Addictive behaviors...

Job 31:1 NKJV - "I have made a covenant with my eyes; Why then should I look upon a young woman?

Job 31:2 NKJV - For what [is] the allotment of God from above, And the inheritance of the Almighty from on high?

Job 31:3 NKJV - [Is] it not destruction for the wicked, And disaster for the workers of iniquity?

NEWSWEEK:

Reliable figures for the number of diagnosed sex addicts are difficult to come by, but the Society for the Advancement of Sexual Health, an education and sex-addiction treatment organization, estimates that between 3 and 5 percent of the U.S. population—or more than 9 million people—could meet the criteria for addiction. Some 1,500 sex therapists treating compulsive behavior are practicing today, up from fewer than 100 a decade ago, say several researchers and clinicians, while dozens of rehabilitation centers now advertise treatment programs, up from just five or six in the same period. The demographics are changing, too. “Where it used to be 40- to 50-year-old men seeking treatment, now there are more females, adolescents, and senior citizens,” says Tami VerHelst, vice president of the International Institute for Trauma and Addiction Professionals. “Grandfathers getting caught with porn on their computers by grandkids, and grandkids sexting at 12.”

In fact, some of the growth has been fueled by the digital revolution, which has revved up America’s carnal metab­olism. Where previous generations had to risk public embarrassment at dirty bookstores and X-rated movie theaters, the Web has made pornography accessible, free, and anonymous. An estimated 40 million people a day in the U.S. log on to some 4.2 million pornographic websites, according to the Internet Filter Software Review. And though watching porn isn’t the same as seeking out real live sex, experts say the former can be a kind of gateway drug to the latter.

“Not everyone who looks at a nude image is going to become a sex addict. But the constant exposure is going to trigger people who are susceptible,” says Dr. David Sack, chief executive of Los Angeles’s Promises Treatment Centers.

A covenant, or in Hebrew: bĕriyth, means alliance, pledge, usually between God and man.

It doesn't mean your not motivated.

It's kind of like knowing you can't be around certain foods, you can't be around drinkers if alcohol is your temptation. God does not "lead us into temptation," it is the evil one that does that.

We find ourselves more preoccupied with our online persona's, and that defeats our quiet time spent praying, reading, meditating...catching up OFFLINE with friends and family.

Here's the Newsweek article. My advice: don't get caught up, and if you are - get some help, fast!

[Is] it not destruction for the wicked, And disaster for the workers of iniquity?

Before your laptop, your text messages, your tweets and Facebook updates, we were once...human.

Uncle_______________

“The peanut-crunching crowd
“Shoves in to see

“Them unwrap me hand and foot—
“The big strip tease.
“Gentlemen, ladies

“These are my hands
“My knees.”

“Lady Lazarus” From Sylvia Plat: Her Life and Work. Copyright © 1973 by Eileen M. Aird

© 13 November 2011, the Griot Poet
1 Corinthians 13:11 - When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

His name is not important.

He, was my aunt’s live-in-boyfriend,

So, in the sixties, “uncle” worked for me.

His name is not important.

At four years of age,

He was a giant to me,

As I bathed in a bathroom sink in Washington, DC.

His name is not important.

My mother came in screaming,

Wielding a lead pipe

Striking my “uncle” across

His taller frame,

Bourbon on his breath

As his unconscious frame smacked the bathroom mat

We left DC on the next bus out (never went back)

My father picked us up in Winston…

My first meltdown was in front of a

Counselor that discerned the screen

I’d erected mentally

When I allowed myself to see:

I drank, I cursed, I swore, I whored... I screamed!

“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known” (1 Corinthians 13:12).

I have seen others like me, men and women lately

For whom their screens have been laid bare

By the worship of sports icons and demonology’s Mammon

I suddenly understood my favorite fiction hero:

The Dark Knight ™ became what he could not be

When as a child “all sense left his life”:

Strong,

Intelligent,

Disciplined,

Gadget(ed),

Martial arts; prose and technology…made sense to me.

At first,

My father was angry that I did not tell him before (nor did my mother),

I could not, nor could she

He was our protector

And he would have instantly become our avenger

And I wanted him as the father…the great father he’d been for me

In a ghetto where too many males

Knew their dads

Through barbed wire gates

And plate glass screens,

And mine was no longer opaque,

It was bare, clear, receded.

