, a wonderful book by a Christian author, I agree with like 90 plus percent of what's in that book.

But it says even if you're not viewing actual pornography, if you know if you're not viewing lustful images, if you're engaged in this behavior, just a physical act of it, masturbation is playing with neurochemical fire.

It affects 1 emotionally and neurologically, says Dr.

William Struthers, Christian psychologist.

Playing with neurochemical fire, it affects you emotionally, neurologically.

It's not something you can just turn on and turn off in the brain because again, you're setting yourself certain pathways in the brain.

Here's what Peter says about it in 1 Peter 2.11.

He says, Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims.

Abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul.

Completely abstain from anything that is a fleshly lust, which of course this would qualify under that heading fleshly lusts and we are to abstain from it.

There's a wonderful book called A Solemn Appeal Relative to Solitary Vice and the Abuses and Excesses of the Marriage Relation.

They used to have longer titles for books back in the 19th century.

But this is a compilation and much commentary in there from the spirit of prophecy regarding solitary vice.

They didn't tend to use the technical medical terminology for it, but self-abuse, solitary vice, etc.

And the excesses of the marriage relation.

We're going to talk about that in a moment.

Now when people go back and read these books, 20th century readers would go back and read Ellen White's statements about this behavior and say, that is ludicrous and silly and nonsense and they would make fun of it and they would say, how outdated is that?

I mean, we know from modern science that there are no harmful effects and this is perfectly healthy behavior and so on and so forth.

And so it was ridiculed, even by Seventh-day Adventists a generation ago and presently to a certain extent.

But anybody who's in the know on the latest science is starting to hit the brakes on some of that ridicule and some of that doubt and question and are saying, whoa, there's something here.

I don't have time to give you all the quotes in their full quoting.

I'm just going to give you the list that the anti-Ellen White websites love to put out and say, look at what these ridiculous people believe about masturbation.

Masturbation will cause pain in the shoulders, side and back, great exhaustion after exercising or a lack of strength of endurance.

By the way, not all of these would be experienced by every behavior of this behaving vice.

A deficiency in the mental strength, being absent-minded, daydreaming and inattention, these are all symptoms, forgetfulness, a weak memory, a weakened brain in general, a lack of perseverance and a reluctance to engage in active labor a gloomy sadness upon the countenance frequent exhibitions of a morose temper in those who were once cheerful, kind, and affectionate, disposed to look upon the dark side, a loss of appetite, poor sleep, tired feelings in the morning, damage to the nervous system, easily irritated and nervousness, decay of the skull, this is where they really start to sound crazy like seriously?

This is inspired, what do we do with this?

The lack of healthful beauty, the sallow face, the progression of disease upon them, cancerous tumors, inflamed mucous membranes, in other words the common cold, rheumatism, weakened eyesight, and dropsy, also known as edema.

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All Teachings

6. Review and Your Questions/Testimonies

1h 10m

5. Addicted to Purity in a Pornographic World, Part 3

1h

4. Addicted to Purity in a Pornographic World, Part 2

1h

3. Addicted to Purity in a Pornographic World, Part 1

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2. A ‘Heaven-Appointed Purpose’ for Your Male Brain

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1. Biblically Correct Masculinity & the Mark of the Beast

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6. The Final Generation (Panel Discussion)

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5. Delusions of Grandeur? (Panel Discussion)

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4. Worst Decision Ever: Why God Permits Evil?

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3. The God Under Your Rug: Why the Old Testament God Appears So Mean?

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2. The Adventist Worldview: What’s Distinct

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