when you get right down to it, about an addiction, the core of it is total selfishness. The bigger the addiction, the tinier other people and their needs are. God wants to live out his love through you to other people seeing it in the terms of I need to quit being so self centered and I need to start thinking about the needs of others. That is a revolutionary change in a person when he really gets it. If you're enslaved to sexual sin, it's ruined your life. It's cost you more than you could have imagined. Then the idea of living in Victory might sound like a fairy tale or even a cruel joke, but living in victory is not only possible, it's God's will for you and he has made a way for you to lay hold of it in this series, we want to help you understand how to live a life of victory. So the first thing we need to do is make sure we're all on the same page.

We need to make sure that we're working with a true definition of victory. That's what's coming up on today's episode of purity for life. Mhm. Mhm. Yeah. Living in victory. That tells us a few things about life. It tells us that this life is a contest. It tells us that we can either be victorious in life or we can be defeated in life. It tells us that we will either come out a winner or come out a loser. It tells us that life is a battle. If we think of life in terms of battle, then sexual addiction is really just living in spiritual defeat. Satan and his forces are arrayed against us, offering temptations and seductions. And Satan comes out the winner again and again. We are defeated. I would guess that many of you listening are saying I want to live in victory, and that's exactly what we'd like to help you do throughout this series. But before we go any further, I want to ask you two questions, Question number one, What does it mean to live in Victory?

And question number two, How will we live in Victory? Let me briefly touch on these two questions First, what does it mean to live in Victory? We've been ministering the professing christians and sexual sin for over 30 years, and I think a very large percentage of sexual addicts would say something like this. Victory means that I stopped looking at pornography. Maybe that's where you're at today. You're saying, just help me stop looking at pornography, help me stop picking up prostitutes. Help me stop giving over to self gratification. And that's it, That's all I need. I'm living in victory. But is this what God thinks? Are we really living in victory? Just because we stop sending in one way? What about the host of other sins that are in the human heart? I mean, imagine a guy who constantly steals and constantly lies. Let's say that he somehow stop stealing, but still lies constantly. Is he really living in victory?

Wouldn't he also have to stop lying? So if a sexual addict completely stops looking at pornography, but he still prideful, worldly and bitter, would God say that that person is living in victory? I don't think so. I mean, let's get real when jesus said that he who the son sets free is free. Indeed. Was he offering us a sort of kind of freedom? Did he mean that we're supposed to believe that we're free but not experience anything like freedom? Was he offering us of freedom? You know when we die? While in the meantime we're just supposed to scrape by spiritually without any spiritual liberty. I can't buy that. The apostle paul once told the church in Ephesus that he was praying for them and listen to how he prayed, he said, I pray that according to the riches of God's glory, you may be strengthened with power in the inner Man so that christ may dwell in your hearts through faith that you being rooted and grounded in love may have strength to know the boy boundless love of God and be fully filled with him.

That is victory, strengthen with power in the inner Man. So that christ may dwell in our hearts through faith knowing the boundless love of God and being fully filled with him. Can I ask you this, is that your definition of victory? Is that what you're aiming for? Do you want to know the power of God dwelling in the inner man so that you go from triumph to triumph? Are you looking for and expecting to be so transformed? That, you know, a life filled with purity? Love, Self control, patience and goodness. I don't know about you, but when I look at the word of God, I see that living in victory means being changed. It means being changed from a life full of selfishness into a life of self sacrificing love. It means being changed from a life of pride to a life of humility, From a life of anger, into a life of compassion, from a life of lust, to a life of purity, from a life of bitterness, to a life of forgiveness that is living in victory.

Victory over sin and victory over self. So that helps answer the first question about what does it mean to live in victory? Now, the second question, How do we live in victory? Short answer. We do it through The power of Mercy. The Power of mercy might sound like a strange phrase to you. I'm not really surprised by that, but hopefully in the next few minutes we can make things just a little clear for you. So today we have unparalleled access to information and along with it an almost limitless number of man's opinions on any given subject. Yeah. In less time than it takes to say, victory over sexual sin, Google will compile for you thousands of man's opinions on that subject. Some would try to convince you that sexual sin is a disease, that your best hope is to learn how to treat your symptoms so that they don't destroy your life.

But others would say that there's nothing wrong with using your body in a way that makes you feel good. Some would even say that you just need to redirect your passions into less destructive avenues. Others would simply label anyone a pervert who would even look at pornography. Bottom line, People's opinions are a dime a dozen. And when I want to know which color to paint my house, people's opinions are helpful, but when my soul is on the line because I'm being destroyed by sexual sin, the last thing I need are a bunch of people's opinions. What I need is God breathed, rock solid life proven truth. Now, what we're asserting here today is that mercy is a power which is able to utterly overcome and destroy the horrible bondage and filthy nous of sexual sin. And we're wanting you to know that this isn't just another opinion.

