Overcome Porn: The 40 Day ChallengeSample

How does God transform people from the inside out? Titus 2:11-14 tells us that grace trains us to renounce the ways of the world and live the way Christ desires.  How does grace do this? 

Grace grips our hearts with what Christ has done.

For grace to train us, we need to realize just how ungodly and taken by worldly passions we are. 

When we don’t place a desire for God and the things he loves at the center of our lives, we are left to our own directionless impulses, and we naturally worship other things (Col. 3:5)—idols that give temporary satisfaction and meaning to our lives.

Grace gives us a vision of what Christ will do.

The key to how grace trains us to live differently is found in these words: “waiting for our blessed hope” (2:13). Obedience “in the present age” (2:12) flows from a longing for the next.

The favor we experience with God now is but a foretaste of our destiny. This is how grace trains us: by setting our sights forward on the people God is making us to be and the world he is remaking.

3 Ways to Submit to Grace’s Training

1. Daily, we should relish in our present favor with God. We are filled with God’s fullness when we understand the breadth and length and height and depth of his love—a love that “surpasses knowledge” (Eph. 3:19).

2. Daily, we should relish in our future favor with God. We put on hope like a battle helmet (1 Thess. 5:8). We cling to it like an anchor (Heb. 6:18-19). We choose to be joyful in our hope (Rom. 12:12).

3. We should prayerfully apply our hope to our greatest weaknesses and sins. As our conscience convicts us, we should look at each sin as something out of step with our ultimate hope. 

It is this hope that inspires us to “be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain” (1 Cor. 15:58).

Reflection

• Write out a definition of grace in your own words. How does it apply to pornography?
• What’s one way you can practice living in grace today?