(fear of flying)

A message to the listener -

Dear Reader...

To start off this exposition
I will refuse to attempt to be didactic, super spiritual, flaky, or religious
By any means, type, sort, or function
Because I'm lacking the vernacular to adequately capture
His immaculate stature, and His love for Mary Magdalene
But still i grab this torch, and use His word like a lit match
And then attempt

To make an accurate depiction of His Majesty...

But let's go back a bit
So I can relate, and expose my heart's true conditions 
My marriage to the soul killer, eloping with Religion
I practiced righteousness with consistency in being didactic
But convinced the lost and hurting

With my actions

To go play in some bad traffic
I've received knowledge from Gnostic's
And gotten ‘Words of Wisdom’ from Prophets
But lived my natural life as a spiritual amateur - equivalent to a novice
Shaken hands with dope dealers
While striking pose's in the club
Making out with chicks i just met - that were lit off prescription drugs
Was listless towards the Body of Believers
And hated Christianity
Breathing threats of disdainment
Poking fun and using profanity
Ready to put my father in the hospital
For overly neglecting my immediate family
For trying to hurt my mother
I blocked out everything that he was saying to me
I've licked my lips to the satisfaction
Off of women in scantily clad clothing
Nude women from just right to plus size
Images lead me to self-groping
Was hurt by the lies my Pastor told me
More specifically, what he didn't say
I blamed him for the fact that i had gone astray
I've been woken up by demonic spirits
Holding my body down like death holds a person in a casket
Hand over my mouth like a tight mask - it's
So hard to breathe, and my heart would pump feverishly drastic
And the laughter of this lame called 'shame'
Would haunt me for days after the arrest
Had never met him, but i knew him before he came
My identity has been a misconstrued - dismantled - an overly trampled version
Of a zombie type, emotionless - disgruntled dangerous, cage-less animal
I've boiled over more times than a neglected tea kettle
And popped off like Latifa in the 'set it off girls' while winning a gold metal
Justified my actions while using the excuse of being practical and pragmatic
But been a stench in the nostrils of God giving off the aroma of bad cabbage
Wasted money on things that i can't even tell you where they now are
Having to scrape my life up off the ground after being run over by a car

I've question every relationship that I've ever possibly had
Including the most prolific one - between the Father God - i call Him dad
And He used to call me son
Until I was seduced by His antagonist
I married His arch rival
Having psychological intercourse with all her lavishes
Her tone of being prone to invincibility
And freedom from being vulnerable
Was tempting enough for me to pack my stuff up
Saying 'I'm going home with you!'
She called me away from sound leadership
Showing me that I didn't need any spiritual guidance
That I could trust her knowledge of self - and she would be my protector, 
My provider...
Taught me how to be rhetorical and polished
Re-introduced me unknown tongues
Told me I'll never let you go my love
So on her truth I hung
She confirmed my hearts cries and justified my insecurities
And helped me hide my true nature, selling a definite cure for me
Blinded me to immutable facts about the origin of beauty, goodness, the Nature of God's Love, the truth's that operating outside of what the 'anti-Agape' church walls does
I was dependent on her, and followed her hip twist like a home sick puppy
But in the end, it was God's saving power that only allowed her to merely cut me
Trust me, she was going for the kill like the bride pursued bill
And hit pressure points on my judgment until i fell down ill
And the pain of defeat and betrayal lied adjacent to my bed
As she walked back and forth over my still body not sure if i was dead
In my comatose, i was spiritually gritting my teeth 
While gripping the sheets
At a loss for reality
Daily and nightly
I couldn't sleep
I tossed and tumbled
Would rise and mumble
Like driving through a jungle on speed
Listening to Cambria and Coheed
But then God spoke a promise of trust...
It was Jesus or return early to the dust
And i was exhausted from the play fighting like Knuck if you Buck

And with everything in me, i got up clothed in various apparel and strangled my enemy
Mangled her face like a thousand bee stings or poisonous sea anemone
I beat religion with the only weapon i use that's partnered with love
It's hard like a fierce shove but gentle a white dove
It's faith in action

Also known as trust....

Truly and terrific 
Top of the line 
Terror to top dog's with dollars signs
Is the truth of the time
That's toppling over the subconscious mind
Take caution, and timidly
Think before you take immediate action
'Cause truth tip-toe's on the tomb 
The entrance to your hearts tavern

Revolutionarily rigorous
Right when you needed a raunchy reading
A rope-a-dope with Paul Oakenfold
That's telling you to slow your role preceding
Readily respective
Running the course
Regardless of what your used to too
Is this group of 'really rough and tough guys'
That's bringing you the good news!

Unconstrained from undermining
The untold stories of the ubiquitous
While unrelenting to understand this unity
Hoping that you get with this
Uncontrollable chaos 
Mixed with unfailing love
Understood stance of your position
With the Lord in the Heavens up above

Stories of laughter, 
And stepping stones to serious divine interventions
Saying I love you again
Being unhindered by vicarious scripture mentions
A sap to swell love songs
Circling the circumference of the Son of Man
Setting your seat sideways and saddled up
Soaking up the Presence of God on the Sabbath again

Telling all tales topical
Relating to those in tip top shape
To turn around for once
And seek to give with nothing to take
No longer tribal over trivial matters
Tripping over the stumbling block
'Cause my hearts been tattooed in Tatuine
Traveling to His lot and then stopped….

So I invite you in formally, to divorce any form or shred of what you know to be religion
And come into a place where you abandon your current trust system

The fact of the matter is that your normal way of living has lead you to a place where you’ve been stumbling and tripping

Slipping away down the slippery slope of the so called ‘American Dream’

You’ve tasted a piece of the cake of self-preservation

Indulged in the devil’s pie

The favorite desert for those of us who think that we know what we want, much less need, out of life

But only end up lying on hospital beds with hearts full of strife

My invitation is for you to go beyond intellectual breakthrough

And encounter the God who beautifully and wonderfully made you

The God that has only one righteous requirement for right standing

And that’s to trust Him totally leaning not on your own understanding

If you’re looking for lasting substance to trust

Then you’ve came to the right place

‘Cause my God prepared for you a home in His kingdom, and to you He’ll never turn away His face

He’s brought to you a glorious story, in sending His Son to experience dying

So that you’d be free…

From the (fear of flying.)

“But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” 2 Corinthians 12:9-10

“When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory. “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting? “The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.  But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain. 1 Corinthians 15:54-58

.s.incer.e. (88)

-The Dissertation-

I want you to understand something. The Fr3edom in Five is not an internet ploy to try and manufacture my own version of Christianity to the world, while I secretly plan my preemptive strikes to mentalities and perspectives on FB by artistically drowning my opponents with rhetoric and heavy opinion. In other words, I’m not a closet Christian afraid to talk about real life issues! And I don’t hide behind the internet to place my claims, or even validate them. Honestly, I think that the internet, if used wrongly, is a giant sea of useless information that doesn’t really get interpreted correctly, much less taught in honesty. It’s a waste of time to be honest with you. You have to really hunt now a days to find the facts online because there’s so much information posted every second that you’d have to be something like a Rhodes Scholar or a Jewish Scribe just to filter out the nonsense.

I’m writing you this as a letter to your soul or even an invitation to your heart and mind, and it’s taken 5 projects to really develop the nuts and bolts of the message but I thank God that throughout the time allotted, I’ve learned even more about myself than I ever could have thought that I could’ve learned in the time span of 2 years. And the more I’ve learned about myself, the more that I’ve been exposed by the bible and by the Holy Spirit of how much that I really need a Savior, and how I wasn’t made to do anything, ANYTHING alone, much less apart from God. From my issues with Codependency, Loneliness, Pornography, and Fear, one could, and would be very well accurate in assuming that I could have been a rape victim. In actuality, those are key emotional responses and mental strongholds for those that have been raped before; some other emotions include outbursts of anger, depression, and self-hatred. But the truth is I haven’t been physically raped by any person. Actually I’m still a virgin, and I’m proud to say that I’ve kept myself for the woman whom I plan to marry and call my own next summer =) And I’m stupid in love with her! So even sex I haven’t experienced in the physical sense. The truth is, me like many other men today, have dealt with rape in a much different sense. The kind of rape I’m referring to is being molested by illegitimate affections that you have no outlet or safety net to fall on so that you can deal with them properly. We live in a time where the powers that be have created a system by design, that subjects men and women to their internal struggles and perversions; in fact it’s often times exploited and used for profit(the pornography industry). The world today is kept afloat by random needs wants and desires that have no bearing, no justification, no substance, sometimes even no consequence. We live in a world, that literally lives by the motto “do what thou wilt, this shall be the whole of the law…” A. Crowley –

And this is exactly what we do; we live as if the only thing that matters is our preservation of self, but the reality is that we can’t fool ourselves into thinking that our true nature doesn’t exist. The truth is, we are still unhappy, still envious of the things that other people have, still unsatisfied with what life gives us or has dealt to us, still mad at our parents, still rebellious against any ideas or factions of true genuine freedom, and ultimately, still deeply rooted in our obsession to the fact that we seemingly HATE everything that there is to do with God, Christ Jesus, and His church. So much so that we live our lives hating and antagonizing any form of organization, truth, standard, or regulation; because it’s all falsely made and has no real effect on society nor has it shaped who we are and where we are today; nor will it do so. See, this is the shallow world of atheism that is usually the foundation of the New Age movement and its spiritual connectivity to any and everything that looks like it has or will transcend this dying world to a better form of living, thinking and existing. But yet even when we get to this place….we still aren’t happy with ourselves and we either want more, or we reject what we have and look for something else…

 The Church of Jesus Christ Of Latter-Day Saints tell me that I’m not holy enough to be welcomed into their temple, freely, but yet their founder and 1^st prophet was a conniving, two faced, wanted man for fraud for most of his entire life, so why should I even want to go into their temple to have my family get baptized and cleaned from their sins and go to their version of Heaven when the man that made their faith possible today is as wicked as I have been? Is he really holy? If so, why didn’t anybody else think so that was on the outside looking in? Why didn’t he look like Charles Finney who lived during Smith’s life span? Why did they look so different, but apparently, preached about the same Jesus? The Hindus tell me that if I don’t make it into heaven with my good works by keeping up with the karmas, that I’ve wasted my life trying to accomplish, that I’ll come back to the earth being reincarnated as some animal, insect or both, but isn’t that a curse, to continue on in this endless cycle coming back to life as another being because I’m still not or never did, do anything right in the eyes of the Gods? The same goes with Mormons, why should I work my way into a place that can’t exist but yet, your book talks about one day reaching, but your book can’t even get known history right, but yet it has this great revelation that I need to get ahold of? What are you really saying? Or do you not have an answer for that either? Or even Buddhists, you’re really going to tell me that a temple monk was raised from the dead during his funeral, seemingly on his own, and had been dead for over a week, and he comes back to life having had a revelation of hell shown to him by Jesus, and Jesus tells him to go back and preach the Gospel, and he does so, leading many Buddhist monks to Christ, but your government quickly suppresses this truth because it’s a communist nation? And hates Christianity? In fact, they deny this story's validity altogether, but why lie about something like that? Are they ashamed that their heritage might be compromised because of this true God-Like encounter in which they had no control over or reason for occuring?

The list goes on but I want you to see that no matter what you may have been told, all roads DO NOT lead to God. The bible tells us that there is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end of it is corruption and death. And today we are desensitized into accepting so many forms of truth; all the while we are also managing life and filtering it through the lenses of experience, having not experienced life at all the way that we were meant to. Slowly but surely, we are being grinded down to be comfortable and more and more comfortable with what’s going on around us, while our lives are being stolen away from us one idea at a time. And truthfully, we really can’t do anything about with our current state of mind. Our minds have to be changed, but first our hearts have to be reconstructed again. And the only way that this can happen is with God doing the work to us that makes us look like what we were intended to be. And friends this is the Gospel message. Our current lives have been raped, molested, and utterly assaulted on every level and only leaving room enough to look normal on the outside, while the inside looks like decay.