Yeah. We'd like to introduce you really briefly to a man named Rex Andrews. He had been radically saved as a youth and spent years in the ministry and yet found himself wallowing and utter defeat. He said this I was one who went head long into the depths of hopelessness for seven years. I was one who after more than two decades in the ministry, was trapped in sin and in the ensuing discouragement went slam bang to the depths of both hopelessness and of caring. No longer. Everything seemed futile. You can't win seemed blazoned and strong words on every side. It is useless to try any longer. You can't win. You will fail. Was the title in capital letters over all that could be visualized of the future. He also said this. We call this kind of teaching word in testimony because we are only teaching what we do, testify and no having committed adultery.

In my heart, I was helpless when the Lord permitted the trap of temptation to be sprung on me, he permitted it because I was willing to deceive myself and was not true inside as outside. And for seven years I was left to wallow in the hopeless meyer, the bottomless swamp of a life given over to a wicked and adulterous spirit. Seven years. That's right. He often said that he had not one shred of hope that he would ever walk with God again. His life had become so debauched and evil, but listen to these words. But God gave me one more chance. His word struck home to my heart with a shaft of light of the life of heaven. He opened his heart to my heart's need. He showed me the mercy of his goodness which leads to repentance. He mercy me.

He restored my soul. He gave me life, Just gave it free. It was mercy all mercy. It was the revelation of what he is two men. Now we don't have the time to give you rex's full scale testimony. But suffice it to say that when rex Andrews saw that God's will to him, was mercy. It absolutely revolutionized every aspect of his life. Yeah. He went from an adulterer and an alcoholic to a man who spent the rest of his life in one pursuit helping others to come to know that God who had shown him mercy. He would tell anyone who would listen that he wrecks Andrews was nothing a no one and a horrible sinner, but that God had lavished his love and mercy on such a sinner. But we don't want you to miss this one thing because it's crucial to our series. Rex Andrews also began to see that Mursi wasn't just something that God showed towards sinners.

Mursi was also a power which when lived out, would overcome all of the sins that had defeated him for so long. He said this God disciplined me in the knowledge of how to do that mercy to others. His will. Mine was a disintegrated will and mind of only evil continually. He taught me how to meet the savage onslaughts of the Tempter. He showed me how to live holiness unto the Lord in the midst of the same evils that I had been drowning him. He showed me what his mercy really is by doing it in me and to me and through me in that year, 1944 was given to me by the Holy Spirit. This definition, mercy is God's supply system for every need everywhere. Mercy is that kindness, compassion and tenderness, which is a passion to suffer with or participate in another's ills or evils in order to relieve, heal and restore.

It accepts another freely and gladly as he is and supplies the needed good of life to build up and to bring to peace and keep in peace. It is to take another into one's heart just as he is, and cherish and nourish him there. Mercy takes another's sins and evils and faults as its own and freeze the other by bearing them to God. This is the glow of love. This is the anointing rec Sanders called this revelation of mercy, the pathway of steady and unceasing triumph in God. Now, that's not opinion, that's not theory. That's testimony to finish today's show. I wanted to explore a bit about why Pure Life ministries puts a heavy emphasis on the power of mercy when it comes to gaining freedom from sexual sin.

So I invited Pure Life's founders into the studio to give us some background. I was thinking about pure life because there are quite a few christian ministries nowadays dealing with sexual sin and each of them basically have their own ideas about how it should be tackled. What are the most important things that they're going to give to their clients, their students, um about what it really takes to find victory over sin. When you started the ministry back in 1986 what were those core things that you wanted to give to people? Well, primarily what worked for me and what worked for me was the Lord took me through repentance, real repentance and then also on the heels of that, helping me to establish a real devotional life. So those are the main things I was wanting to convey to others. And while I was in bible school, I learned biblical counseling. So that was going to be part of the whole thing.

But yeah, it was mainly getting a life in God established. Okay, so let's fast forward to 2021 for people who aren't familiar with the ministry. One of the massive components in our ministry is what we call mercy or what the bible calls mercy. We talk about in chapel services, it's stressed in counseling. We even have a weekly bible study devoted to that subject. And I guess I'm wondering when you became aware of what the bible calls Mercy, how long did it take for you to realize this is also going to be a core teaching. In 1992 the Lord led Kathy and me to a little ministry north of Chicago called Zion faith Homes and we went up there and um discovered two things really stood out the presence of God in that place and people who were really walking with the Lord and we knew these are people we can learn from.

And so they have this book what the bible teaches about mercy by a man who had been a minister there, rex andrews. And so I took that book home and I would read through it and it just was kind of dry to me. It was hard reading and that went on for I think a few weeks even after we got home, but one morning I was out on a prayer walk and all of a sudden a revelation from heaven. I remember that morning I came back into staff prayer. They were all waiting for me for like a half an hour. I came back from that prayer walk. I was absolutely on fire because it just suddenly became so real to me, Mercy is everything, It is the love of God being extended through believers to people in need. And it just, it was like before that day Christianity to me was like a black and white drawing and that day just Disney colors just filled it in, you know, it was like, it was unbelievable and my life has never been the same since I was gonna say that when he came back, we were all sitting there waiting for him, it's like where is he?

