From the Archives - still very timely and powerful...

“I’m struggling again.”

Those words send pain through my heart like no others could. They entail betrayal, a re-occurring pattern, and a feeling that I will never be enough. I know that the battle against lust will always a struggle for my husband, and for almost all men in general, but when he tells me these words I know it means that temptation has once again become too much.

My husband is the godliest man I know. He is upright in his faith and fully surrenders to the Lord in everything He does. But when Satan finds a weakness in you, he will not relent until we are safe in the arms of Jesus. That weakness, for my husband, is internet pornography.

We have tried to implement every precaution. Software installed on our computers, accountability with friends, him telling me what I need to be asking him on a consistent basis…. But still the struggles come. The fall to temptation is not even common, but it has happened several times throughout our marriage and each time seems more difficult than the last.

I love my husband with all that I am and always want to be a supporter and encourager for him. When he tells me that he has fallen, I always try to not rebuke, to show him only love and compassion and to help him decide what the best next steps can be in order to discourage temptation again. While supporting him is a blessing and something I am glad to do, it is hard to go on to the day-to-day tasks with the hurt that I must carry and only show moments of. A hurt that is so deep that even the slightest breath can bring it out. A hurt that I must live with until God chooses to heal the wound completely.

I tell you all this because of all the software protection, accountability, or Bible reading/praying/etc. that we try to implement, the thing that seems to help my husband stay away from falling again the most is my hurt. He hates it and begins to hate himself when he sees it in me. I only show him so much of what I’m feeling because my desire is not for him to hate himself, but to know the pain that it causes me so that he can say “no” much easier the next time.

This is a blog for traveling husbands. There is no easier temptation when you are traveling than free Wi-Fi and the easy access to Internet pornography. There is nothing easier than to hang up with your wife and kids that night after your nightly conversation and to open the computer and type in those 4 little letters into your search bar. There is nothing easier than porn, but there is also nothing more painful and more betraying. I share with you my hurt from my own marriage to hopefully give you a glimpse at what your wife feels or would feel if she knew. Do not hide it from her, because it is in those secrets that Satan breeds more and more deceit and more and more pain. No, be honest with your wife, but remember the next time you look to other women, whether physically or simply in image, just how much hurt you are bringing to her. Because no matter how great technology gets, no matter how much accountability you have, and no matter how badly you want to stop when that temptation rears it’s ugly head, the choice is ultimately yours. Think of your wife and the hurt you could bring her, think of your kids and the generational pattern you could be beginning, think of the Lord and rely on Him.

You are not a bad person if you struggle with pornography. God has made you for a greater purpose and can use your struggles for His glory. Rest in the fact that you have been redeemed and are a new creation in Him. Your sins do not define you and anything that has happened in the past can be used to better the Lord’s kingdom. Use the strength that only He can give to you and the peace that only He can bring as you walk through this battlefield of lust and temptation. He promises to never leave you and He never will.

Deuteronomy 31:6- Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the Lord your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.”

____________________________________________________________

Erin has been married to her husband Matt for 5 years. She recently graduated with her MA in counseling and seeks to use her education most in the area of marriage. She blogs over at Mystery32.com where she writes to both husbands and wives to encourage healthy and strong marriages. When not blogging, Erin enjoys time with friends, family and doing anything crafty. Feel free to stop by the blog and say hello anytime!

I'm Struggling Again - Guest Post by Erin Baxter

From the archives - still very timely and powerful...

“I’m struggling again.”

Those words send pain through my heart like no others could. They entail betrayal, a re-occurring pattern, and a feeling that I will never be enough. I know that the battle against lust will always a struggle for my husband, and for almost all men in general, but when he tells me these words I know it means that temptation has once again become too much.

My husband is the godliest man I know. He is upright in his faith and fully surrenders to the Lord in everything He does. But when Satan finds a weakness in you, he will not relent until we are safe in the arms of Jesus. That weakness, for my husband, is internet pornography.

We have tried to implement every precaution. Software installed on our computers, accountability with friends, him telling me what I need to be asking him on a consistent basis…. But still the struggles come. The fall to temptation is not even common, but it has happened several times throughout our marriage and each time seems more difficult than the last.

I love my husband with all that I am and always want to be a supporter and encourager for him. When he tells me that he has fallen, I always try to not rebuke, to show him only love and compassion and to help him decide what the best next steps can be in order to discourage temptation again. While supporting him is a blessing and something I am glad to do, it is hard to go on to the day-to-day tasks with the hurt that I must carry and only show moments of. A hurt that is so deep that even the slightest breath can bring it out. A hurt that I must live with until God chooses to heal the wound completely.