Men are sexually assaulted in their perspectives and that causes them to sexually assault other women as well as other men, with no regard for their conscious. Once a man’s conscious is seared, it’s only a matter of time before he is over taken by his passions and desires for more. It’s a terrible travesty but that’s sadly only one example in the 1,000+ that I could give to you that goes on every single day, right under our noses, and practically no one can do a single thing to reverse these causes and effects or prevent them from happening again.

-The Fr3edom in Five-

I want to say a few things about this book that might surprise you but that’s an ok thing right!? =) This project came out of time spent with the Lord after repenting of hidden sin in my heart that was unyeilded to God; and since then, the 4 issues I wrote about were what God revealed to me to really let Him deal with and for me to face. I always had a problem with hidden sin in my life. Partly because of my personality, I dealt with things in an inward self-destructive way growing up. It was really easy for me to feel left out of most circles, because I didn’t understand what it meant to assertively be yourself. I felt like being myself was sitting there and being quiet and letting everyone else live their lives while I recorded them in my memory bank and reported to them all of the details later. So as a friend, I felt more like a tape recorder for people rather than someone that people could and would really count on for love in their life. It was a lonely road and a stereotypically long road traveled as I would carry this mentality into important issues that I would face later in my life. When I really got honest and bare naked with God after I had truly repented of my sins in 2009, He really revealed to me things about myself that I thought that I gave to Him years prior. It’s almost as if I was living life because I had come back to Him and repented that the story was a wrap and I was free to figure everything else out on my own now. Sadly, I was only beginning my new life with Him, but I let offense drift me away from the work that He started to do in me. So 2011 rolled around and God really wrecked me the first night I was in bible school. One of the pastors preached a message that hinged on kids dealing with issues with their parents, and almost immediately did the Holy Spirit hit me right in the chest. When I moved from Panama City to Tampa, I was at ought against both my parents but my dad mainly received most of my anguish. I didn’t really deal with it properly because I already had a few offenses in my heart to begin with, so by the time that I heard this message, it was as if God had been trying to talk to me for 2 years or more and I kept hardening my heart towards what He was trying to tell me. He revealed to me that I wasn’t saved for myself and if I ever wanted to see the life of God manifest in the earth, I would have to learn how to die so that another person could live. I was so broken because I found myself looking like a Pharisee in motive and intent and I couldn’t do anything about it. I was supposed to be seeing miracles in my family’s life, but I didn’t because of how much of a spiritual brat I was towards the people that I thought should know better. But the fact was that even if they didn’t, I had a responsibility to continue to walk in the Love of God that was establishing my faith and trust in Him. It’s such an easy concept to grasp when your heart is in the right place, but when it isn’t, you’d rather chew bricks or arm wrestle with an elephant that listen to someone tell you that you’re heart isn’t right, especially when it truly isn’t.

And that was the truth behind the heart of the matter that I was dealing with; no matter how much I would try to justify my actions to myself knowing my own intentions, I was still filthy because of my attitude toward the people around me. It was easy for me to walk out of love with people because I wasn’t walking in love in the first place in my relationship with God. When I didn’t get the affirmation that I needed from the Lord, there was little to no affirmation that I had to give to the people around me. Love works like a cycle, and I was out of the loop; which is why the issue in my heart had suchers in them although they needed heavier bandages. My scars didn’t have what they needed to heal, so it wasn’t too long until the problems of life struck me in my healing wounds, only to expose them prematurely, causing them to not only bleed again, but begin to develop infection. So to make it simple, apart from all of the medical diction – lol – I had issues in my heart that didn’t heal, and when life struck, my makeshift bandages burst at the seams, and I went into a hurtful process of going back into a depression which lead me back to pornography…

When I was convicted and delivered from my sin, the Lord really broke me down and boiled me down to my roots and exposed places in my heart that I kept hidden and others I just never thought that I needed freedom from. The list is as follows: 1 – Codependency 2-Lonliness 3-Pornography 4-Fear; all of which gripped me for a very long time until the day that I gave myself to be made brand new by God. From there, The 5 books and beat tapes have been catered and developed with each theme in mind concluded with the fact that among all of these personal vices, the God who has saved me has proven His track record for salvation to me, by personally rescuing me from a life of hate, malice and envy. No one can take that fact from me! I’ve felt the freedom of forgiveness myself and the entire foundation of the Fr3edom in Five project is just that, there exists an undefeated God who has taken away all of my pain, and my shame and turned my sorrow into joy and with that being said I will praise Him forever more, for He is good!

-Fear = Universal Mind Control-

This could be the most intimate chapter of all five books and I may have said that before but I’m really serious saying that about this. It’s intimate in the sense of highlighting ideas and concepts that we live by but never really expose in a way that makes us vulnerable and truly open. I’ve been pretty intimate about my past life but I’m aiming to be intimate in regards to things that we all think is true but really aren’t in the least bit. I want to start off by making a statement that God spoke to me some time ago in prayer. I was asking Him about life and asking why do we deal with the things that we do on such a large scale with no outlet. I wanted Him to show me what keeps people at bay, even when the truth is staring them right in the face. And He spoke to me one word…fear. Fear is universal mind control on every front, in every capacity and any place that you see it in action; and it will stop at nothing to rule, conquer and dichotomize mankind from his Creator. Fear, when used to its full potential, will restrain even the strongest of antagonists, bringing him to his knees. We see it throughout all of history; the Roman’s used crucifixion as a warning sign against all who might oppose the government or law in place. They would leave the bodies on the crosses that they hung on, at the edge of the city limits so that before you walked into the city, you’d see people dead or dying on a cross. This was a symbol to keep people from even breathing hints of opposition in secret or in public. The Catholic Church during it’s more violent tenure was no different; when the crown was challenged, men like Guy Fawkes, that disobeyed or went against social order would be hanged, drawn and quartered when found guilty of a heinous crime. As this too was made a spectacle for the general public; sometime fear tactics would be used on an individual basis by men and women alike. A man named Vlad the Impaler, whom we get the general story of Count Dracula from, was arguable one of the wickedest men known throughout European history. The man was accounted for hating the disabled, poor and needy and elderly of his time and devised a plot to rid the country of these types of people. He was accounted for inviting a great number of them to his house and feeding them a most lavish meal and honoring them. At the end of the dinner, he would ask them who wants to live the most fulfilled life? The would response to him accordingly, and Vlad would seemingly grant there wish for them in a seductive way by ordering all of the doors to be blocked and the windows to be locked only to set the entire estate on fire while he watched them burn and scream in agony as not a single soul escaped the flames. He is also known for impaling some 100’s of men and women on wooden stakes and left them scattered on his lawn to strick fear in the hearts of those that would come and try to deal with him. Those are just some of the stories of real life events in recorded history. There are so many that are fictional, and it’s intent and purpose to, no matter what way you look at it, conjure up the  hidden anguishes inside of us and make them a reality.

In modern day society, fear is such a common thing that people grip with that to live without it, people will almost fight to stay confined, and restricted by their fears. That’s when we’ve have truly fallen away from God’s intended purpose for our lives friends; God never designed for us to be ruled by fear much less in agreement with it. There used to be a time to where the media would pump out the social standard to men and women to help them raise their families and lead them into the right direction for their lives. Sadly, that time doesn’t exist anymore. The media isn’t working with the family anymore; it’s working to tear it apart. And it’s being torn apart by men that with every generation, become more and more Godless, and turn further and further away from the truth that really establishes a legacy. But among all of this trouble, we’re taught that this stuff is normal. It’s normal for us to live like this. Live like what? Afraid to do more than just speak out about it but to live above it? That’s the real challenge. To do more than just recognize the need for something to change, but to really change it.

You gotta understand something that by default, it’s in us to naturally be afraid of the things that we don’t understand. I believe that at one point, that was the reason why some would agree with not teaching certain things about history or only making it available at a higher learning. The scary thing is, that by the time that the individual gets to the age of a young adult, the questions that they could have asked by now, they won’t ask, because they don’t care about the world around them. And who can really blame them? We are the generation of having parents who aren’t honest with themselves and then they punish us for doing the same thing and wonder why we reject what they say. It’s serious because fear produces fear, intentionally or not, it’s a deadly cycle that marks a person for failure before they even begin to live out their lives. My dad once told me that one thing that he always wanted from his dad was to really love him and to show it to him the right way because he didn’t show him that when he was a kid. Instead, my dad was raised being instilled to be afraid of the world around him that during that time, was controlled by an ever-increasing manipulation that the white man ruled the ground that black people walked on. If he did, he would have to pay the consequences that followed for challenging the ‘status quo’. That kind of fear was beat into the generation of parents that lived through Emmitt Teal, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, John F. Kennedy’s and MLK’s assassinations. That time period is the period that raised our parents and some of our grandparents. And because of the fear manufactured by different groups and social orders, the majority of people white and black grew up feeling disconnected, discontent, distraught and even hating the opposite race, simply because they exist in a frame of life that is new to or foreign to them. Again, no matter what circumstances, we tend to hate the things that we don’t understand; and powerful, wicked men see this and amplify it to create space to rule out their secret agendas that if exposed would show them for what they really are – opportunists. These men subject society to its perversion and doesn’t offer us a way out because to get us out would jeopardize their plans to fulfill their greed, envy, and other vices that serve as matters of the heart.

So in essence fear is used to manipulate people to do things that they don’t know any better to do the opposite of. Aren’t you supposed to fully trust the people that serve as your leaders? Don’t they make the way plain to you rather than expose your motives and make you pay for your own indulgences while they charge you interest in the background? I’m not trying to get too political but I’m really trying to show you what happens every single day across the globe, especially and most consistently in our backyard of the world. We are dumbed down to think that if anyone thinks like this, they’re full of it and needs to calm down and stop reading into the same mistakes that every is likely to make if they too had a position of power. So you can call me a whistle blower because it’s true. I’m not mad per say at the U.S. Government, I’m disappointed in the fact that they are selling themselves out in secrecy and all the while trying to convince us that the same country that our four-fathers discovered, fought for and died for exists today. Because no matter what way you look at it, that’s a lie; we are NOT the country that we used to be, nor do we with integrity live up to the Constitution like we once did. Freedom costs you everything now and life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are been molested and turned into the so called ‘American Dream’ where space, time and conundrums create the definition of it. So of course we live in fear, because we really don’t know what’s going on around us, but we’re too comfortable with all that we have currently. So back to my first point, we won’t do anything about it, because this is what normal looks like…but my question is are we really happy with what’s normal? What is normal? Or even better yet…”What is truth?” -Pontius Pilate

-“For God tests the righteous…”-

I have two people in mind that I always look up to so much when I’m dealing with my own personal fear. The first One is Martin Luther King Jr. and the second is the Old Testament man of faith of whom God worked some of the most miraculous and monumental things ever recorded in History; his name is Moses. Without getting too much involved in these two men and their backgrounds, I want to highlight the fact that both lived FILLED to the top, with faith, total reliance and divine optimism in God. The amazing thing is, that both walks with God were first confronted with and had to overcome… yep you guessed it… (fear). Moses killed a man and fled into the desert in hiding for years, and even after God Himself handpicked Moses to go back to Egypt and to tell the Pharaoh to let the people of God out of bondage, Moses still was unsure of himself and his abilities; but yet and still, God still used him mightily to work out some of the greatest exploits of the bible recorded. Even today scientist and historian alike marvel at trying to find proof, evidence and document that show case God’s glory in our seen world. Martin Luther King was no different. He lived under death threats for almost his entire tenure of a minister, much less as a civil right movement leader; and this included his family as well. He was put into jail wrongfully, and lived under scorn and mocking for his entire time in serving God. But yet, he would one day be revealed as one of the greatest men in American History. Both men had to face the fear that so easily grips society, but notice how if they would have been succumb to their fears and anguishes, they would have never been the men that we know them for today. Think about that; without the opposition of fear in general, the men and women that have risen above it would never have anything to be remembered for or even respected for conquering. Not our early presidents, not even a single person in the bible would be who they are unless they conquered their fear and rose above what was seen by all to be singled out by their faith – that’s what allows you to conquer.