He's never like yeah, and he came in and he just started saying it's all mercy, it's all mercy and it was like he got saved really? That's that was the effect it had on him. He was like a completely different person after that, he changed a lot again. So then it probably didn't take very long at that point to say man, the students need this. No, that was instantaneous. Absolutely. Yeah. You know, up until that day, I had an aversion, two terms such as grace and mercy and love and all that, because it was already starting to be abused in a church and I was just, my walls were up against it. But when I went up to the faith homes and these people would talk about it, but it was man, it was like, it was real and there was a fire in it. You know, it wasn't like this week manby pamby vanilla Christianity where everyone saved basically.

It was a fire of God's love. And when I started seeing it like that man, that was a completely new way of thinking. And so then, yeah, I wanted to get that into the men coming into the program. The experience I've had with wives, um, that have come into the um wives program has been different um because women are coming to us because they've been devastated and their Brokenness is different than what the men coming to us for help is there coming, their lives have fallen apart, they're desperate, they're they're a mess and they understand it. So the Mercy teaching for the students um it's like a breath of fresh air for them, It's like I need this, I want this. And a lot of, a lot of the guys are revolutionized through the Mercy teaching because we've all heard it our whole life Mercy and we think because we've been hearing it our whole christian life that we know everything about.

In fact Roxanne Drew says that in the Mercy teaching, you don't you don't dig any deeper into because you think you already know it all. And when the guys get to the residential program, they're experiencing mercy. They're they're seeing others live it out there, seeing the christian life actually lived out through that spirit of mercy. But the wives don't have that same experience because for a couple of reasons, number one, they're not at the residential program, living in that atmosphere. But the other thing is they're the victim and when you're a victim, um you're not seeing yourself from the standpoint of I need to love him, I need to forgive him. I need this mercy of God to live this out to my husband. Most women aren't thinking that just I need healing. Yeah, I want I I need to be fixed, I need to be healed, I need to be comforted. I need a I need another woman to talk me off the ledge of not divorcing him. So their experience is really different.

There have been women that have encountered that mercy And when I talk about it from my own experience and perspective, I had that experience way before. I knew about the Mercy Studies. The forgiveness of God was so powerful in my life. And it was that Mercy that enabled me to love, forgive and keep loving, keep forgiving, keep putting up with, keep going through that trial. And that's that is the same Mercy. It's just different for the wife because she's been so hurt, so terribly, terribly hurt. And a lot of these women feel like they have to keep a distance from the so called perpetrator if you will. Um, it's harder for them to think of the Mercy teachings for themselves. Okay, this is total speculation, but I'm interested in your thoughts on something. If in your mind's eye, you could imagine pure life without this understanding of God's mercy, how would this ministry have suffered?

It would have been a major component missing in what we were presenting to these men. Because listen, when you get right down to it about an addiction, any addiction, the core of it is total selfishness. That's the core of it. I mean, it's all about me and the bigger the addiction, the tinier other people and their needs are and and the Lord. So to be taught on a regular weekly basis that God wants to live out his love through you to other people instead of you being the center and being a receptor of all this. Love. Seeing it in the terms of I need to quit being so self centered and I need to start thinking about the needs of others. That is a revolutionary change in a person when he really gets it. And so yeah, to lose that would have been losing a major part of what the Lord does for these men up your life, something has to happen in them.

For for them to even embrace that as a need because the guys come to us believing the world has so influenced their thinking about what they need, they need healing, they need their wounds, all that kind of stuff. But the reality is you have lived a completely self centered lifestyle and the only way out of that is through the cross and through death to self and you can't do that in the flesh. You can't live the mercy life in the flesh. There are a lot of christians who are trying to be christians in the flesh and it's not possible. So you have to surrender the whole thing of abandonment and trust for God to actually believe that he will, he wants to he desires to dwell in you and to live out his life through you. And when they get that, it's almost again, I don't like to say this because I know that some people will take exception to, but it's almost like they get saved again when they come into that revelation and that reality, I have to have him living his life out through me.

I can't do it in the flesh. They start off doing acts and deeds of kindness and that that is right. They should press, you know, go against their flesh. But something happens to these guys when they've been doing the outward thing, trying to be, you know, trying to do the mercy life in the flesh. But something happens, they start to really get it. They start to understand this is the life, it's God living his life out through me, jesus, is the manifestation of the father and that's what we're supposed to be, the manifestation of christ in us. So when they get it, it's life changing is what happened to my husband. He came in that morning from that prayer time, a different man. It was like that is it. That's what's been missing in my life. Well, thanks for joining us today. I trust that this show has given you a lot to think about and our prayer is that you would hunger and thirst to know mercy as a personal experience.

And that through this series, you'll learn what it means to walk in God's victory through the power of mercy. We'll see you next week on purity. For life, purity, for life is a production of Pure Life ministries for over 30 years. Pure life ministries has been the go to for those whose lives have been devastated by sexual sin, visit us on the Web. For more information about our life changing counseling programs and powerful teaching materials. Also check out our video clips of men and women. These lives have been radically transformed, all that and more pure life ministries dot org