It is the enemy from within rather than the adversary from without that challenges us most. Therefore we must not only know God and His word, we must also know ourselves – including our weaknesses and flaws - so that we may live lives of purity and righteousness – from the inside out.
The Required Reading:
- Sex Isn't the Problem, Lust Is by Joshua Harris. (This book is appropriate for both men and women.)
- The Power of Integrity by John McArthur
Also recommended:
- Breaking Free by Russell Willingham
- When Good Men Are Tempted by Bill Perkins
Class Materials
Download the Class Workbook Here
Purity Topics (find more resources for this class in eMANcipators)
Paenitentia can only offer a temporary abatement of chronic sin by attaching pain to a behavior you hope to extinguish. This associative conditioning fails as soon as the pain inevitably fades (Colossians 2:20-3:10). It's time to break the enslaving cycle of sin and celebrate freedom! This is a practical class (with practical workbooks that participants complete while in class) with value for both sexual purity and overcoming any chronic sin.
- Discern Desires
- Long term vs short term fulfillment of God given desires and drives
- Short term corruptions of long term desires
- Short term solutions leading to long term fulfillment
- Recalibrate Righteousness
- The Before and After picture of spiritual regeneration
- Striving for nothing less than biblical righteousness
- "Getting" Grace
- Expose Excuses
- Chronic sin requires BOTH an appealing stimulus (e.g. forbidden fruit) and a loophole to disobey our covenant with Jesus (see Genesis 3 and Matthew 4)
- Identifying excuses that open the door to chronic sin
- Destroying "valid" excuses via Scripture
- Terminate Temptation
- Opportune times leveraged by Satan for temptation
- Triggers
- Rituals
- Entitlements
- Proactively Pray
- Biblical models for prayer in the face of temptation
- "Watch" and pray
Integrity Topics
- A Study from the Book of Daniel
- Life
- Time
- Money
- Media
- Relationships
- Doctrine
- Problems with interpretation
- The pressure of Post Modernism
- Safeguarding the truth
- Speech
- Identifying Fears that promote Lies
- Loving the Truth
- Hating Embellishment
- Ministry
- Hypocrisy and compromise
- Stats and rolls
- Leading by example