The truth is that God tests the righteous and the wick man God leaves him alone to pretty much do his own will. The men and women that want to escape the fire, to escape the trouble, escape the hard time will never receive what the eyes of faith were made to attain – and that’s true freedom. People who stood for something throughout history, many times, never received it in their life time; including Moses and MLK both. Moses didn’t even get to go into the Promised Land, he just saw it from a distance, but the people of God did. And the same was with MLK. African Americans received civil liberties only subsequent of  his death. And that’s sometimes the price of freedom. But to live a life above fear is what I want to highlight for you to see. Because that’s how the road for these types of men even existed. And that’s the premise of this entire exposition, to allow you to be free from what holds you back from ultimately seeing God; because if we’re scared about when our next pair of shoes is going to come in, we’ve been defeated before we even started.

So the question becomes why even have faith? What’s the point of positioning yourself to ‘believe’ in something outside of you? So you can follow in tradition with everyone else that calls themself spiritual or something to that extent? To not be left out of something? Understand this – before I gave my heart to the Lord, I used to struggle with being able to relate to people because I hadn’t had a ‘bad story’ to relate to someone else and tell them about myself to show them how far I had come. I felt like I had to do something really bad or have come from a really terrible place in life in order to win their conscience or even have them give me the time of day to talk to them about Jesus. I felt so bad about it because I never did drugs, never drank, never smoked weed, never raped a girl, never had a baby out of wedlock, never had sex, never been sent to jail, never stole from the convenient store or anything like that. This came to be one of the reasons why I would struggle with porn – because I felt like I had to have something for me to be able to relate to with the people that I was going to be ministering too. Even though what I was doing was wrong, and I knew it was wrong at time, I felt like I had something to relate about with people because of my self-induced struggle. That’s how deep the bondage of fear can take you. It will take you to a place that you’ll convince yourself that you’re free, only to find that you’re in even worse bondage that you were before you found a form of truth. And I was afraid still; I was afraid of God and still afraid of the people that needed me to be free so that I could free them; because I couldn’t minister freedom to people when I myself was in eternal bondage.

You can’t fly with weights on your feet, you won’t even leave off of the ground; and your fear will tell you that this is what flying looks like to you, you’re just different. The truth is you ARE different, BUT you need the same requirement as everyone else does, to really live a life above the poison of fear. And more than I want for people to be stimulated in their mind about a good topic, I want them to be released from their world view about the Gospel message and opened up into a world that God designed especially for them to live, move and freely have their being in Christ Jesus! That’s what faith awards for you! It awards for you the liberty to not live for yourself anymore; it empowers you to live for something else bigger than yourself that matters eternally! Something that lasts, something that has purpose and meaning! Never were you meant to sleep your days away while you scoot by your college courses only to graduate thinking what’s next? Or why did I even enroll in the first place? You weren’t made to marry just any old person because you’re so sick and tired of being lonely. That’s not your calling! I’m telling you today that your calling was to be trapped into an everlasting cycle of love that frees even your grandparents from the religiousness and prejudices that they’ve never confronted and dealt with. God uses the weak things of the world to confound the wise and He uses a faith filled man and woman to work out His eternal purpose in the earth. In fact, faith is the necessary requirement to please God and to gain His reward =) that’s freedom friends. You don’t have to scale a mountain with your bare feet, keep up with your karma markings, baptize yourself on behalf of your other family members, or even come up with a rigorous program to kill your flesh so that God will be pleased with your sacrifice…These things will create a crutch in your relationship with God and rob you of being free to love God, and from that Love, live out His will for your life! If all of this verbiage is new to you, I want to be the first one to introduce to you the true Historical, Authentic, Holy, and Righteous God that has embodied himself as flesh in the person of Jesus Christ and invite you to give your life to Him totally! Stop waiting on a religious movement of many people to happen and ask Him to show Himself to you! I believe that the very fact that you’ve even read this entire composition is because you know that you need something real and something that isn’t misleading or even compromised. Sadly, my life hasn’t given you the best example to live by. By living and dying internally in secrecy. But I pray that among seeing my short-comings that you’ll see how Christ’s power has rested upon my life, freeing me from the bondages of not being good enough, or smart enough. He empowered me to live for Him and to forsake all forms of fear!

-Closing Remarks-

I've been getting such a tremendous download of a revelation on the love of God and on God's purpose for man in the earth, lately; and for me not to share anything about what's going on would be beyond terrible manners for me but it would be eternally disconcerting to not brag about God while I have the chance to today ;) The first thing I would like to say is that God, throughout scripture and by His very nature, desires to have you in His arms and in His company! I was reminded of a passage of scripture in Psalms 24:1 - "The earth is the Lord’s, and all its fullness,
The world and those who dwell therein." Really the whole chapter is worth reading but I wanna really pull on this scripture for a bit and tell you that God, from the foundations of the world, willfully choose you to be inside His mighty plan for salvation; because it isn't His will that any man should perish but that all should come BACK to Him through repentance. (1 Peter 1:20-21 and 2 Peter 3:9) From the beginning of time God had it established in Himself to see to it personally that NOTHING would separate us from the love of God, and that love safe guards our hearts. (Romans 8:38-39) And that's just a few examples for Gods plan for mankind! Jesus came to fulfill the law and the prophets and His commandment to us was to love the Lord God will all that is within you and the subsequent commandment was equated to it, to love your neighbor as you also love yourself. (Matthew 22:37-40) Jesus also told us that no greater love has any man that this, that he should lay down his life for his friends. (John 15:11-17) And the famous staple scripture for everyone is that God so loved the world that he gave His only begotten son that who should ever believe in Him should not perish but rather have everlasting life. (John 3:16-17) Jesus also said to us that man can't live by just merely eating bread alone to sustain his life, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. (Matthew 4:4)

So a great display of infinite affection and wisdom has been shown to us in this example shown, God has never stopped and will continue to resist anything that gets in His way to attain the life of His children. It's like God had a no child left behind mentality before there was ever reason to be so protective over us. The bible tells us that He had a plan for us from the beginning of known time and space and He has never relented in seeing to it that our every need in this life and in the next would be taken care of. I'm telling you that this stuff never gets old to me, because I'm learning on my own, aspects of the God Man Christ Jesus that were never taught to me. I mean Jesus is so filled with the perpetual expression and power of God that it blows my mind to even attempt to comprehend what all that He done for me in light of eternity; much less what it all means. I've found that God has specific instruction for every man according to the power and the needs, but the ultimate purpose and intention for all of mankind is to shine the light of the Son of God Jesus Christ that is best represented in the Gospel message that He gave. God wants us and He is zealous for us! Jealous even! And He will stop at nothing to reach us and empower us where we're at!

I'm floored because Jesus tells us that the things of this world are not too terribly important to God because it all belongs to Him ultimately; but what is important is what's IN the earth. And that's us friends, me and you. (Luke 12:22-23) And so God will stop at nothing for you, because Jesus recognizes that YOU are the most important thing to Him. That's why it was easy for Him to give His life up in exchange for yours and mine, so that God would turn His wrath against the things that have separated us from Him, and allow us to freely walk into His forgiveness and into His way of living life. His intentions aren't to steal from us but to empower us to empower someone else with the Good News of God. No man is excluded and no man is condemned in God's court, but rather every man is freely justified by Jesus. The only condition is that we put our faith in His saving knowledge and live our lives in recognition and response to this truth so that no man can boast about doing anything better than another. God is good and He wants your soul to be filled with the fruit of righteousness that you don't have to do anything to earn, you just simply receive it by putting your faith in the finished work of the Cross of Christ and let Him change you; rather than the ideas of man and the misconceptions of religion.

If there's anything that I want you to get from this is that God has never been against you, you were made to take His name and creatively pan it across the sky showing all that God is our all in all and that the enemy and his cohorts can't and won't ever do anything to change that! Would you stop just merely reading this work and decide to choose life today? Would you stop playing church or doing your religious responsibilities or even carrying on traditions long, enough to get honest with God today? It's not good enough to just read this and agree with it unless you've made that decision before. I challenge you to choose life today by asking Him into your life and let Him change the way that you view Him, yourself and the people around you. Release your fear to fly by choosing to walk by faith, and live the way you were intended to live your life, under the umbrella of true truth that he has your entire world in the palm of His hands.

Marcus Christopher Hollinger
freed, from the fear of flying.

.s.incer.e. (88)

.u.ndefeate.d.

.s.incer.e. (88) presents…

*undefeated*

“Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.” St. Augustine

Fight the good fight of faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses. 1 Timothy 6:12

Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.

Clive Staples Lewis

“If I have never mourned over my waywardness, then I have no solid room for rejoicing.” F.W. Grant

This Good News tells us how God makes us right in his sight. This is accomplished from start to finish by faith. As the Scriptures say. “It is through faith that a righteous person has life.” Romans 1:17

“Find it, somewhere in your soul, the last bit of strength that will take ya on home, just find it, somewhere in your heart, to put the past in the past and go back to the start…” Propaganda

“No one can please God without Faith. Whoever goes to God must believe that He exists and that He rewards those that seek Him.” Hebrews 11:6 God’s Word Translation

“What is oxygen to the lungs; such is hope to the meaning of life.” Emil Brunner

“I have learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.” Nelson Mandela

“Effort and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.” John F. Kennedy

“We serve God whether people honor us or despise us, whether they slander us or praise us. We are honest, but they call us imposters. We are ignored, even though we are well known. We live close to death, but we are still alive. We have been beaten, but we have not been killed. Our hearts ache, but we always have joy. We are poor, but we give spiritual riches to others. We own nothing, and yet we have everything.” 2 Corinthians 6:8-10

Introduction...

            Being the fourth installment of my freedom in 5 project, it’s truly to God’s honor and reverence to His love that I have the grace to present to you these bodies of work. The whole story isn’t possible without the Lord Jesus reconciling my soul and covering me with His blood. He’s brought me though 5 major heart issues in my life; and every one of them is extremely different but all of them play off of each other in a cumulative style, telling the story of God’s redemptive power in my personal and social life. The funny thing is that I had no clue that the s.incer.e (88) work would take this kind of turn. At all. Honestly, I thought that I would be making music and producing composition for numerous artists at will from 2010 onward. Writing was going to be something that I did in silence; but God has a way of turning things into a wonderful heavenly picture that my eyes couldn’t all the way see when I first got the unction and vision to do music. See Ecclesiastes 3:11 and you’ll understand what I mean. It’s been four years since I really got serious about what I would do with the things that God put on my heart in the area of music and I’m so glad that God has put me in this time, with this message and this current work to do. I really never would have made it without the grace of God. I would have never made it unless I had Jesus interceding to the throne of God for my soul to be captured by His love again. Because without that biblical fact, my life was left in shambles with no hope, no salvation, no change, and no love. But the fact is there is a greater power that runs deeper than any chain of defeat that you have experienced in your life. There is a greater working force in the earth today, that can change your current circumstance and lead to you a place to where you experience the most fulfilling joy that you’ve ever tasted in your life. There is a God who loves you and has a life story of triumph that will last throughout the sands of time and historical facts, if you allow your heart to listen to His call. He calls for the broken hearted; He calls for the one’s in need of a miracle in their life; He calls for the molested; He calls for the spiritually morbid; he calls for the Pharisee’s and the Prodigals; He calls for the one who thinks that they have everything that they could ever possibly want in life; He calls for you…

The most prolific undefeated story in known history is the story of the triune God (who is the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit) and what He has done for mankind, in response to God’s creation severing the relationship that God had with man. It’s literally the Gospel as told by the men and woman of the Hebrew Old Testament Bible and the Greek New Testament Bible and how that revealed truth of God that was lived out in their lives, how that relates to the rest of  mankind, today. And maybe somewhere in there, I’ll blow God up in my personal life as well. But mostly I want to highlight God’s story, to the world…

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you the motivation behind the testimony of my salvation and millions of others throughout secular and sacred history. I give to you God’s Story, the Salvation Plan, and the blue print of worldwide reconciliation:

The Gospel Story, that we will call today…

u.ndefeate.d

The Undisputed Champion

2 Timothy 2:13 – “If we are unfaithful, he remains faithful because he cannot be untrue to himself.”

The most amazing story ever to be told or listened to is always a story of triumph. You can ask any girl or guy alike, stories that have a struggle towards attaining a great victory, that is bigger than the protagonist, is a story worth telling again and again and again! No matter who’s acting in it or who’s not acting in it, the quality of the body of work is what brings the listener in to the subject matter and holds us firm to its truth, at the heart level. This is especially true with movies that are based on a true story or based on true events. Because there’s something about knowing that this actually happened that hit home with us. Like for example, when I watched the HBO series ‘Band of Brothers’ I was astonished on how real Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg depicted the events of World War II. They did such a good job in accurately portraying that time of world history, that I felt as if I was there with the soldiers. I read about the atrocities but seeing it was a whole different story. But the fact that I felt like I was living in a time of history that had pasted amazed me, I gave me a deeper sense of worth for my country and the men that have been fighting for the freedom of this nation that I didn’t have before. But ultimately we know the story; the U.S. flooded the beaches of Normandy and ultimately joined with the allied forces to win the battle against Nazi Germany.

My goal with this project that I’d pinned the name ‘undefeated’ is to do something very different than the past three chapters in this book. Undefeated, is a close look into the greatest story ever told. That story is the story of God’s redemption of mankind. God’s story goes back so far in time you need the bible, historical accounts and Jewish Culture and Heritage to really grasp the essence of the story in its entirety. But honestly, I wanted to paint the biblical picture of the power of God’s Love as seen throughout secular and sacred history.

The bible tells us that God is Love and everything that He does, mandates, and allows comes from the source of His love for His people and His creation. No matter if you are reading from the Old Testament portion of the bible or the New Testament, everything that He does comes from the source of His love for His people. The sad thing is, because of sin, God has been given a terrible identity marker. The sinner doesn’t know God for His love, the mistaken every move and action of God as retribution, vindication, hate, malice and even evil in some religious circles. But until you understand the Heart of God, you’ll continue to misappropriate God’s actions and deem Him as unfair or unloving; because God is love so He must by his nature, love. The amazing part about God’s love is that His love is the very factor that has given Him the undisputed champion award for all time to be in a league of His own to be called ‘Undefeated’….

“But to you who are willing to listen, I say, love your enemies! Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who hurt you. If someone slaps you on one cheek, offer the other cheek also. If someone demands your coat, offer your shirt also. Give to anyone who asks; and when things are taken away from you, don’t try to get them back. Do to others as you would like them to do to you. “If you love only those who love you, why should you get credit for that? Even sinners love those who love them! And if you do good only to those who do good to you, why should you get credit? Even sinners do that much! And if you lend money only to those who can repay you, why should you get credit? Even sinners will lend to other sinners for a full return. “Love your enemies! Do good to them. Lend to them without expecting to be repaid. Then your reward from heaven will be very great, and you will truly be acting as children of the Most High, for he is kind to those who are unthankful and wicked. You must be compassionate, just as your Father is compassionate.”

Luke 6:27-36

In the Beginning

            As far as the Bible tells us about God’s beginning, God has always existed. The bible tells us nothing of a big bang, no primordial soup, no God coming from another galaxy to make His habitation on earth, or God being some witch doctor that decided to manifest Himself as an unseen being. The bible shows us that as far as we are concerned, He existed, and then He developed a reality, life, time and space for us in His own time, under His own rules and with His very own hands. The beautiful part about this was that He created us for one primary purpose, for relationship and to make His name great! We weren’t made for sin, evil deeds, to waste time, to make up life for ourselves and by ourselves; NO! We were made to fulfill God’s destiny and purpose for the earth which He created in 6 days. God breathed life into man’s lungs after He formed him form the soil of the ground. He even put man into a garden with the perfect climate to have his life sustained in. he supplied man with all of the food that he would possibly need. He gave man dominion and power over the newly created world. He gave man responsibility to define the rest of God’s creation of life (animals). He even gave man a helper to assist him in day to day affairs and to keep him from being alone. Man was created perfect, not missing anything to live the life that God created. And God being love, was well pleased not only with the world, but what was in the world too.

            As the story goes, a wild card was thrown to create a stumbling block for man. The wild card was a fallen angel that had lost his rights and privileges in heaven because of his conspiracy to over taken God’s kingdom with wicked intentions and the like. The fallen angel once called Lucifer and now Satan, would continue his never ceasing plot to pervert, manipulate, and ultimately destroy God’s work and to resurrect his own form of creation; death. I truly believe that death was never an option for anything in God’s court until it stood in the way of God being God. And Satan is the High Priest of antagonists’ in our story. Satan would take on the form of an animal, but an unusual animal to deceive Mankind into falling into the same deception that Lucifer was under before he was casted out away from God’s sight. Satan would go on to attack Man’s help meet and trick them both into taking part of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil; this would be the very tree that God told them never to touch. For its fruit would cause them to die. Only knowing good, man and woman didn’t know that the death God meant was to be eternally separated from Him. The nature that he gave them was a pure clean slate that knew no sin or disobedience, because God was their source of everything. Nevertheless, Satan attacked the thoughts life and the consciousnesses of mankind and deceiving them into thinking that God was holding something out from them that they really wanted. The trap was a devastating blow on so many accounts; because now sin had entered into the world, Satan took his place as forerunner for the fight against God and the attack against God’s creation, and now mankind was separated from God and forced to live life apart from the life under God’s umbrella. The biblical definition for this terrible day is called the curse and later the Apostle Paul puts it ‘the law of sin and death’. This day was such a sad day for God because He didn’t intend on man living his life apart from his Creator. Not only that, the only other place that His creation could be was separated from Him because God made him to forever dwell with Him. But once His rules were questioned and violated God had to still be God, and as much as God is love He is also Just and as much as God is Loving and Just, He is also Holy. God finds the two hiding and He questioned them for their fear of Him. They tell Him that they were naked and afraid, and immediately God locates the source of their fear of Him. He finds out that they have taken part of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, and because he gave dominion to man over the things of this world, including Satan, He must by default judge man according to the standard from which he fell from. The thing that hard to understand is that God truly put man in such a sacred place and position with Him that he couldn’t deal with it lightly. Man was completely different that anything that God has ever created. Even the angels marvel at the actions of man because mankind doesn’t react the same way. Man has a will, man has emotions, feelings, and a special plan and assignment from God that nothing else in His creation had, and the angels were astonished by God’s work. So when God had to turn away from mankind and banish them from the parameters of God, God didn’t do it casually and with no remorse for feelings, He did it unhappy and heart broken, because man was made for relationship with God; and now that couldn’t happen anymore because of committed sin against God. God then takes animals, kills them, and puts the skin of the animals on man to cover them from their nakedness and to warm them since their journey would take them away from God’s perfect climate. Thus the first sacrifice for sin was done in the Garden of Eden after man sinned.

            You have to picture God’s heart being broken and how he never intended for man to be on the other end of the stick for God’s judgment against sin; man was always supposed to be in heavens court and jury for any affair. But now, with sin in the world, God held man responsible for God’s dis-involvement with His creation. Surely, surely…there must be a way to restore order in God’s court, and to bring restoration to the relationship between God and man…

                                   

The Road to Redemption

            “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned— (For until the law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who had not sinned according to the likeness of the transgression of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come.” Romans 5:12-14

            See there had to be a mediator who was flawless in every way, to restore balance back to the relationship between God and man. One who would not only satisfy God’s righteous requirement for sin, but could also replicate the human condition to help mankind understand the Love of God. The only one who could stand in this place was Jesus Christ. The bible tells us that He is fully God, and truly man at the same time. He feels like we feel, he cries like we cry, He hurts like we hurt; He can touch, taste, smell, hear and reason like we can. In fact the bible tells us that He was alive and present at the beginning of this day and age that we live in. So Jesus saw us in glory and saw us in our sinful state before God, and decided to let himself be the sacrificial lamb as propitiation for sin. The amazing thing is once Jesus decided to give up his life on the earth for us, the devil plans of ruling and reigning on the earth were brought to a halt. You see, originally, Satan had planned to deceive mankind again, and tricking us into killing our savior and thus defeating God in a game of cloak and dagger. But Satan never could really get it right when it came to defeating God; he kept forgetting that God was the creator of everything and He couldn’t be swindled or dooped. So man ultimately would kill Jesus with the motivation of basically hating God and His righteousness. Secular history as well as Biblical account would go on to tell us that Jesus after suffering a criminals death as instituted by the religious establishment of the day (Judaism – The Hebrews) would raise from the dead and dwell among living people and being seen by over 500 hundred eye witnesses, some of which knew him and others could simply recognize His face. This testimony was so powerful because Jesus is the first and the last living person to awake from His own grave in His own strength. No one else has done that before or since. Once Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection took place, the requirement for sin committed was eternally satisfied and thus the way back to the Father God was reestablished through the saving grace that’s found in Christ Jesus’ shed blood and the message of the Gospel. Jesus would go down in history as a man that consumed Himself so that other people could live and not die. And He did this before the company of heaven and earth proving His love for His people and His obedience to His Father. And that’s how God defeated the cancer that cripples us from seeing Him clearly and being with Him without anything hindering us from doing so. Jesus died to bring us back to the exact same relationship that Adam and Eve fell from in the Garden of Eden, and He did so by defeating the odds of misinterpretation, and the human nature of mankind. Man couldn’t save Himself, but in man’s weakness that God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob would blow His definitive strike against sin, saving man, and proving to be the undisputed champion of recorded history by giving His entire being to rescue the lost and to exalt the humble. This is the Gospel Story and this is the declaration of the living eternal God and His story of triumph over pressing tragedy only to win and to prove Himself to be in a league of His own, but only wanting to share the spoils with His children. God is - .u.defeate.d.

The Savior Who Reigns

(.verse 1.)
See I'm lacking the vernacular
To adequately capture
His immaculate stature
And His love for Mary Magdalene
But still i grab this torch
And use His word as a lit match and then
Attempt to make an accurate depiction of His majesty

I'm glad it's He
That created the sun, moon, and stars
Who made a choice
That's actually
Broken these chains and melted these bars
Of religion and trepidation
Self-Righteousness
The bed of Satan
Instead of waiting
He struck both sides of my mattress
With a mere statement
Remodeled the whole house
And made the cornerstone Christ Jesus
Evaluated my situation
And gave me the word that Paul spoke to the Galatians And the Ephesians....

Concerning the fruits of the spirit
Christian conduct and a life of worship
Why He died on my behalf
And my life to be in His surplus
He disrupted my circus
With a verse of true controversy
and said 'Nobody fears God..'
In listening it started to hurt me
Urking and Lurking in my hearts file cabinets and archives
Was the never ending truth
Of the Symphony of Heaven
HALLELUJAH!
OUR GOD'S ALIVE!
He's alive and iridescent
Undisputable and irrefutable
Fully suitable to fit work
In a hard heart that seems un-do-able
I got a passion in the Son of Man
And a passion in His words
Passion that burns for His hands to grasp
My hearts every turn
And twist
And He remains anonymous
But I know him by His gift
For he greeted me with a kiss
And with obedience I'll honor Him.

(.hook.)
All praise to the name
Of the Savior who reigns
He's taken our blame
And embraced all our shame
He's raised from the grave
So His fame we proclaim
Salvation by grace
Through faith in His name!

(.verse 2.)
The most prolific martyr
The who (who's) dwelling in unapproachable light
The God man Jesus Christ
His mandate repent and follow:
The steps of the elect
And wear His words on your chest and neck
Denounce the sin
And to lawlessness
Forever be vexed
His words holy and perfect
And His breathe like summer winds
He's the blessing without the cursing
And the one who's coming again!