And in that light

I found a love that accepted me.

Despite; beyond my tears and screams…is freedom…is healing.

1 Corinthians 13:13 - And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these [is] love.

Millstone Prophecies...

Forgive me...to be an oURLife teacher, we MUST pass a criminal backgldround check! Period! The children at New Light will NOT be ministered to by monsters! Forgive my zeal...I am ANGRY! God forgive me...

*****

Matthew 18:1 NKJV - At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, "Who then is greatest in the kingdom of heaven?"

Matthew 18:2 NKJV - Then Jesus called a little child to Him, set him in the midst of them,

Matthew 18:3 NKJV - and said, "Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.

Matthew 18:4 NKJV - "Therefore whoever humbles himself as this little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

Matthew 18:5 NKJV - "Whoever receives one little child like this in My name receives Me.

Matthew 18:6 NKJV - "But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to sin, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were drowned in the depth of the sea.

Matthew 18:7 NKJV - "Woe to the world because of offenses! For offenses must come, but woe to that man by whom the offense comes!

*****

Tribute to the Overweight Lover...

Cut down by pneumonia. It reminds me of the verses during Job’s travail:

Job 8:9 (For we [are but of] yesterday, and know nothing, because our days upon earth [are] a shadow:)

Job 14:1 "Man [who is] born of woman Is of few days and full of trouble.

Job 14:2 He comes forth like a flower and fades away; He flees like a shadow and does not continue.

I have the unique recollection of being in high school (yes, I wasn’t born an adult) when the first rap song “King Tim the III: Personality Jock” (You Tube here; Wikipedia here) and the first rap album “The Sugar Hill Gang” (You Tube here, Wikipedia here) came out. It made my senior year in high school absolutely crazy. Everybody was rapping; everybody had a “beat box”; people were breaking their necks/winding up in ER break dancing.

It’s conventional wisdom that Sugar Hill invented rap. No, it had been around in Be Bop and Beat Poetry: The Watts Prophets; The Last Poets and Gil Scott-Heron.

It originally meant “Rhythm And Poetry.” Hip-Hop wasn’t a lifestyle or a culture: it’s what you did when the song played (as in danced). It had nothing to do with guns, gangs, sex or drugs. It did come out in 1979, 11 years after the death of Martin Luther King: I think we were trying to find our way as a culture, with grace and dignity.

As Heavy D described it once, Rap was our Opera, because like Opera it originated from the streets. It was meant to be our version of CNN, telling the real deal going on in the ‘hood without becoming a minstrel show. That ended when the record executives got hold of it; warped it and made it the parade of clowns dragging their pants below their waists it is now. (See the Real History of Sagging)

Heavy D was the “Overweight Lover,” giving dignity to plus sizes. He was losing weight for his health I heard this morning on the Tom Joyner Morning Show. But notice at the BET Awards: he’s not cursing, he’s not demeaning women, he’s not representing his ‘hood, he's not flashing sets; he’s not acting at all like a gangster: he looks as if he’s enjoying himself. Nobody's asking young people not to enjoy themselves. If you practice acting like a gangster, you will eventually be one, and part of the prison industrial complex. According to the Thirteenth Amendment of the Constitution: that makes you a voluntary slave.

Before you buy another CD or download another song: think about what you’re filling your minds with. You become what you meditate on:

Pro 23:6 Do not eat the bread of a miser, Nor desire his delicacies;

Pro 23:7 For as he thinks in his heart, so [is] he. "Eat and drink!" he says to you, But his heart is not with you.

Rest in peace with the Prince of Peace, Heavy D!

Tears of the Good Shepherd...

I'm talking about this...not because I'm complaining or "putting my mouth on the king," as Ecclesiastes stated. I am concerned that this may be the beginnings of the "Great Falling Away (2 Thessalonians 2:3)."

John 10:11 "I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives His life for the sheep.
John 10:14 "I am the good shepherd; and I know My [sheep], and am known by My own."

John 11:35 Jesus wept.
John 11:43 And when he thus had spoken, he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth.
John 11:44 And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with graveclothes: and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus saith unto them, Loose him, and let him go.

No other title needed...

...ponder this: