This was written by Michael Pearl, our favorite Bible teacher, who has never looked at pornography. He is very hard hitting which may offend some of you but I think we need it!
Here is some very valuable advice from him ~
I never erase my web history. Someone else does it for me after examining it. Someone may ask, “What is wrong, don’t you trust yourself?” My answer to them is, I want my wife to trust me. I want my son-in-law to trust me. I want you to trust me, and I want to make myself accountable to someone—just as you should.
I don’t trust anyone who erases his own web history on a regular basis. Just think about it. God keeps a file of all web searches. Nothing is ever erased, except your entire past sins history when you got saved. After that, in the day of the judgment seat of Christ, you will give an account for every deed done in your body (II Corinthians 5:10). No amount of confession and sorrow will prevent you from having to answer for every deed since you got saved.
By the way, I passed. I have never viewed as much as one single porno image on any computer—ever! My Lord and my wife deserve no less. Having done what is required of me, I am just an unprofitable servant; I have only done that which was my duty to do (Luke 17:10), as any normal Christian does.
Dear lady, if your husband’s office was in the same building as a strip joint, just one curtained glass door separating him from the view, would you be comfortable trusting him to never pull back the curtain and look in on the smut? Would you trust your young untested sons—even when you are gone to the store, and they are there alone? That is exactly what the web is—a ready window to the most vile pornography that the devil and his demons can produce. It is pure Sodom and Gomorrah. And it is right there in your home, all the time, waiting day and night to reach though the screen and grab the lusts of a boy or man. I avoid it like Hell.
I cannot say this too forcefully. You are gullible beyond belief if you have in your home a computer with access to the web and it is not on a password, completely inaccessible to your sons. Every single boy from eight to sixteen years old—without exception—will get on the web and look at porn if he can find the opportunity. He will get up in the middle of the night. He will play sick and sneak in when you are gone to the store for medicine. He will arrive home early, stay up late, rise before you do, or go to a friend’s house and get on their computer when they are not home.
If you are the best parent and child trainer, with the best of spiritual instruction, and the finest education, and your sons view pornography on the web, you have wasted your time. You lose. They lose. God loses. The devil wins.
Christian men develop the fortitude and discipline to obey God and walk in holiness against all temptation, but few boys before the age of eighteen have that kind of discipline.
Any husband that expects his wife to “trust him” is a scoundrel. Never put your wife in the position to have to depend on blind trust. Make every moment a walk in the light. I take my wife everywhere, or else she knows where I am and who I am with every moment. Every Christian man should invite his wife or a friend to view his web history on a regular basis. Every computer should be in a public place or facing an open door (or a glass door) where the wife and kids can see what is on the screen. A man who refuses to do so is guilty of something, if only pride.
Dear Christian brother, make yourself accountable to your wife and your friends. Sweet, gullible mother, get as mad as a mother goose and protect your boys and men.
This is me again...Wives, ask your husband every morning if there was even a hint of sexual immorality in his life the day before. If he is a Christian man who walks in holiness, he will want to be held accountable. He needs to be held accountable, if he will let you.
My youngest son who takes obedience to God as a very serious thing has
this Bible verse on his computer screen ~
I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes.
Psalm 101:3
Accountable2You is a GREAT application that protects your family from porn for a very low fee and can be put on everything you own that gives access to porn.
But fornication, and all uncleanness, or covetousness,
let it not be once named among you, as becometh saints.
let it not be once named among you, as becometh saints.
Ephesians 5:3
My youngest son who takes obedience to God as a very serious thing has
this Bible verse on his computer screen ~
I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes.
Psalm 101:3
Accountable2You is a GREAT application that protects your family from porn for a very low fee and can be put on everything you own that gives access to porn.
Tara · 634 weeks ago
Lori Alexander 122p · 634 weeks ago
Tara · 634 weeks ago
Tiffany · 634 weeks ago
We have a few friends whose marriages have really struggled because of porn. The scary thing now days is that so many teenage boys have smart phones in their pocket...so they don't have to wait until mom is at the store. They can look at it on the bus, during class, anywhere they want. Very scary world we live in. But we are doing our best to raise our (still little) kids in the best way we know how, and teach them as much as we can!
Lori Alexander 122p · 634 weeks ago
joluisesd@gmail.com · 634 weeks ago
As to the part about not removing the history from your computer, both my husband and I do off our own computers as it removes cookies etc… It’s worth doing once in a while. And as I trust my husband I have nothing to fear about him cleaning out the cache.