He's kinda like
Dy-na-mite
The messiah TYPE A
And ain't chemical concoction
reciprocating His Holy name!
He's the lime-light of Heaven
And the laminin of the Galaxy
He's suspending the earth
By the sound of His voice
But He close enough to say that He's proud of me
SO I'LL SAY IT LOUD
JESUS!
THAT'S RIGHT I SAID IT
JESUS!
J-E-S.U.S
The best
Alpha and Omega
His touches leads to cardiac arrest
Captivating the inner mane
while putting a hold on bodily functions
Freezing time to purge iniquity
From every submitting and willing persons
with an iron rod
He's sworn to bash the face of wicked mischievousness spirits
But at the same time
He blesses your soul...
Speaking to you via the Fathers Sacred and Holy lyrics...

(.hook.)
(.repeat.)
(.fin.)

The Pornography Project

.s.incer.e. (88) presents:

The Pornography Project

“And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history—money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery—the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.”

Clive Staples Lewis – ‘Mere Christianity’

There is a great difference between what we define as Joy and what we define as Happiness. To be happy, is an emotional state of satisfaction, that’s subject and constant with an occurring circumstance or idea. For instance, I can always look forward to the Holidays because of all of the wonderful gifts I have the opportunity to receive and give, the music, the culture, I get to see my family, I love the scent of pine trees and Apple-Cinnamon candles and the like. The Christmas season makes me feel happy! And you can tell that it’s my favorite time of the year! Why? Because I know such much about it? Not necessarily; I just know, explicitly how it makes me feel, whether or not I know the details of its Pagan roots or not. But never the less, I can look forward to the Holidays bringing me cheer, not because I hate the rest of the calendar year, but because this time is special to me, and I can look forward to being happy during this time of year because of my invested emotion into it! See Joy is the opposite in a way. Joy makes consistent the feelings and excitement that an action of happiness brings. It remains when there no reason or evidence to be happy. It’s based upon truth and an inward decision rather than an outward ‘deal’. Joy is connected and constant with faith, because it counts an idea and a perspective as rightly esteemed, inwardly, when there is no proof to be so in the natural. And the emotions that follow are honestly contagious!

So here’s the dilemma…

Humanity (men and women alike, without any exceptions between the two) are seeking to find a way to be happy or satisfied with the life that they are living. We try to find it through social acceptance, religion, moral responsibility, civic duty, or even recreational activities. The sad thing is that these and many other things only satisfy us for a short period of time, before the feelings that they bring begin to fade away as our activities and investments seem to fade away with time and age. They bring happiness to us because of the instant and direct affirmation that these things make room for in our hearts, to ultimately remain valid. It’s as if we are trying to compare ourselves among ourselves and hope to have our answers in what we can see, feel and relate to. Truth be told, that we find some, but never the answer to the ultimate question down this road. With all of these possible trails, it brings me great joy to expose my personal past trail today, to you. I took a road to fill empty spots in my life, and that road was pornography…

A road filled with heart ache, trepidation, confusion, psychological negligence, self-hatred, suicidal thoughts, malice and anger. A road that our sons and daughters may find themselves down if we don’t begin to do anything about it….

(selah)

I want to dedicate this project to more than just raising awareness about the many internal perils of pornography, the truth behind industry, and the like. But I want to go deeper than that. I want you to understand that (porn) isn’t the problem. It’s what we do in expression, excess, exploitation, or even misunderstanding of something else deeper. But porn is a direct reflection of a broken heart, a reprobate mind and a confused soul.

There are some terms that we’re going to define and stick to throughout this project.

The first one is exploitation…

Exploitation - [ek-sploi-tey-shuhn]: use or utilization, especially for profit.

We’re gonna skinny dip (no pun intended - lol) into this study and find out the truth behind the motives of the (once secret now not constrained at all) San Fernado Valley (the epicenter for most US pornography production) and the entire pornography industry. We’re also going to look at the effects of what the industry has enabled and facilitated to porn stars, and the viewers of pornography from yesterday and now. Biblically, we’re also going to go head to head with the identity and the misinformation that the media has fed to men and women, to tell them what they should accept as truth about themselves and about their sexuality.

Adult Entertainment – aka – ‘sex industry’: The commercial enterprises related to sale or purchase of sex-related services, ranging from individual ‘workers’ in prostitution to the pornographic end of the entertainment industry.

Thesis Statement

Please understand this. I encourage you that if you’re skeptical about any of this, you hate Christians, you hate the bible, you hate God and you hate the things of God; I challenge you to this; Let your guard down when diving into this exposition, because if you’re a real skeptic, you’ll give me a chance to prove something to you before you reject it. This isn’t another ‘Christian approach’ to battle Ron Jeremy’s work in secret and facilitate a way to have my own opinions shown to whoever I want to influence; nor is it a stab at ‘adult entertainment’ – whatever that even means. I’m seriously a young man that almost lost his personal and social life because of his misguided decision making earlier in his life. And you know what; I don’t even blame anybody for it. I truthfully can’t. It’s not fair to you and it doesn’t help me with anything that I want to talk to you about. But we will do this. We will break down the culture… past, present and future; and we will look at a pattern of thinking that has been developed to make people assume things about themselves that are often times true, but often times false as well. The culture is a powerful, real time, never ending, always changing concept and truth that dictates the pace of our lives, the things we deem good, and pressures in doing a lot of things that we don’t even want to do. The crazy thing is, without culture, we couldn’t grow and thrive the way that we were intended to do. How do you change the way people think? You infiltrate the culture with the right ‘teachers and leaders’ to carry out the message. See, when you have the right people who have the needed influence over weaker wills, you are granted a power to say what you want to say and do what you want to do. We see this in the music industry. An artist is elevated to such a degree that everything that comes out of their mouth is a good as gold. They are seen everywhere you go; and because of the lack of loving, honest parents, the children grow up and completely leave the tutelage of their parents behind them. Most the time it’s when they haven’t even got the learners permit yet…

It’s sad but it’s true. We live in a time to where because of a song on the radio; you have to be ‘carded’ just to buy cough medicine now. COUGH SYRUP. There are some countries that are so full of nonsense that they have passed laws to allow the husbands and wives with dead spouses to be enabled to have sex with their spouses in the last hours of the body’s physical living clock. The state of Utah is known as being one of the greatest consuming states of pornography in all of the other 50, and yet it’s also known as a mecca, if you will, for a prominent religious establishment that used to publically appreciate and encourage within the religion, polygamy. The United States, alone, makes more than 13 billion dollars off of pornography a year (I wonder how much of that can start going towards our financial deficit…) These few among many others are things that whether we like it or not, define our society. They teach things to kids that they can’t rightly know how to deal with. In fact, because of plan to break up homes in America, the society is forced to be the child’s first and main teacher throughout all of their natural life. Where have we missed it to where a music artist can give an interview on PBS for 60 minutes and a child develop almost half of the outlook on life based upon this guy’s quickly manufactured ideology?

I’m going to sound old-school with this suggestion and mandate, but we got to and must change the nature of the contemporary culture. The society has turned into a vicious cycle of generational curses that never amount to bringing any good for anybody. It’s just selfish practices of self-preservation and randomly throwing heaping amounts of moral responsibility on people with the hope that they ‘just get it’ as they grow older.

Where are the fruit filled mothers at?

Where are the true fathers full of the Love of God hiding?

What happened to having solid big brothers and sisters that can reinforce the teaching of the parents?

When did it become the media’s responsibility to raise our kids?

When is a society going to raise up men and women that love themselves enough to show others how to love too?

Biblical Love – the love that requires us to lay down our lives for our friends and to seek the betterment of someone else’s needs before ourselves.

Last thing….

In this project remember this one simple African (Nigerian) Proverb, “ it takes a whole village, to raise a child…”

Follow me as we indulge into my most intimate project yet…

The pornography project…

My Childhood…

I was born at Gulf Coast Hospital in Panama City, Florida July 5^th 1988 to Walter and Diane Hollinger. To my memory, according to what my parents have told me, because my dad had to work the night shift, he couldn’t be present with my mom when I was born. Lol. I believe that my mom said that he was asleep at the house when I was born and the hospital had to call him and wake him up to tell him that I was born =) I’ve remembered some really interesting things in the early part of my life. I remember a time where I was walking in a hallway, I fell down and my mom and my sister stood there and laughed at me because I was a baby trying to learn how to walk. I remember staying up late with my dad watching Johnny Carson and eating fudge pops when I was a toddler. Aside from those few, I don’t remember much before the age of seven. It wasn’t until my mom, my sister, and I moved in with my grandmother (my mom’s mom) that I really started to develop a sense of time and a concept of reality. Sadly, during this time my father was absent from my life. I didn’t know why this happened then, but he was absent because he was dealing with a drug problem that flooded into his married life and thus the life of his family. The time leading up until this breaking point was spent with my mom and dad dealing with extra marital affairs: most of which came down to the fact that my dad never came to the place where he knew that he needed a savior. He and mom both were for the most part raised around church and religion and basically knowing that there was a God who’s watching what we do and keeping us from harm. What they didn’t act on was the fact that he wanted their hearts more than anything else. And with my dad not ever knowing who he was in Christ, he was forced to live his life being a law unto himself, knowingly or unknowingly. The lack that he received in his upbringing is the same that flooded into my upbringing, because no one knew anything better or how to initiate a lasting change. And because his dad wasn’t sure about things in himself, neither could my dad. See, men need to be affirmed as being men; our wives can only do so much for affirmation in our lives. But there’s something about a man that you respect a lot, who tells you that you are a MAN. Because once you hear it, that’s all it takes for guys to ‘get it’. As men it’s important that you receive this from you father, because if you don’t, you’re literally living for a word that will never meet expectations apart from Gods divine order and structure. But this is the reason why men struggle now today. It’s right for us to lead and to be lead also. It’s right for men to want to give and to pour out into their wives and children, because it’s good for him to and if it’s in love, no one has to tell him that it’s his ‘responsibility’ to do so. There’s something about being called a man that tells you that you don’t have to assume anything about the nature of who you are, because I see who you are.

And because my dad didn’t get this, I was defaulted to receive that same exact thing. And I did. Whether or not he wanted this for me, it happens to young men if we don’t do anything about it in our son’s early lives. As I grew up without his teaching and affirmation, I couldn’t see how this kind of negligence would affect me until later in my life. When I was living with my grandmother, my mom was starting to assume two roles, being a type of father and mother for me and my sister. I remember getting beat up a few times after school, and I also remember being afraid all of the time. For no reason. I hated to sleep in the dark because I always thought that someone was going to come and snatch me up. My sister used to make me watch scary movies just so she could watch me get upset and cry (lol). I couldn’t make solid friends because I was so shy and afraid of being emotionally exposed. But more than anything, I lacked a validation that would give me the basic strength I needed to be strong and courageous in life, just like Moses told Joshua and Caleb before he left them to govern The Children of Israel. So for about 2 years, I lived dad-less while my mom was fighting to keep her family alive and fighting for her husband to come back home. From there we moved around a couple of times, as my dad was dealing with health complications, lack of finances, but more than anything, his excessive drug usage.

