I want to begin today be sharing with you that God began several years ago to bring women across my path who were under heavy sexual temptations on some level or another. I began to pray and ask God why it was that He continued to bring women to me with the same kinds of struggles. He began to lay on my heart that I needed to expose the enemy with his seductive schemes by writing to the women in the body of Christ. I want to stand in agreement with Beth Moore that the body of Christ is being seduced! I am so passionate about conveying to you his schemes so that you will not fall into his trap of destruction for you. I want to talk today about the conditions of our hearts. A heart that has become hard and calloused towards a spouse is a prime target for the enemy to launch a full scale attack of seduction. Oh, allow me to say that again a little louder! A HEART THAT HAS BECOME HARD AND CALLOUSED TOWARDS YOUR SIGNIFICANT OTHER IS A PRIME TARGET FOR AN ATTACK OF SEDUCTION FROM THE EVIL ONE.

Sisters, if your heart has become hardened toward the one you love, I ask you to open your heart today to the Lord. When you receive Christ as your Savior, His Holy Spirit takes up residency within you. Under the old covenant He promised His people in Ezekiel 36:26 that He would remove from them a heart of stone and replace it with a new heart. With these words God promised to put a new covenant into effect for those living on the New Testament side. That is you and me. We can replace the words “I will give you a new heart” with “I have given you a new heart” because He did what He had promised two thousand years ago when Jesus died on the cross. We can stop begging for God to move on our behalf and start receiving all He has already done for us two thousand years ago. Please take a moment and write a prayer giving the Holy Spirit permission to do whatever He needs to do in order to make your heart soft and pliable again. Tell Him you want to activate the new heart he already given you if you have not done so.
 
_______________________________________________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

I want speak to those of you who are married and are being tempted by another man other than your spouse or are currently involved in an ungodly relationship. Repent now. It is not worth the horrendous pain that will come over you like a giant tidal wave! Run like the wind towards the loving arms of your Father! Even if you feel chained by addiction to the other person, God is big enough to break the ties. He was big enough to burn the ties that bound the men’s hands that were thrown in the fiery pit in Daniel, and He is big enough to break away the bounds that tie you to any kind of addiction! For those of you who are not currently in this position, bear with me for a day so that I may reach out to those who are. We may not be actively involved in such a relationship, but this information is imperative in helping others who are. It can also teach us how to come to the Father to escape any form of bondage we have. For those of you who are not married but are involved in an ungodly relationship, I urge you to repent as well. The baggage you will carry into a marriage one day from these ungodly relationships will rear its ugly head if you don’t deal with it. Trust me, the skeletons I had locked in the closet that I never dealt with tried to come out a time or two!

So where should we begin? I would like to share with you the stages God took me through for my recovery which began by dealing with my hardened heart. There are many ways to begin recovery but I can only share with you what I have experienced and learned along the way. I can’t possibly write about something I know nothing about. So I will share some of the places God took me after a wave of sin overtook me and hopefully it will encourage you to begin to look for your own personal road to healing.

The last season I had with sin ended in an enormous rumble with the enemy. I will not share all of the details, because some of the details are not glorifying to God. I pray that your flesh will not become so focused on what I have done in my past. There are some details that don’t need to be broadcast corporately (although Satan made sure to tell as many people as he could in the town I live in. He is into public humiliation). Details are not always glorifying to the Lord and they can bring shame upon other innocent people. The last thing I want to do is hurt the people I have already hurt by my sin through the sharing of details they never asked to be a part of in the first place. When we share our testimonies, we don’t need to paint a picture of our past sins that will burn an ungodly image into someone’s mind. What we want to stick with them is the awesomeness of God. Let’s take a moment to ask God to get our focus on Him and what He wants to say to us today. Please pray with me.

Father,

We want to come before you today and ask you to help us get our eyes on you and off of any other distractions. We believe you want to speak to each one of us so personally. Give us eyes to see and ears to hear your voice today. We ask these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Okay, let’s get back the where my recovery began. As I stated before, the last season of rebellious sin ended with a war waged against me by my adversary. Understand that the enemy had waged wars against me in the past, but this one was by far the largest. I believe it was his last attempt to destroy me. I believe that he had been a part of every act of abuse that came my way growing up and was the author of every shameful event that took place in my early years. Because of that, he knew my weakest places and my most vulnerable areas. Remember, just as the captain of an army studies his enemy when planning an attack, so our archenemy does the same. He caught me so off guard that I fell right into his trap and suffered enormously for it.

Seduction has a way of slowly taking you captive. It is not something that happens quickly. It had inched its way into my life so discreetly I didn’t even notice when the day came that the roaring lion was standing in my living room about to devour me! I only realized it after his attack came. Quite honestly, at first I really didn’t even know how I had ended up at the bottom of the barrel, I was so caught off guard.

Have you ever been at the bottom of the barrel, my sister? If so, what was that like for you?
 
