Sin Against Your Own Body
Often we have prayer ministry clients come to us with some hefty physical needs. Most have had prayer for the ailment(s), stood in endless prayer lines, rebuked and rebuffed spirits of physical infirmity and nothing has seemed to help them. When we hear this kind of testimony, we begin to ask the Holy Spirit to take us to the root cause of their physical problem(s) occurring in their bodies. We began to see a pattern that surprised us. The Holy Spirit often does that!
Permit us to share a basic principle for successful prayer ministry with you. We all are born with four basic needs and they each have a counterfeit. They are:
Need Counterfeit
Unconditional, expressed love Passion
Affirmation and attention Position
Safety and security Possessions
Destiny and purpose Power
(Note: For more information on the Four Basic Needs see our eBook entitled “Father’s Love” available at https://placesinthefathersheart.org/ebooks.php
Notice the first need is unconditional, expressed love. If one does not experience this basic need from conception through life, this person will very likely pursue the counterfeit which is passion. Love hunger demands satisfaction! This includes all kinds of sexual promiscuity including lust, fornication, adultery, masturbation, homosexuality, and even bestiality.
With the many changes in our culture and society regarding sexual perversion, the consequences of sexual sin are rampant both outside and inside the Body of Christ. Our experience as prayer ministers tells us that most Christians today do not believe that fornication (sexual contact before marriage) is a sin. Our culture and government are moving more and more liberally, until today we find ourselves living in a modern day Sodom and Gomorrah.
But let’s make it clear. The Word of God teaches us the following with respect to sexual immorality:
“Shun immorality and all sexual looseness [flee from impurity in thought, word or deed]. Any other sin which a man commits is one outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body.” I Cor. 6:18
Just how, then, do these sexual sins manifest? They often manifest as this scripture says in sin against our own body. Let’s make it clear here. We are NOT saying that ALL physical infirmities have their roots in sexual sins. However, when one does exhaust other alternatives in prayer and they are unsuccessful, it may be time to probe the area of sexual immorality.
This week, the following article entitled “Science Proves Premarital Sex Rewires the Brain” by Jeremy Wiles arrived in our email box. It is an excellent article and shows just how powerful the counterfeit of unconditional, expressed love can be. God has given us a precious gift in the sexual encounter designed for the marriage relationship. When we abuse it, we reap the consequences which often manifests in longstanding physical ailments. My personal testimony is at the end of this article.
Science Proves Premarital Sex Rewires the Brain by Jeremy Wiles
There’s a reason why breaking up from a sexual relationship is much more emotionally painful and much harder to forget than one that didn’t involve sex. There are several neurochemical processes that occur during sex, which are the “glue” to human bonding.
Sex is a powerful brain stimulant. When someone is involved sexually, it makes him or her want to repeat that act. Their brain produces lots of dopamine—a powerful chemical, which is compared to heroin on the brain. Dopamine is your internal pleasure/reward system. When dopamine is involved, it changes how we remember.
The other part is oxytocin, which is designed to mainly help us forget what is painful. Oxytocin is a hormone produced primarily in women’s bodies. When a woman has a child and she is breastfeeding, she produces lots of oxytocin, which bonds her to her child. For this reason, mothers will die for their child, because they’ve become emotionally bonded due to the oxytocin that is released when they’re skin-to-skin with their child.
The same phenomenon occurs when a woman is intimate with a man. Oxytocin is released, and this makes her bond to him emotionally. Have you wondered sometimes why a woman will stay with a man who’s abusing her? We know now that it’s because she bonded to him emotionally because of the oxytocin released during sex.
Men produce vasopressin, which is also referred to as the “monogamy hormone,” and it has the same effect as oxytocin has on a woman. It bonds a man to a woman.
These “bonding” agents narrow our selection to one person. That is wonderful in a marriage relationship but really bad in a dating relationship because you lose your objectivity when you’re searching for your potential life mate.
Impaired Judgment
According to neuropsychologist Dr. Tim Jennings, “When you have premarital sex, your reward circuitry is bonded to them now, and it will be much deeper and hurtful. Oftentimes, in breakups of people who’ve been sexually active, they can’t tolerate the sense of emptiness, so they rush into another relationship. The neuro circuits did not have time to reset, and so they’re impaired in their ability to bond with the next person, and they may become sexually active with them. This is just a repetitive cycle, and there are real impairments in bonding going on.”
Becoming Bonded With Porn
These same neurochemicals are present when viewing pornography. A man will become bonded with whatever he is engaged in during the moment these chemicals are released. When your relationship is being carried on with an image, you become bonded to whatever you’re viewing.
Dr. Doug Weiss, a marriage counselor, advises men to have eye contact with their wives during sex because they become bonded with that person. By doing this, he explains that, over time, individuals will decrease the “neural pathway to pornography and sexually inappropriate thoughts and believes and glue to healthy sexuality to [their] wife. When your brain thinks sex, it thinks, ‘Where’s my wife?’ And that is a great way to fight this battle.”
Discovering how our minds were designed to operate by a magnificent Creator reveals truth in the way we are to live.
Cycle of Sexual Sin
For someone viewing porn, one of the functions of oxytocin is to separate the experience and the excitement from the intensity of the shame. According to neuropsychologist Dr. Jes Montgomery, “Usually by the time they turn the computer off, they are already sinking into a sense of failure and shame, and the function of oxytocin is to tell the brain, ‘Wait a minute. You don’t want to remember that. You want to hold on to this excitement and this amazing magic that you just experienced.’”
Knowing how these neurochemicals interact and change the brain help us understand why sex is meant to be kept within the boundaries of marriage. You see the overtones here about God’s design for His pure temple. This is another reason why the devil attacks our sexuality so much—because in attacking human sexuality, it actually interferes with human bonding.
So, for those practicing sex outside of marriage, they are creating a bond with their partner, thus inhibiting their discernment of whether they should remain in that relationship. God wired and designed our brains for a specific purpose: to bond ourselves with the person we marry.
*********************************************
Roger’s Personal Testimony regarding I Cor 6:18
In my mid-20’s I began having pyloric spasms in my stomach. The spasms sent me to the emergency room many times for injections to stop the spasms and the acute pain they caused. This was followed by the unending exploration of antacids for the heart burn and gas. All this became very irritating. A couple of years later I began having severe allergy symptoms. I’d never had those before. My eyes would swell shut (scary!) and there was massive red, runny, itching eyes and troublesome sinus drainage. This produced an ongoing hacking cough and headaches with difficulty sleeping because of the cough. Once again we tried all available OTC meds as well as some prescription drugs to relieve the symptoms.
We had no idea that both of these physical problems were rooted in my sexual sin. It wasn’t until Father began to teach us about I Corinthians 6:18 that we realized we should ask Father if my stomach and allergy problems had a spiritual root. As we began that pursuit, He took me back in the Spirit and showed me the connection to the time I began to commit adultery. It came clear that my self-centered sin resulted in about 40 years of pain, suffering and expense for both Gerri and I. Oh the price of sin, but oh how wonderful the grace of God to make every provision necessary for His children.
When Father showed me the root of these physical problems, I asked Jesus to go back to the time of my unfaithfulness with me and He did. I repented and asked for His healing touch and He came to me, put His arms around me and said, “Son, love is not found in sex. It is found like this.” And He put His arms around me and held me close releasing His life changing love into me. Thank You, Father, Son and Holy Spirit for Your wonderful love for your children.