As a child, most every issue that I’ve ever experienced has not been dealt with until many years later in my life and to an extent, it’s been the deciding factor of many relationships that I’ve had. Because of my personality, it was very difficult to bring out what was on the inside of me. I would keep things hidden because I was scared of being hurt but at the same time I’d keep things in because I was scared of hurting someone else who was already in hurt. So my hurts and pains were silent bullets and daggers that continually pierced my heart at will. These feelings and assumptions were my first thoughts, ideas and concepts that I can remember developing. I hated myself so much but could never really explain why. At the end of this time, my dad moved back into my life and moved my mom and sister into an apartment in front of my new Elementary School called ‘Parker’ and the realities of the life and the secrets of the heart, for the first time in my life, came to fruition…

The Dream that You gave to me…

In the middle of the 1990 decade, having my dad back in my life gave me two main things to accept. One we were no longer in the hood and I didn’t have to feel like I was living like a second class citizen anymore. I had resources now because my dad had a stupid tight job now and the rent was so much cheaper than the previous mortgages we had. But secondly, I had to accept the fact that I really didn’t know who my dad was. I wanted to know him more, and in fact, he bought me the world and offered me as much as he could to show me that he wasn’t going to let me live life alone and forgotten anymore. He bought me so many toys, games, snacks, clothes, and everything else that you could imagine that a child would want to have to be happy. But I would find out that I was being called to something bigger than my sad feelings. One night, I was asleep on the top bunk of my blue bed. My sister slept on the bottom mattress with her daughter and I slept on the top because I was close to the air-conditioning duct – (I love cold weather!) But truthfully the smaller bed was on top. It was very early in the morning, 2-3am to be exact, and I was awaken by what I’ve come to know as being the Holy Spirit, or the mouth piece of God in Heaven. Sleeping on my stomach, I found myself awake and starting straight ahead of me with my gaze falling on a man dressed in a white tunic of some sort, standing outside of the sliding glass door of our back porch. He had a gold cord around his waist and his face was recognizable like a man’s but glowed too much for me to make out any real details of his facial features. As I looked at him my body was arrested to the bed and I couldn’t move a muscle, all I could do was watch as he walked towards my bedroom. He appeared from the back door and began to walk extremely careful and patient towards me, as if he was walking on coals. The closer he got, the more afraid I was getting because I hadn’t ever experienced anything like this before. Yet, in my trepidation, I felt something warm in my chest that was fighting against my fear almost trying to win a war inside of my heart. As he got closer, his light got brighter and brighter. Finally when he got close enough, I regained some control over myself, and hid under my covers terrified that the man would take me away from my house. With my eyes glued closed, hands over my ears, and curled up in a ball I laid in place not moving and wanting the man to leave me alone. Without warning, I began to hear music, singing and what I’ve come to know as prayer all at once. I can remember in my head, seeing the earth, and seeing what looked like a vortex of blue color, sort of like a swirling cloud, extending from the earth and going up higher and higher beyond what the human eye could see. I saw musical notes in this vortex and I also saw words from many different languages. The next thing I remember I was being forced to wake up by my toddler aged niece telling me that ‘grandma just made pancakes!’ lol it’s crazy but true. In fact, throughout my life, less than 10 times, I’ve had that same vision as a dream and a memory, but never like when it first happened. That was the first time that God had ever, to my knowledge, called for my attention, and I wouldn’t see this time again for nearly 10 years…

The Seed

That dream/vision was held somewhere around the time of my 7-8 years of age. The funny thing was almost immediately after that, my mom plugged the family into a ministry that would be my church home for the next 12 years! But aside from that life would start to take a dramatic twist, as we dealt with family issues that would split up my sister from us, allow my parents to entertain the thought of divorce, encourage my dad to get back on drugs, dare my mom to give into the pressures of another person’s failures, and be unresolved matters of my heart that has taken years to locate and eviscerate. ..

We moved from our apartment into a nicer home, and just like the last place, we picked up where we left off at with finances. There were even more this time! I can’t tell you how many times Christmas was good to me. Even just random Saturdays! I was pretty much given what I wanted again, but this time, I was getting old enough to start learning responsibility, value, and hard work. I remember days to where I pulled a lawn mower around and got money for cutting grass. My mom made me clean my own bathroom, and my room, and made me take good care of my dog as well. So all in all, it was a good time and a better opportunity for my parents to raise me and feel like there was an established family atmosphere to keep doing so. Even though my sister was coming back around, and trying to get her life back together after the death of her baby’s daddy, we were attempting to rekindle past love investments and structures. It was as if we were, despite all of our weaknesses and frailties, trying to still function somewhat as a family. The day we got our Compaq Presario, things were changing. It was the first that our family had ever had. Somehow, we had dodged the hype of this technology by waiting 10 years, but it was well worth the wait. My mom could continue her work at the house, I could learn school stuff to keep me educated when school was not in session and my dad could relax knowing that he could have the tv all to himself throughout the day – lol. On a random summer weekend the wall would come crashing on me. I was using the computer one day and I decided to go on the internet to search around and see what the hype was about. To this day I don’t know how it happened, but I ran across a pop up advertisement of a half-naked chick that turned out to be a continuous pop up which we would come to know as being a computer virus. The pop up got more involved and had fully nude photos of women in little, to no clothing at all. Like any 9 year old boy, I panicked, because I didn’t want my parents to think that I was willfully looking at this stuff. My heart was beating 50,000 times a minute as a felt a burning feeling in my chest that something was terribly wrong; It’s as if my innocence was for the first time in my life, had it first indulgence of being taken away from me. I got into so much trouble for it and my parents were very disappointed in me, but I hadn’t initiated anything, nor had a premeditated to do this. But yet, I was punished greatly for it without any explanation or teaching of what to do right about it...

Sometime later, I was at my friend Cory’s house. We were thick as thieves, and loved to draw, play video games, and watch music videos. It was his 12^th birthday party and I was the last friend over at his house, the only one allowed to stay the night and we had a blast. We played super smash brothers until 11pm and enjoyed a cold December night on a Friday. After playing video games, we watched the music awards show to thaw out after our video gaming; Cory leaned over to me and asked me if I wanted to see something other than N’SYNC sing and dance to ‘It’s Gonna Be Me’. My natural 10-11 year old curiosity was totally up for it so I entertained his gesture. He walked me over to the other side of the house, and instantly I felt horrible; because when I was at Cory’s house, everything on the right side past his bedroom was off limits. Those quarters were the guest rooms, the office, the washing and dryer room and his parent’s bedroom. When we past his room I knew that something was wrong because if he wasn’t allowed back here I knew that I wasn’t. Reluctantly, I went along with him anyway. He took me to his parents room, and then to their bathroom. He turned around and looked at me and said to try and keep this under your hat. He reached in between the nicely folded towels over the toilet and pulled out a pornography magazine. My heart dropped into the pit of my stomach and my mouth started getting dry. As he turned from page to page, I was watching and looking at things that my mind wasn’t ever prepared for. In fact, when my first opportunity presented itself, I was rebuked for even having these feelings to begin with. No one talked to me about anything; I was just told how bad I was and how wrong I was for being caught in this act. But as bad as I felt, I was curious still, even though I knew that something in me was being forfeited and other things were dying in me as each page turned….

I left his house feeling awkward the next day because I did something wrong but I didn’t know how to go about correcting it. I needed some guidance but sorely lacked to find any. So like any other kid with parents that assume that a smiling kid that makes good grades and doesn’t bring home parent alerts is basically alright, I had to muffle my inward groans as a fight began to ensue on the inside of me; a fight against what was born of God and what was being manufactured out of my negligent situation…

Thorns and Thistles

From here it began, my natural want to be with another woman that was being overwhelmed by the thoughts of my codependency. Middle school was like most kids, such a pointless and confusing time. It’s the time where kids develop their first senses of self, reality, and many more things. Usually it’s when sex, drugs, alcohol, money, status and things that make this world go round, begin to bombard the thought life of the ones affected. I had crush after crush after crush, but because of how I thought of myself, I wouldn’t dare EVER bring myself into the light of another woman and tell her how I felt about her. I couldn’t ever do it. I was the kid that sat at the back of the class and went home feeling worse about himself than when he woke up that morning. I was a candidate for suicide before I knew what it meant. And pretty much all of Junior High was as such, made fun of for being fat, poor self-image, no confidence, broken family life; I mean you name it, and I had it. But once High School came around everything began to change; some for good and some for worse. My first girlfriend was in the 9^th grade. We met at youth group and we were really good friends. I really liked her, and I felt pressure to ask her to be my girlfriend many times but never really mustered up the strength to ask. To my knowledge I asked her and she said yes. So naturally, I felt good right!? My first girlfriend ever! I only saw her at church, I couldn’t buy her anything or give her anything or see her outside of church service, but I still enjoyed our long talks on the phone and sitting by her in church. As time went by, I found out that she was cheating on me, and me being the hopeless romantic that I was at the time, I refused to believe it. Sadly, I was wrong; she had been seeing another guy for almost the entire length of our relationship which was a few short months (3-4) I was so devastated, because not only did her decision reinforce how I already thought of myself, which was being worthless, but I lost my first best friend. My second girlfriend was the next school year and like the first, I met her at youth group. She was formally the best girl friend of my previous girlfriend and at the time, and used the situation to get with me while I was emotionally listless. She was my first kiss and the first person to make me feel like I was special. But eventually, just like the girl before, the relationship ended in less than a year with the same outcome, infidelity. What was so wrong with me? Why doesn’t anyone really love me? Am I really not good enough to meet someone’s needs? Because the world is so good at making me feel like the only identity I’ll ever have, will be a statistic…

And thoughts like these I held quietly in my head as I grew in my High School life, I was known as the quiet nice kid to pretty much everyone who knew me, but not a single soul knew the conflict that I had in my heart. My third girlfriend was in the 11^th grade and she was a chore and a half during our relationship. I felt like everything I did for her was to be strong on her behalf. She was arguably the most emotionally unstable person that I’ve ever met in my entire life, and every day, I had to pick up the pieces of her life for her to show her that everything was going to be ok, while I put it all back together. It was crazy, because her brokenness made me reason that I had purpose in life, for once. For once it felt like someone really needed something from me to live out the rest of their life with. It felt like someone was dependent on me and someone relied on my strength and my know how to finish whatever they were facing. I felt like a giant and I felt invincible! Until we had to part ways…Before we dated, I heard the voice of God tell me not to ask her out. I was spooked by it because one, I didn’t know that God talked to people that weren’t pastors and two because even if He did say it, what’s wrong with asking your good friend to go to the next level in y’alls relationship? Sadly, this carnal deduction was a mistake that cost me in more ways than one. Dealing with the guilt of this word, I struggled to keep a smile aaallllll yearlong during my junior year of high school, but I couldn’t ever shake what I felt. Literally, I felt basically ok, but I was dealing with my first conviction of God for the entire length of our relationship, to break up with her. In fact, everytime she would freak out and I would try to put everything back together for her, a little something in me would die because I didn’t know why I was doing all of these things for her; especially since she never gave anything back to me in return. In an attempt to save her feelings and to satisfy this burden on my chest, I broke it off with her and explained to her why we couldn’t be together anymore. She completely went ballistic on me and ruined many friendships that I had, cussed me out on several occasions, and even deemed me as her reason for giving up on what she knew to be God. That summer of 2005, I never felt more broken in my life, because once again, the world was begging me to accept the fact that I was a mistake and not worth anything to anybody. I felt like trash and attempted to drop out of life. I went loose cannon for a while and started seeing a girl that was a few years younger than me. It was sad because I couldn’t see anything clearly during this time, I wanted to play basketball and go to college for sports medicine, but inwardly I didn’t care about much of anything anymore. I was mad at the world and had a lifelong list full of complaints and no one to tell em to. The worst part of this time of my life, was dealing with my eyes. I had no guards on them. So much so, that I was given a terrible vision one night. I remember dealing with secret lust issues and waking up to dreams in the middle of the night arrested to my bed by an inexpressible spiritual rock or solid sheet, pushing me against my bed, locking me into place and not being able to move. No matter what I did to get free, I couldn’t move. I even used to have visions of dark figures circling my bed, and whispering back and forth between each other during this time. One night in particular, I remember having a vision to where every girl that I ever lusted after in High School, stood outside of my bedroom door, and in a single file line, they all came into my room and sexually molested me as I was strapped to my bed void of any opportunity to leave or make them stop. I believe it was God’s way of showing me where my life would end up if I wouldn’t listen to Him. He was trying to show me where my inward passions were leading me if I didn’t change. But at the time, I didn’t understand what was really going on with me. The only thing I had to live for was basketball at the time. It was the only thing that seemed to put into me what I put into it. I wanted to be with girls but they didn’t want anything from me apart from what I could do for them, and I didn’t know how to handle it all. From 8^th grade to 12^th playing ball was the antidote for my soul scars. That is, until the caller blessed the called, faithfully again, on a late afternoon in August of 2005. I was playing basketball outside of my house and running my shooting drills as normal. This day was especially interesting because I missed literally every shot and lay-up that I put up to the basket. I was so frustrated with myself, because some of the easiest shots for me were as if I was learning how to shoot all over again. After an angry hour long practice, I heard what I now know as God voice telling me to ‘put down the ball and pursue my face.’ Which means what exactly? I’m out here working on a dream to leave my life in Panama City behind and eventually join the NBA only to hear that I need to basically stop playing ball? I struggled and wrestled and kicked and moaned and complained and continued my spree of missing shots. Irate, I kicked my basketball as hard as I could. I went back inside and just sat on the edge of my bed so mad at myself. I later got in contact with my then praise and worship leader but soon to be spiritual mother, and told her what I had experienced. She without haste, told me to listen and to do what God was telling me to do. I was so frustrated and confused because I felt like I was losing everything before I had even started my life, but I would later find out that I was gaining everything…

A New Life

I asked God what would He have me to do, and He simply said the same thing again. Feeling my nature of trepidation and confusion rise up in me and dominate my thoughts, I reluctantly got my head somewhat clear and attempted to go to my basketball coach and tell him that I was quitting basketball. He, like the jerk that he was at the time, cussed me out and told me that I was making a huge mistake. I left his office and went to the bathroom and cried. What was I created for I wondered, am I good for anything, to anybody? Will I ever have and find worth in anyone’s eyes? Will I ever find purpose? Will the ultimate question ever be answered?

