Monday, 28th June, 2021
Bible Reading: Romans 1: 24-28
Memory Verse: Turn my eyes away from worthless things; preserve my life according to your word. Psalm 119:37 (NIV)
Kingdomworks Studios said, “All men watch porn. It’s normal. It’s just something done in private. It doesn’t hurt anyone.” These are some of the lies the enemy would have you believe about pornography; especially the last statement. Say no to porn.
Truth #1: Pornography Damages your Brain: A porn addict’s brain looks similar to a heroin addict’s in brain scan. In both cases, you are changing the very structure of your brain. First, your brain is constantly changing in response to your thoughts, actions and experience, creating trails in your brain. By doing the same thing over and over, you strengthen those neural pathways – the trails in your brain – so that they fire on an automatic sequence. This strengthens porn’s hold on you, making it much harder to break free. Secondly, watching pornography bypasses and weakens the prefrontal cortex. This part of your brain is responsible for impulse control and good decision making. It also sends a powerful jolt of dopamine and other hormones directly into your limbic system a lower part of the brain where pleasure is experienced and where you act on impulse. When those chemicals (strong as any drug!) hit, you feel better for a short period of time. However, the desire to watch porn again returns with a vengeance. Not only that, over time, you damage the brain’s pleasure center so that you are less able to experience normal pleasure. In short, you need higher and stronger doses of dopamine to get your fix. Often, this leads to seeking out more extreme forms of pornography, more frequently, as well as indulging in riskier behavior.
Truth #2: Pornography will rub you off your productivity, time and money: In 2013 Forbes article, Cheryl Conner noted that 25% of working adults admit to looking at pornography on a computer at work. A Nielsen study put that percentage at 28% in 2010. The average time spent visiting pornographic websites on company computers is 13 minutes per visit. Employees who view pornography spend about one hour and 38 minutes a month doing so on the clock, according to the Nielsen survey. Almost half of all porn addicts will end up getting fired at some point for this very reason, according to the Family Research Council. People who are addicted to porn have been known to stay up late at night watching it. This means they are showing up to work on just a few hours of sleep (or even as little as one hour). You can imagine what that would do to your work performance that day; and probably for several days after that. That is if the same thing doesn’t happen again. So we see that what you do in off-hours can negatively affect into your job or business. Half of all porn addicts who watch porn at work get fired at some point.
Quote: Until God is your chief concern — until sinning against Him is what makes your heart break — you will never turn the corner.
Prophetic Decree: Receive your deliverance from the plague of pornography, in Jesus name.
Prayer Focus
1. Thank you Father for your power of transformation to change a sinner like me.
2. I repent of anyway I have disappointed You Jesus in the way I use my heart, mind, thought and time watching pornography.
3. By the power of resurrection, I break away from the entanglement of porn, in Jesus name.
4. Holy Spirit, please empower me to live a holy life, in Jesus name.
5. I receive grace for self-control, holiness and purity, in Jesus name.
BIBLE IN ONE YEAR: 1 Kings 20-21