_______________________________________________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

I can honestly say when you are at the bottom and you look around, everyone there looks the same. They may have taken different vehicles of sin to get there, but they all looked like you and me. Surprising isn’t it? Your pride assumes the only people who would be in the barrel would be people who look “extreme”. Can I be honest with you for a moment? Everyone I have ever seen at the bottom looked like someone you would see at church on Sunday morning dressed in their pretty clothes that seemed to have it all together!

Has your pride allowed you to have prejudices about what kind of people find themselves completely at the bottom of a pit of sin? If so, why do you think you had those preconceived ideas?

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

My prayer for you is that any form of pride that would lead you to think you are not capable in your flesh of some awful sins, would be extinguished. The Bible teaches that we all for short of the glory of God (see Romans 3:23).

If you feel that there might be pride in your life that has led you to believe lies, would you consider repenting from that right now? If so, write a brief prayer of confession to God repenting from the sin of pride and ask for His forgiveness. I don’t want the enemy to have any foothold in your life through pride.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

After coming to my senses, it felt as if I had been put under some kind of spell! It was almost as if I had been on drugs of some kind. Please hear me clearly, I MADE MY OWN CHOICES. NO ONE MADE ME DO ANYTHING. The only role the enemy played in my situation was to set up every trap for me to fall in and to attempt to get me to sin as ugly as possible. I take full responsibility for my choices. No one held a gun to my head and made me do anything sinful in my life. It was all my own choice.

My hope is that you will not ever have to hit the bottom as I did. My prayer is that should you be involved in an ungodly relationship you would consider repenting now.

What do you think “repent” means?

_______________________________________________________________________________________________
 
_______________________________________________________________________________________________

According to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary it means, “to turn from sin; to feel sorrow, regret, or contrition.” I believe it means that we are to get into agreement with God about the nature of the sin and choose to turn in the opposite direction from it. We are going to look at repentance at a deeper level tomorrow, because I feel there is something we need to do in order to repent. Sisters, if you don’t feel sorrowful for a sinful action something is not right. It is my belief that if we don’t feel sorrow when we sin, our heart must be hardened. How can we repent when our hearts are in agreement with our sin?

I know before I experienced brokenness, bitterness had hardened my heart to such a degree, I felt no sorrow during my sinful seasons. My heart was so hardened towards God that I could not really feel his convictions when I was involved in an ungodly relationship. When I did begin to feel convicted, I would harden my heart even more. I think I made excuses for my behavior because I was angry with God. I had such a victim mentality and often felt sorry for myself. Somehow I felt He was responsible for my sexually sinful choices throughout my life because He knew that I was trying to fill a void my earthly Father never did. I felt it was His fault that I sought out drugs, alcohol and men in order to numb my pain because He had not protected me from seduction at a young age. In my mind He was a mean God that allowed me to be born into a life surrounded by unloving people. I have since come to a place of total forgiveness for those who hurt me in my life, and thank God the Lord taught me how to take personal responsibility for my “stuff” instead of bathing in self pity! I also sought forgiveness from those I hurt as well. I knew my heart had grown hard when I had caused so much destruction to a few people I really did truly care for. My hardened heart caused me to go to great lengths to get what I needed to numb the pain in my life no matter the costs. I did not know how to reach out and truly call upon the Lord.

What about you? Have you ever experienced a hardened heart? If so, how did it affect your life?

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

If you are currently involved in an ungodly relationship and don’t feel convicted over it, please take an honest inventory of the condition of your heart. If you want to live a life pleasing to the Lord, it is absolutely necessary to have heart surgery so that you may begin the path towards restoration. We can ask the Lord to give us a heart transplant and I promise He will be faithful to do so. I know because He did it for me. The thing is, once we are saved and the Holy Spirit comes to take up residency, we have everything we need in order to walk with a pure heart. His life-changing power within us gives us everything we need to walk holy and blameless. All we have to do is begin to receive it. We have to have the revelation that everything we could possibly need to walk the godly walk is deep within us. We need to have the Holy Spirit teach us how to tap into that power.

Please read Deuteronomy 30:6 with me and let’s turn it into a prayer. “The LORD your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants, so that you may love him with all your heart and with all your soul, and live.”

Let me urge those of you who may have some hardening in your heart to pray the following prayer. Remember, our best weapon against the enemy is God’s Word. This scripture was given under the old covenant. Remember, since we are living under the new covenant, we can replace the word “will” with “have” and then ask to receive what He has already done for us through the new covenant.

Father God,

Lord we call out to you to circumcise our hearts so that we may love you. We ask you to forgive us for allowing our hearts to get in this condition. Thank you that all we have to do is receive what you have already done for us; circumcise our hearts. We stand in a place today believing and receiving the circumcision so that we may love you. I thank you for teaching us these truths about receiving what you have already done for us. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

When we begin to see the Old Testament promises to us with New Covenant eyes, we can begin to receive all He did for us on the cross. We no longer have to beg God to move on our behalf; we just have to receive all He did. I am so honored to teach you these truths. I pray you are just as blessed as I have been to understand them! May you bask in the beauty of His presence today.