I was so alone and so confused and even more lost than I had ever been. Because it feels like God’s playing with me…

Months later at the turn of the year, my church that had been going through a terrible split, started having what I now know as revival services again. It had been almost a decade since we last had meetings like these. Only thing was, it only happened at the youth services! Night after night, it seemed like something was going on in the church, but only in the hearts of the kids. I personally felt the presence of God for the first time in these meetings. I found myself arrested to the floor numerous times crying out for God to heal my 10 yearlong broken heart and for him to fix it again. And in this time I sought after a new hope and a new life that would forever change the way I viewed God, the people around me but also, who I was and why I was created…

For almost a year and some change I learned what it meant to live for God. I learned how to make sense of everything that I was unsure about by going to the word. I fell in love with the Book of Proverbs and the Book of Psalms. I even started learning what was really wrong with me and why I couldn’t love women the way that I was intended to love them. I decided to let God be the guidance of my relationship life and to stop chasing a cute face and a girl that wants attention. God introduced to me in this time to a girl of whom spiritually, wanted the same things from God that I wanted. We were friends and strictly friends, we didn’t hang out any place, never kissed, and I respected her and her walk with God. She was the youth pastor’s daughter and I kept that to high regard as I prayed and waited patiently for the Lord to tell me what to do next with her. My theological bubble would be soon be dealt a punishing burst without warning, as the 6 year church split finally hit its climax In 2007. My entire youth staff was asked to step down and the head pastor rebuked the youth for doing too much in church. We all handled it horribly and honestly in rebellion, we kinda functioned as a spiritual law unto ourselves as we fought for ‘the things of God’ still being under our pastor’s care. The youth pastor’s daughter took the most dramatic turn for the worst and started dating a guy, in private, who was known for objectifying women, and she totally walked out of my life for about two years. I was so hurt, because I thought that I was waiting for her. Like waiting to be with her, and I thought that she was waiting for me too. But I was wrong. So in quiet bitterness, I finally left the church after being a member after 12 long years. It was the straw that broke the camels back for me then, and I just couldn’t take any more of the hurt, confusion, lies, even the religious obligations to keep a cool head about everything that was going on. I started going to my friends youth group shortly after only to find that a lot of people were involved with things that had so much red tape around it. From emotionalism, to living ambiguous lives, to gossip and secrecy, I mean you name it. Then in February of 2008, I officially gave up on God and walked away from the things of God, so mad at Him for not helping me. The sad thing was, I was never honest enough with myself about the fact that I truly needed a savior to rescue me from my most formidable opponent…myself…

The Pornography Portal

Angry at myself for being a perpetual relationship failure, a casualty of the church, a type of a wayward son, a lonesome loser, a dreamless young boy, and a person void of identity, I started a 12-15 month process of actively and perpetually watching pornography on the internet. I started it first off, because it was free to do it; second off, nobody was gonna ever find out, and because nobody cares enough about me anyway, what does it really matter? I mean the girls I’ve been with never showed me any worth so far so what’s the point? I justified my feelings and tucked my heart away, closing it down. I hid what I really felt and lived the way that I wanted to live. My time involved in pornography lead to a very reckless outlook on life, which would provide for me the opportunity to start going to the club and hooking up with girls while I lied to myself saying that I’m basically ok. I remember thinking that God doesn’t care so why should I? Even as far as to say, these girls don’t care, so why should I? The sad thing was my initial fear of being a statistic only got amplified when I gave into this pressure. But I was in secrecy none the less. I hid my porn searches on the internet and learned how to cover my tracks my clearing out the Google searches, only watching when my parents weren’t home. It was true bondage, because once I would hear the garage door open, my heart would be instantly convicted and I would carry on as if nothing was happening to me. These were lonely months too, because I was searching so much for a road to make myself happy, but I couldn’t. I really never wanted to watch pornography to begin with. Never had any intention to; I wanted to naturally be with a woman and to desire just one, but I kept feeling like not a single one desired me…

And I developed a complex about myself and about women that killed my inward soul and ruined the way that I thought about myself. I was a mistake and a failure and not a single person could convince me otherwise. I would never be good enough. Never be strong enough, never be handsome enough, never be a good leader, never be a good father, never be back with God; because my worth was equated to nothing. And that’s the perspective of many people involved in pursuing these things and being the actors of it. The people involved in the pornography business are some of the worst drug addicts, suicidal, murderous, poor perspectived and lost individuals in the earth. And it’s sad but true to say that porn isn’t their problem. Having illicit sex isn’t their problem. Not keeping their zipper up, their mouths shut, their hands still isn’t the problem. It never has been and never will be. People don’t get it that, like they do with other addictions; it’s the fruit of something else. People don’t smoke because their bored, they smoke because it’s an attempt to soothe something in their soul that only Christ can do. People don’t drink because it’s good for their health; they drink because they want to wash away the thoughts that so extremely on a regular basis haunt them and plague them of being self-conscious and socially awkward. And people don’t watch porn because they’re curious, they’re watching it because there is a void on the inside of them that runs deeper than poor upbringing, it’s all about self-image. Porn literally deals with the way that you see yourself and the people around you and your interpretation of life, especially your love life, as a whole…

And that’s exactly what my stumbling block was, even though I thought to myself as being a decent guy who meant no harm to anyone, the enemy took my personality, my family situation, my lack of identity; and mixed it with another plan aside from God’s and made his attempt to take me out in a slow grueling process of slipping away from what was Godly and turning my heart to what would lead to death…

On a random Sunday morning in August of 2008 I woke up at about 1130 feeling like a got hit by a car. I was out all night the night before and got home at about 3 or 4 in the morning from Spinnaker Beach Club. Everything in me hurt as I was coughing up blood clots, shaking cold in the middle of summer, I was dehydrated, and I had a splitting headache every time I took a step to get out of bed. I was throwing up as well and I had no clue what was wrong with me. I didn’t ever drink or smoke nor did I do any drugs (over the counter or illegal) but never the less, I was in bad shape for about 2 weeks. I passed out at work 3 times during this sickness and I didn’t know what to do because I had such a good immune system. One night on my bed, God’s voice woke me up saying that my physical body was a picture of what my spirit looked like. And he was trying to get me to see what I was doing. Like a punk, I ignored what He was saying. Eventually I got better and school started. One of my friends Ashley, on a random day introduced to me a friend from her job that I instantly had a crush on. It was mainly because I thought that she was cute. I added her on myspace and started actively trying to hang out with her. Eventually she would surprise me and shake the hell that was in my heart, right out of my body. We never dated, never did anything, she resisted my every attempt, but what she did do was preach to me. But she did it in a way that I never knew was possible, she loved me the way God did. She was always telling me why God created me, and that He had a specific purpose and plan for my life that I couldn’t see right now because I was still hurt from the past. I was so mad, because I felt like in a few months, some random chick just read my mail and then had the audacity to leave town for New York afterwards. Literally for 3-4 months I knew her and then she was gone. Being dependent on her words and constant encouragement, I fell back into porn again but this time it was so much worse than before. I didn’t care as much a year ago but now in Jan-Apr of 2009, my heart died every time I opened up the web browser because I knew that she was telling me right and that I needed to really examine myself in the light of God’s word. I missed school just to watch it, I stopped going to church again because I wanted someone to know what I was spiritually dying and I wanted somebody to release me and let me out. I was late for work because of porn, I would rush home from classes just to watch it, and every time, every single time, afterwards, I would cry and weep because I wanted to stop so badly, but I couldn’t. I tried to take a shower when I was done but my soul was still filthy and ruined. I tried to watch testimonies on YouTube and try to adopt another person’s story to make me feel like I was ok, but it never worked. Literally, I was so sick in mind that I thought that I could fabricate my own testimony and be free on my own. But it was always to no avail. I couldn’t talk to my parents about it, because as far as I was concerned, I was just a growing boy dealing with life but who is basically ok, and they had no clue what I was going through – the entire time. I hated everything about me and convinced myself that I wasn’t good for anything. No one paid attention to me, no one listened, no one asked, everyone assumed and everyone thought that I was normal, but I wasn’t. I was lost, alone, scared, scarred, suicidal, bitter, forgotten, and on top of that, worthless…

April Showers, Bring May Flowers

One night, in the spring of 2009, I would have the most intimate experience of my life. I honestly didn’t create any prerequisites for the event but none the less the Lord showed up in my bed room like a flood. I didn’t expect this on a night like this because I had just finished watching porn and I kicked my computer because I was so mad at myself. I laid face down on the floor and just started verbally killing myself. My words turned into frustrated cries and my cries tuned into wordless moans and my moans turned into deep wails and my wails turned into a bitter sob that lasted for hours into the night. While I was crying out, I felt the presence of God fill my room and for the first time, I felt the tangible presence of God’s Love, fill me from the inside out. I passed out and found myself awake the next day on my bed lol. I still have no clue as to how this happened but it did haha. Who knows…I found myself feeling like I was brand new the next day! On the inside of me I felt like a giant rock had been lifted off of my heart and I felt like the thoughts that I was dealing with, that resembled a black cloud, had lifted and the sun was shining BIG on the inside of me! Like never before I got so hungry to taste that feeling again and I began to dive into God’s word every day. I found out everything that I had been missing before. I found my identity, I found my security, I found my present help, I found the voice of God, I found my life again, I find a new ambition, I found my purpose….

The Lord saved me put eternal life on the inside of me that day and I’ve never been the same since.