I tell you all this because of all the software protection, accountability, or Bible reading/praying/etc. that we try to implement, the thing that seems to help my husband stay away from falling again the most is my hurt. He hates it and begins to hate himself when he sees it in me. I only show him so much of what I’m feeling because my desire is not for him to hate himself, but to know the pain that it causes me so that he can say “no” much easier the next time.

This is a blog for traveling husbands. There is no easier temptation when you are traveling than free Wi-Fi and the easy access to Internet pornography. There is nothing easier than to hang up with your wife and kids that night after your nightly conversation and to open the computer and type in those 4 little letters into your search bar. There is nothing easier than porn, but there is also nothing more painful and more betraying. I share with you my hurt from my own marriage to hopefully give you a glimpse at what your wife feels or would feel if she knew. Do not hide it from her, because it is in those secrets that Satan breeds more and more deceit and more and more pain. No, be honest with your wife, but remember the next time you look to other women, whether physically or simply in image, just how much hurt you are bringing to her. Because no matter how great technology gets, no matter how much accountability you have, and no matter how badly you want to stop when that temptation rears it’s ugly head, the choice is ultimately yours. Think of your wife and the hurt you could bring her, think of your kids and the generational pattern you could be beginning, think of the Lord and rely on Him.

You are not a bad person if you struggle with pornography. God has made you for a greater purpose and can use your struggles for His glory. Rest in the fact that you have been redeemed and are a new creation in Him. Your sins do not define you and anything that has happened in the past can be used to better the Lord’s kingdom. Use the strength that only He can give to you and the peace that only He can bring as you walk through this battlefield of lust and temptation. He promises to never leave you and He never will.

Deuteronomy 31:6- Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the Lord your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.”

____________________________________________________________

 

Erin has been married to her husband Matt for 5 years. She recently graduated with her MA in counseling and seeks to use her education most in the area of marriage. She blogs over at Mystery32.com where she writes to both husbands and wives to encourage healthy and strong marriages. When not blogging, Erin enjoys time with friends, family and doing anything crafty. Feel free to stop by the blog and say hello anytime!

Warfare - Just Expect It

Expect warfare when you embark upon a journey of #sexualpurity. Satan wants to keep you in bondage and is not willing to let you out easily. Jesus can break the bonds and will walk with you on this lonely journey. Invite Him for a walk.

How Many Miles Does it Take?

From the Archives: What is your magic "miles from home" number? Are you a local traveler that acts out in your sin closer than 100 miles? Mine was 100 miles. Nobody around, no risk of running into someone I would know. It was freedom, in it's own way. Looking back, it was pure insanity. So how far do you travel before you feel that freedom? Family men who travel to make a living, to support our families -- we are in trouble. With porn addiction rates running over 50% in regular households, we all know it is over 80% in households of men who include regualr traveling in their job description. Maybe your secret sin is not porn -- maybe it is the actual act of infidelity, strip bars, alcohol, drugs, gambling... No matter what it is, it is still a secret and still a sin. And when it stays hidden in the darkness, that becomes Satan's playground. So next time you are X # of miles from home and feeling that freedom, that pull to the darkness, remember you don't have to do it. You can resist. It is possible to win this fight -- one day (night) at a time.

Greensboro, NC here I come. Have a 3 night stay this week. First time laying my head there, hope it's a nice town!

I can do what I want!

I am #free to do as I please. I remember my college days and the craziness that went with it, back in the days before I had a relationship with Christ. Back then, there were no rules...well maybe one - have fun. Then I met my wife, and the rules really didnt change much, until....I met Jesus. When I was saved on an Emmaus weekend, the transformation began. And it has continued. So, yes, I am free to do what I want to do, but because of the Holy Spirit, I choose not to. I choose to try to live a God honoring life. I choose to love my wife. I choose to be a father to my children. I choose to love and hope. What choices are you making?

Church Today and Samson Pirates Monks

Saw a large number of guys from our old Samson group this morning at church. We all agreed that we need to have a Samson update meeting. It will be great to hear how God has worked in each man's life over the last 12 months. I sure do miss the fellowship and friendship of that group.

Quality family time is being in the basement with the power out as tornados pass through Knoxville. The poor dog is about to have a heart attack

Consecrate

Men - consecrate your hotel room to the Lord tonight. Invite the Holy Spirit in to make it Holy Ground. Ask yourself this: "Am I going home tomorrow with a clean conscience? Have I sinned in such a way that my wife would be ashamed?" I pray the answers are "yes" and "no" respectively.

Have you thought about working hard to maintain your sexual purity during this Lenten season? Christ will be glorified!

Praying for all the guys that are in hotel rooms tonight trying to fight a spiritual battle alone. Call on Jesus and have a fighting chance at winning!

"Fight for your purity, fight for your wife" - heard via a prayer request response on the daily audio bible podcast.