Liz · 634 weeks ago
I do have a question about this part of the article: "Nothing is ever erased, except your entire past sins history when you got saved. After that, in the day of the judgment seat of Christ, you will give an account for every deed done in your body {II Cor. 5:10}"
I have been taught (maybe incorrectly?) that there is no judgement for God's children and that His blood covers all sins, past, present and future. Something about that quote above doesn't add up. Can you help me figure out where the breakdown is? :-)
Lori Alexander 122p · 634 weeks ago
Liz · 634 weeks ago
I kid. I think the thing I look forward to most is getting my asthmatic self a new set of perfect lungs! Oh! To be able to run again!
Cynthia Swenson · 634 weeks ago
Victoria · 628 weeks ago
David · 565 weeks ago
I think accountability is crucial however if a husband says to his wife that he has struggled with his thought life, or lusted over a woman he saw in the street 9/10 times she is going to get angry at him, often cause more distrust as she will constantly question him on his thoughts.
He needs accountability with another man that will challenge him, believe in him, and help him though his struggles.
I think it is incredibly important for filters, protecting kids, conversations to be had. But if the assumption is that all men are sex crazed savages that need their wives or mothers to challenge and protect them from themselves, then men will just turn to secrecy.
Jesus hung out with prostitutes and sinners, he didn't condemn them he helped them showing them there was a better way.
How about putting energy into helping Christians who have sexual struggles rather than just telling them they are sinning (which they already know).
Olumide · 418 weeks ago
Most women can not understand how incredibly easy it is for a man to be sexually tempted because we have a different biological make up, as i can see from the previous comments.
I believe, if men were to tell their wives everytime they feel sexually attracted to another woman, most women will never be happy in their marriage. Yes, even that holy husband sometimes feel sexually attracted by another woman.
Ken · 418 weeks ago
Train your wife in real life instead of having something in your marriage that you cannot talk about openly. Anything like that means less intimacy, understanding and acceptance of each other. It is mature believer who knows that all sin misses God's mark and needs admonition, encouragement and exhortation. Who better but your godly spouse to help you with any area you or she needs help to stop sinning?
Ken · 418 weeks ago
As you know, sins' strongholds are not something one just wakes up with one day and it just appears. It is a gradual giving into what one watches and looks for on the computer or tv. A husband is free to set his own levels of accountability, but most husbands need a wife to ask them how they are doing in order to not have a secret sex life struggle going on inside of them.
If a woman's struggles are with a desire to control and her emotional nature, a man's is his sexual nature. Why not have the closest Christian to you help hold you accountable for your sins? The idea that a wife needs to get to a woman's group to confess her sins and be held accountable and a man to a men's group is foreign to my understanding of what a mature marriage should be all about. I get it if you have a wife who is too immature to understand what you have written about a man's sexual nature, but it is your job to teach her and to mature her emotional nature to be able to accept that she simply has a different set of sins she will struggle with until the Lord grows her up in the area of her emotional life.
I would like to see a true study on how much "accountability" other Christian men and women actually hold each other to. My years in the church shows that what is called "accountability" is really confession and then others offer encouraging words like, "We are all sinners, and I struggle too." There is rarely a firm commitment to change or stop the sinning... "I will pray for you" is not accountability.
The true nature of Christian accountability is that "I want to be held accountable to God and my fellow believer" and in turn I will benefit from the spouse He has given me to help me stay strong in Him. And when I fail, I am mature enough to confess my failings, perhaps not all the details, but a simple "I need to do better." Perhaps even disciplining myself for godliness with specific consequences as the apostle Paul says, "So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. I discipline my body and keep it under control lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified." (1 Cor. 9:26-27).
Certainly I am all for having understanding for how hard it is for a Christian man in today's world to avoid the flesh of women that is thrown at us in this sex-crazed society... but when a man is actively searching out sexual sin and porn... such a man needs strong accountability, and if he is not seeking out the porn, does he not need accountability to help stay away from seeking it? It is not the mud that comes up on us as we go along our journey that is of much concern as that is easily brushed off, but rather when the mud sticks and the guy or girl decides to play in it that is of great concern for the building of sinful strongholds.
"My wife couldn't handle it!"" Then get her some articles to read and help show her that your battles may be different than hers, but you don't get emotional over her sins of disrespect and control, so she needs to begin seeing that the things you may see are not the greatest of sins, but you need her help you not stumble headlong into sin.
Imagine what a mature marriage looks like when both spouses are holding each other accountable for their biggest areas of struggles, not matter what they are. And instead of crying about it... praying together and working together to ensure that it does not grow into something bigger as we wait upon the Lord to sanctify all areas of our Christian walk.