Concerning porn, my taste for it completely and totally went away. It was to the point that even when I would see a girl in public and start to feel my heart pull towards her, I would instantly get convicted and changed my mind. I never felt it before. It was like someone was teaching me how to view the opposite sex and have an observation of beauty instead of lusting. I felt like someone was with me in my life and they would never leave me nor forsake me and wanted me to be with them at all times, even in my worthlessness. I felt a completion that forever exceeded my expectations and began to introduce to me a love that was beyond recognition, but had power enough to change my mind at the heart level, and mark me forever as a member of something bigger than myself…

Receiving Sight

Prior to me being saved I had a horrible, distorted, and poor outlook on myself. It was bad enough to where watching pornography became normal for me as a two folded outlet: 1 – to justify my release of natural sexual desires to be with a woman (but) 2 – to try to blot out what I felt about myself in interpretation of what people saw me as. Sex is a natural agreement between man and woman that creates another life. It’s a coming together that God meant only for a husband and a wife to share and cherish. Not to be marketed for profit or financial gain. Because of what the media has spent millions of man hours and millions of dollars on painting to the general public, the average woman is constantly battling with self-images and concepts in their heads about what it is to be a woman in a society that is run by male leadership that have motives to exploit the weaker individuals around them by capitalizing on their ignorance. Woman, today, are finding it increasingly difficult to find purpose and identity in today’s culture that has so many pressures on the greater number of females. Every demographic feels it as the crime rates increase, the suicide rates grow rapidly, abortion is being more and more accepted, and gay marriages are the social norm now while being called the new ‘minority’. It’s truly sick because the agenda is so under-handed and so clandestine that to speak out about anything means that you’re proving them to be right when they paint a picture about being radical or doing too much to change something. We live in a society that the moment that you speak up for anything against what’s going on, you’re marked for a specific identity that is only true to a person that’s jacked up in their thinking to begin with. But yet, he decides what’s socially accepted and what’s deemed as jargon. We can say what we want but it’s true. Because parents aren’t raising their kids with the word of God in their lives, the tv is forced to be their main source and full understanding of reality. And the parents can’t decipher and refute the bad and raise awareness to the good because they themselves are deceived. I hate it because we live in a society of robots where a lot of people’s opinions aren’t likely even their thoughts. They spit out the same words that news media and popular opinion pump their ears with on a day to day basis. And to make matters worse, because, it takes a village to raise a child, the children today get the affirmation that they need naturally to grow in their understanding of the world around them, by people that are over influenced by the same lies. It sad, because the structure that God has designed to bring Him glory, the enemy has manipulated to bring man’s detriment and God’s mockery…

I’m here to bring the subtle blinders down of Adult Entertainment, and I’ll be honest enough to admit my own personal sinning and my short comings. But the time is past to where we are encouraged to hide behind a mask of being real, in order to continue on in mutilating our souls. We are real people, with real hurts, and real questions, and real situations that we can’t find answers too apart from the foot of the Cross of Christ. Men in today’s society can’t be good husbands and fathers because they didn’t have good daddy’s to show them how to do it; but God does. Women are confused with whom to give their attention to because they themselves are seeking for the wrong affirmation; but God gives it. Men watch porn because they feel like they can. They hate themselves for not being able to change and they hate their fathers for not being able to change them when they were young. They hate their mothers too, because the mother didn’t stand next to her husband when she needed him to the most. Women hate men because they never had a father who, through faith and patience, brought up the family in the right admonition that’s shown in God’s word. They hate their moms too, because their mothers are still trying to live out their 20’s through the lives of their daughters by telling them who to marry every time they see a cute boy. It’s so sad and I know there are a thousand tears in Heaven from each minute of every day from around the world of lost parents that don’t know how to reconcile their differences with their parents, so they pass the same situations on to their kids to do the exact same thing, and because they way life works, the generational curses continue in an endless cycle of people playing should’ve, could’ve and would’ve with their lives. I’ve cried many nights because I hated who I was and I didn’t know how to fix what I had become. I cried and couldn’t break the mold. And that’s what we are dealing with today as men and women. We are a people that have forfeited all the promises of God that come by faith for quick fixes and short term justifications of every level and every intention possible. And all the while the enemy of our souls sits back and laughs at us all the way, because we have every tool to stop this non-sense, but nobody is willing to do anything about it…

Truth Be Told…

That this is an official vendetta against popular culture and against what the world deems as good in the context of men and woman and the truth of marriage. I plan on being married to one woman. To desire one woman. To fall in love with continually, one woman. To make love with, one woman. To raise kids with, one woman. To have eyes for only, one woman. To receive my crown as her prince from, one woman. To desire intimately the body of, one woman. To cherish and to hold on to for the rest of my life, one woman. To put the ring on the finger of, one woman. To renown and to bless the work of the hands of, one woman. To fill up the emotional love tank and to be filled by, one woman. To praise the living God for granting me full access to, one woman…

And that’s the truth. The society has made it ok to be with someone and to be interested or even emotionally available in other people and it’s one of the many reasons for divorce in marriages today. The society has made it basically ok to have friends with benefits. It’s also been made ok to be single and to let yourself come off as being available to every person of the opposite sex that is attracted to you or attractive to you. And yet, people are still heart broken, still forgotten, still alone and still feeling worthless. It’s sad when a girl is emotional weak gets her virginity taken away from her because they guy she was with more than anything just wanted to have sex with her. And she couldn’t see it at first, because he just looked like a nice guy that always smiled at her and it made her feel like she was pretty. It’s sad when good men get cheated by women that use their past as their excuse as to why they do what they do. Some women want a good man, but refuse to do anything to keep him because he’s just so good, why do I have to do anything? It’s his job to. There’s just as many reasons to point the finger at men as there are to point the finger at women today, and God never intended for this to be a working truth in the earth. God designed the man to desire one woman and the woman to desire one man, and as one flesh, they being whole people on an individual basis could and should come together to make the complete man, which gives God praise and glory and honor. Blaming someone else for revealing our own personal insecurities never solves them, but rather gives us the opportunity to come to God and to ask Him to burn out the things that separate us from Him and to multiply the things that bring Him joy. In return, this same fruit is the much needed antidote for marriages to not only just succeed but to flourish as everlasting hope to the newlyweds to come, years after their marriage start. Because that’s one of the ultimate goals God has planned for men and women, to flourish in times of drought, and to multiply during times of harvest. Because that’s God’s nature, to be eternally and perpetually blessed on all fronts and under any circumstance. So why shouldn’t His children be doing the same thing? After all, we were made in His image…

Consummation

This is written to inspire and to make aware but to also bring about the truth behind what is causing us to rip each other apart on a psychological level. Because understand this one fact: porn is not the problem. Men and women have been participating in pornographic actions long before Caligula and his lawless sexual endeavors and personal secrets ruled on the earth. Whenever you are a law unto yourself, the bible deems that as being in sin, because the biblical definition of sin is to be lawless. And that was the charge against Sodom and Gomorrah, not because they were sexually unhinged, but because there wasn’t a shred of righteousness to be found in the city, hence, the people were a law unto themselves un-governed by God’s law. So God smote the city without hesitation. The danger of being lawless today is not that God will smote you with a hammer and chop off your feet with an axe, but that we will blindly lead ourselves away from Him by choosing to ignore His call to our hearts. Because of Jesus, God’s anger is turned away from us as long as we put our hope, faith and trust in Him in light of what He did for us to be in right standing with Him again. See we have a choice, even after salvation, to let Him reprogram our way of thinking or to live, once again, as a law unto ourselves. Honestly, no one is happy with themselves that lives apart from God, because God is spilling over with a love that goes beyond knowledge and gives His people a joy that is unspeakable. He wants to restore us back to the garden, where we can be naked an unashamed with our spouses. Where we can walk with God in the cool of the day. Where we have no fear of tomorrow. Where we can’t even be concerned about today. Where trust the person that God gave us with our lives, because their life is your life too. The optimum place to raise your kids in. And that’s what Jesus died for, to save us from a life away from Him. He saved us not because of anything righteous that we’ve done, but because of His great mercy. He saved us when we didn’t do anything religiously acceptable to become like Him, but He did it anyway because someone had to go beyond what we were used to seeing and bring us into the real truth of life before ours ended with a devastating conclusion. He wants our minds back fathers and He wants our commitment back mothers and he wants the parents to raise their kids up knowing who they are in Christ so that when they get old, nothing can detour them away from the truth of God’s word that’s been so implanted in their hearts. It’s the new cycle that’s only new because not too many people attempt to honestly live it out daily with their families. They’re so bent on God filling in the gaps that they don’t do anything about the fact they just found a pornography magazine under their 15-year olds bed. I want to be an encouragement to parents and children alike, that we don’t have to die daily to God when He desires for us to live and move and have our total being in Him! Don’t waste your life on things that don’t matter, you’re good enough at that by yourself. Invest in the Gospel and taste and see that the Lord is good in every way and in every sense. Lose your life to God’s love and watch Him restore you from your inner most to the uttermost. The fact is that we don’t know how to love ourselves. We really don’t. I didn’t. That’s why it was so easy for me to eventually fall into the pornography portal like many people do. But I learned that I was worth loving, even in my mess of life that I had created. Even in my selfishness and bitterness, God loved me. And His love for me was much deeper than my chains of defeat and self-inflicted pain. He loved me so much that He was also committed to me learning how to love myself and to not let society dictate the way I thought about life, but rather to let Him dictate what my mind conceived. From there, I’ve slowly learned how to love other people in the scope of the finished work of the cross and after almost four years of continual scrubbing and even wrestling God at times, I finally understand His love for me. And now I know and know more about how to love the people around me, as unlovable as they may be sometimes. Lol. But truth is, we have to love people enough to see them in the finished work of the cross, but also love them enough to tell them the truth about their life. Because the obligation of love is to seek and to save that which is lost, no matter the cost. My desire is for women to desire to be with God more than a man and for a man to fulfill her desires. My desire is for men to prefer God over a woman and for women to fulfill his desires. My desire is for men and women to understand their equality and their interdependency under God and to each other. My desire is for Men to desire one woman and for women to desire one man. My desire is for the Adult Industry to become shut down once people gain the knowledge of who they are in Christ. My desire is for the love of God to be the force that motivates couples to stay in love in their marriages. My desire is for households to be fully responsible and committed to their offspring, the seed and the adopted.

Closing Remarks

I think that I’ve successfully broken the mold of what people may have conceived about this project. I had no intentions to ‘expose’ the Adult Entertainment industry by systematically breaking down statistic sheets, showing a bunch of numbers from bank accounts, exposing names and dropping a bunch a claims and tell you about testimonies that you honestly can go read for yourself. There are plenty of documentaries on the History of Playboy, you can go read about former porn-stars and their life in the pornography industry, you can go YouTube Ted Bundy’s last interview, you can look up interviews on Ron Jeremy when he debates Pastors on live television, you can go find out about the media mogul Rupert Murdoch. I mean there’s a myriad of things to look into about porn and its effects on the human psyche and on human history, but my goal is to lead you away from going into factual head knowledge, and to show you where viewing porn stems from. I want to shed light not on porn itself but rather, the reason why people are addicted to it in the first place; Because the same reason why people are enslaved to watch it is the same bondage that encouraging women to go and be exploited by it. In the sex industry, and in the homes of America. It’s the same motivating factors…

But I don’t wanna blame popular culture for anything that the Bible hasn’t refuted already and provided a way out of our current and present circumstances. The word of the Lord is the authority that will break the bondages of tyranny in our minds and bring about a self-revolution where men and women find their complete knowledge of self. We can’t help but do what we do because we don’t have God as our source of all that we are. We’re sinful because it’s in our DNA to do so and only putting faith in the finished work of the Cross of Jesus Christ will bring about the reconciliation and change that we so seek to have. I don’t want to waste your time and I’m confident that I haven’t because the very fact that you’ve read this far is either because you already have won this battle and it’s encouraging to hear another story, or that you are  and have been seeking to find an answer for this thing for a long time and you can’t get out. Jesus can and will free you today from the restrictions of love that you have in your heart. It’s hard for you to guard your heart against doing this stuff because your heart is too broken to even have a solid rock to stand upon. And I’ve been there too. Beneath every person with a cold outer shell is a living beating heart that is susceptible to become filled with one of two sources, death or life. If you need true reconciliation to monotonous soul searching, then the time is now. If you are tired of not finding solutions I got a God to introduce you to that is greater than the best thing that you’ve ever experienced in your life! He’s so good and His standards are perfect! His love in unmatched! Adult Entertainment is blind to the Love of God but God wants to restore only after repentance is first made. I’m telling you, don’t waste your life on things that collect moths and dust and are corruptible and fade away and tarnish and get washed down a drain and forgotten. Don’t waste any more time chasing things that don’t matter in light of the eternal God and His heavenly perspective and plan for your life. You’ve got to let yourself go so that you can find yourself again. But this time in truth. And God wants nothing more for you than to live and move and have your being in Christ Jesus. He died so that we could live a life that is exceedingly and abundantly above, all that you can ask or think, but its only according to the power that works in you. There’s a seed in your heart that may have been watered by the wrong words and thoughts but God offers you a heart transplant to bring you into a moral and spiritual resurgence that will shine so brightly in you that the people around you will want the same thing that you have. Let this testimony be a ramp for you. Let this testimony encourage you to chase God with all that you have. Let this be your first wave of faith that forces you to examine the infinite conundrum…

“Who am I and why am I here?”

It takes a village to raise a child and it takes people filled with faith, power and the word of God around you to help bring you into the real truth that God desires for His people to live, be governed, and love by.

And so concludes the third chapter in the freedom in five book.