Course Corrections for #Purity,,,Keeping it Between the Lines

I am using a driving metaphor when I say "keeping it between the lines".When we drive a car, we are constantly making little corrections to our speed and direction to keep the vehicle between the lines on the road. Those little course corrections keep us going in the direction we want to be going at a safe pace.

When we travel, we forget to make those little course corrections. After all, we REALLY don't have accountability when we are on the road. So a few failed course corrections can have some serious implications.

Some examples of failed course corrections:

1. An extra drink at the bar with the guys. Normally you wouldn't do that, but since you are on the road, nobody will care...right?
2. A friendly smile to a girl in the bar (or in the elevator or wherever). Again, this is not the norm, but you are just being nice and friendly....right?
3. Checking out the titles of the adult movies on the hotel TV. Would you do that if your wife was sitting on the bed next to you?
4. Firing up the laptop "to check on a few things". How often does that lead you to a website that you told yourself you were not going to go to? Alot, I bet.
5. Ordering a huge meal (and eating it all)when you are trying to lose weight. Is it just a way to fill the loneliness?
6. A physical touch (innocent, of course) with a female in the office/location you are visiting while away from home. Your a long way from home and nobody will ever know...right?
7. Lying to your wife about where you have been and what you have done....she wouldn't understand the truth anyway, would she?

We as men screw up. We are good at messing up. It seems to just come naturally. It is especially easy to mess up when we are away from home and alone. Add to this the fact that we as men really don't have deep friendships with other men that can help us through temptation.

If this sounds familiar to you and you really want help in making small course corrections, send me an email...info@travelingmanministry.com

Temptations while traveling

The blog gets alot of hits from web searches asking about #temptations while traveling. I think people are starting to realize how serious a problem this is. The temptations a man faces when he is away from home are very real and can destroy a marriage. The temptations can come in many forms -- something simple like watching network TV (i.e Dancing with the Stars), to a little deeper like a hotel room with HBO or Cinemax, to the extreme like pay per view movies.

The goal of TMM is to help guys stay pure while they are away from home. Pure can come in many forms - sexually pure, alcohol pure, gambling pure...you get the idea. 

A man must be continually on guard to defend himself from these temptations. One slip up can lead to disaster on the purity front. Stay strong and  do not let the enemy in!

Double life

Another example of #doublelife hit the news recently. The governor of California has revealed he has a 10 year old secret child. Here is a man that gave the appearance of a faithful man. There were some indications of problems earlier when he was accused of groping women while he was acting in films.

A secret life of a man who is on the go, on the road, and been married for 20+ years does not surprise me. Men who travel sometimes operate under a 2nd set of rules that only apply when away from home. There is an extremely high level of porn addiction, gambling problems, alcohol
Abuse, and infidelity. Men who lead a sinful life while away can come home and integrate back into their families for the few days they are home, always anticipating the next trip away.

So the governor's secret affair and secret child comes as no surprise. I do believe this marriage can be saved, as I do believe that with 90% of marriage issues. The question is (as it usually is) are they willing to do the work that many have opted not to do. Are they willing to allow Christ to heal and restore?

What are your thoughts on the issues that traveling men face?

My 15 year old son and the fight to keep porn out.

In our effort to keep #purity within our 15 year old son, I want to share the struggles we face to keep him pure. Let me set this up for you... He has a girlfriend who is also 15 years old. He has a cell phone with no data plan. He has an ipod hooked into the home wifi. He has a Wii and a PS3, both with internet through he wifi. He has a DSI and a PSP, both with internet through the wifi. He has a facebook account also.

People say get safe eyes or covenant eyes to protect the computers (home and laptop). That's solid advice, except for the fact that he is never on a computer. We protect the router using OPEN DNS that filters and blocks things based on my our criteria. We keep this set to highly secure to keep all forms of porn and other things we don't want him exposed to out of the house and off his devices. We have also blocked you tube at the router and through open dns.

So along with all these measures, the electronic devices go through semi regular inspections. We check text messages, safari history, google searches, email, and palringo. We monitor FB activity. It is alot of work and stress to ensure all the protection programs and systems are working properly.

Before you judge, we have a great son. We trust him. He is a natural leader and rarely follows the crowd. We survived middle school with no incidents. Some say we go overboard, and those that say that to us never check their sons activity. We know that porn addiction can be avoided by delaying initial exposure to porn. We are aware that he will not avoid porn for his entire life, but if we can do our best to avoid exposure then maybe he will be in the 50% of men that do not have a porn problem.

Maybe the best solution is to just turn the internet off in the house.

Would love to hear your thoughts on this topic!

Crazy Love Week 5

We all knew it was coming. We knew #crazylove would have to take us into a deeper look into ourselves. We knew the profile of a lukewarm Christian was too general to create change in us. So Francis Chan hits us with chapter 5. Serving leftovers to a Holy God. Ouch. Yikes. Oh Man....

I found it interesting that for the dreaded chapter 5, we were missing several members of the group... for various reasons, all good reasons, and understandable given how busy all of our lives are. (See Crazy Love week 4 post for more on that!) But the absence of a few left a very intimate discussion of the ones that were there...and in small group, there is absolutely nothing better than intimacy in sharing.

One of the key discussion points of the evening is the section that Chan writes "Let's stop calling it a 'busy schedule' or 'bills' or 'forgetfulness'. It's called evil." When we prioritize nearly every other thing in our life ahead of God, it is sin and evil.

For example, I have a choice every day before I go to work to 1. Pray with my wife, and 2. (At a minimum), spend some time alone with my Bible and with God. It is so sad that most days, I choose to leave for work without doing either. Yes, I choose that, maybe not in my thought process, but certainly in my actions. Sad.

Chan also uses the metaphor of swimming upstream. To be a Christian, you are constantly swimming upstream. It is a constant battle against the world, against the flesh, and against ourselves. Someone posted the other day that only dead things float with the tide. Interesting thought, is it possible to take short "breathers" on our journey? Some R&R for a few weeks a year? What are your thoughts on that?

So Chapter 5 is done, and we survived, hopefully with the insight in our ability to make the necessary changes in our lives to allow God to be our top priority. One would think this would be easy since we just experienced Easter.

Crazy Love Week 4

Small group met again to discuss #crazylove, chapter 4 -- the profile of the lukewarm Christian. If you have read the book, you know how humbling this chapter was. The video discusses the concept of being lukewarm, and asks you to go through the scriptures listed in the chapter and pick out the one that spoke to you. There was great conversation throughout the night and one gentleman in the group freely admitted he was lukewarm. This followed with several other people admitting it also. Now let me tell you about this group. We are all parents of teenagers. So we are BUSY. All our kids are completely over committed with sports and school and extra stuff. And we all want to be so highly involved in our kids lives that we don't want to miss things they participate in.. so we coach them, and we watch them play golf, and tennis, and baseball, and volleyball, and softball, and basketball, and you get the idea I am sure. Most of us also have younger kids that have to follow along...so basically we are all exhausted ALL the time. Anyway..

So the scripture that spoke to me the most, and I spoke up during group and told everyone, was Luke 14:34-35. This passage talks about salt losing it's saltiness and not even being good enough for the manure pile. Pretty depressing...I am so lukewarm that I am not even good enough to be tossed into the manure pile... powerful stuff...

Through the course of the evening, I commit myself to do better. I WILL get up and read my Bible, I WILL be extra nice to my wife, I WILL follow up and talk to my small group members just to say hello, I WILL be the leader of my family...well, let me just say thank God for GRACE! Not the church, but the actual grace that draws us closer to Him. the kind that allows me to be lukewarm for a little while, maybe through this season of life, The grace that helps me understand that my primary ministry is to be a father to 4 sons, a husband to one wife, and a child of one heavenly Father.

Crazy Love Week 3

Small group met again Saturday night to complete #crazylove chapter 3. Another great chapter and we are excited to begin moving into week 4: the Lukewarm Christian. Our lesson got a late start when the Butler-Florida game went into OT. Leave it to Butler to never make it easy!
Back to chapter 3.... it is all about the love of our Father. The relationship we had with our earthly father tends to dictate the relationship we have with our heavenly father. The video for this lesson is the best one yet!

We had great discussion about relying on God and trusting God. All the things that we typically fail at every day and need to work at. We need to make a conscious effort to be in relationship with our Lord daily. We talked about our struggles of reading our Bibles every day and our prayer lives.

Looking forward to week 4!

The Purity Principle

Sexual #Purity for the men who travel can be very difficult. I have previously written about the pull of temptation that starts before the man even leaves home. We all know the loneliness felt when away from home. We know the struggles as the temptation is denied, and consequently it grows and grows. We know that it is really a spiritual battle, and there is ZERO chance of success without the power of Christ.

The Purity Principle sounds like something high school students would take. It is really no different. Committing yourself to a pure life will work wonders and eliminate quite a bit of temptation. Satan will know there is no need to mess with you - you are part of the Purity Principle.

I wish it was this easy and there would be no more temptation to sin. A man's secret sin is devastating to families. The guilt and shame of this sin forces it to stay a secret. And we all know what happens when we keep secrets. It's not good. It never is. Keeping things in the darkness of your heart only allows more darkness in.

All men, and especially those separated from the fellowship of their friends and families, are susceptible to sexual sin. Claim purity as the standard. You will not be disappointed!