Ryan Swanson: Welcome to the second episode of the Satisfied Podcast. I’m really excited to have you here today, and I want to jump right into the material that we have. But first, let’s just do a quick review of what we covered about a month ago now when we did our first episode. That episode was entitled, “Gratified or Satisfied,” and we really dove into a passage in Proverbs chapter six to prove that what we’re stealing in moral integrity. When we compromise our moral integrity, what we’re stealing is not satisfying at all. They’re just to gratify ourselves.

Last week on Thee Generation Podcast, you heard Dr. Jim Van Gelderen with a message that you’ve probably heard before, but we’re running it in different segments. You’ve heard him preach it maybe at the Cola Clash Plus if you were there. We’ve streamed it in the past. And that message was entitled, “The Co-Infections of Moral Impurity.” Last week’s section of that message was specifically on selfishness and how that desire to please self and to be gratified pervades so much of our lives, especially if you’ve had a background in moral failure. It’s just amazing how far those selfish roots go into different aspects of your life. You’ll see more and more of it as we go through this podcast, I trust. It was great having that last week. I hope you’re listening to that message just to catch that as we go along. It ties in really well with the Satisfied podcast.

The question comes up then, still in light of that aspect of gratified or satisfied, what is our goal then? Is it just to feel good or feel fulfilled? Why do we work? Why do we get to the end of a day and it’s just like, what are we living for?  We go and work our jobs, but is that just to get money to eat, money to do things that we enjoy, money to buy things? Ultimately, what we’re doing is living for these little sessions or little segments of gratification here and there. So if the point isn’t to enjoy life through those little sessions of gratification, then what is it?

Let me give you a definition of what I think is the difference between gratification and satisfaction. Gratification is the demand for immediate pleasure while satisfaction is the delight in eternal purpose. Let me say that again. Gratification is the demand for immediate pleasure while satisfaction is simply the delight in eternal purpose. So what then is our eternal purpose? Is it to enjoy life? Not really, no. Let’s even look at you; someone might have said, okay, it’s probably the Great Commission. Now the Great Commission is an aspect of fulfilling our eternal purpose, but yet we need to go way back to why man was put on this earth. Why were we created? And maybe you’re getting it now. We were created for the glory of God. Isaiah 43:7 says, “Everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my… glory.” God put us on this earth for His own glory. “Whether therefore ye eat or drink or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.” 1 Corinthians 10:31. So it’s really not about us at all. The original purpose of mankind: we were put here for God’s glory. That’s our eternal purpose.

So when we’re looking to be satisfied, to delight in our eternal purpose, the question is, are we right now bringing glory to God in what we’re doing? So what are you doing to glorify God today? I mean, a huge part of that is John 15:8. “Herein is my Father glorified that you bear much fruit.” Are you accomplishing the Great Commission? Are you a testimony of Christ? Are you a disciple of Christ? And that’s why Pastor Gilmore’s podcast that we’re hosting now on the Thee Generation Network is so vital as well in the Go Mission podcast. So pay attention to that. That is a huge aspect and part of how we can glorify God today. Maybe the primary way we can glorify God, we could say. But what are you doing in the next 24 hours to glorify God? In fact, what are you doing in the next hour to glorify God? It’s too much just to say, “Why don’t you give your life to Jesus and just live a life for Jesus,” because it’s so hard to wrap our brains around what we’ll be doing in 20 years. But what are you going to be doing in the next 20 minutes? That’s how you glorify God. “God, what do you want me to be doing right now? What do I need to plan out today so I can know I get to the end of the day and know I accomplished my eternal purpose of glorifying you today?” That’s satisfaction. It’s a delight. It doesn’t mean everything’s going to be great and dandy, and you’re just going to love life. No, that’s all about gratification. But satisfaction is so much deeper than that. Psalm 107:9 says, “For he satisfieth the longing soul and filleth the hungry soul with goodness.”

Now I am thrilled to tell you that your God is good. He is a good God. But when your search becomes for God’s goodness instead of just for God, you’ll end up looking for goodness outside of God, and you’ll end up gratified rather than satisfied. The goal is not goodness. The goal is God. Now there’s more on this later, but I can’t emphasize enough how important that personal relationship with Jesus is, that personal relationship with God, having the goal of living for Him and not for ourselves. Just like Dr. Jim emphasized last week and how selfish we can become in every aspect. I want us to be focused on this podcast as we seek to be satisfied and delighting in our eternal purpose. Your eternal purpose is not about you; it’s about God.

I spent the last couple of days at the RU recovery headquarters in Rockford, Illinois. There’s something they called Rockford Training Days there, so I was there learning about their program, and I’m sure you’ve heard of RU before. But there was one thing in one of the sessions that really stood out to me and just struck me. And it was when one of the leaders said, “Our program does not work.” Now, this is a program that’s been around for over 20 years, and we’re talking hundreds of these groups, these RU recovery groups all around the world. Here’s a guy saying our program doesn’t work. It’s Jesus that works. That struck me so much because I can look so much at the practical things, and we’re going to be looking at another practical tip today. But if we focus so much on the practical things that we forget Jesus, it’s not going to work. He said, “This is not a 12-step program. This is a one-step program. Turn to Jesus.”

Are you living for your eternal purpose? Okay. Now, with that said, and I probably took too much time on that, but maybe I can’t spend too much time on that. I trust you got the point. Now, last week, we also talked about turning cleave, which is that same principle of actually using the temptations as they come by because they will be scattered throughout a day and using those to turn and actually just cleave to Jesus from that. So that was our practical step from our last episode. Alright, so this episode I want to look at another practical step that you can take on the way to moral integrity, and it’s actually something, believe it or not, I read on a billboard. Yes, I was driving down the road in my truck on the highway, and I looked up at this billboard for a filtration company, and it said, “Buy a filter or be a filter,” and it had a picture of a boy leaning over and drinking with his mouth right out of the sink faucet.

Buy a filter or be a filter. I thought that is so true because if we don’t have a filter on and we’re allowing those impurities to come in, well, something’s going to catch them. They’re going to get caught. They’re going to stop somewhere.

And if they’re not, if we don’t stop them before they enter in, then they’re going to stop and find a home and lodge somewhere inside of us. That’s a scary thing. So buy a filter or be a filter. And I want to focus on this because there are so many things today. There are so many aspects and avenues that the devil is using to attack us and to try to get those impurities to enter into us. It can be billboards, it can be through the internet, through advertising, through social media, through videos, YouTube, all kinds of entertainment. So there are so many ways. The temptations are more prevalent than ever before. It just pervades every aspect of our day. And if we don’t take the steps available to filter out those things before they get to us, to stop the impurities before they enter in, then they’re going to find a home. And even in a journey as we attempt and seek a journey towards moral integrity, even in the midst of that, we can be having impurities, finding home and carefully, slowly lodging inside, building bricks of strongholds like Dr. Jim mentions, and building up things in our heart almost unwittingly, just because we’re still being exposed to all these things that are coming at us and the impurities are still coming in. Filter ourselves. So buy a filter or be a filter.

Now obviously there’s only so many things you can do if you’re out and someone’s walking down the road or even a billboard or something like that, but so much of this comes through our devices, so much through the internet, so much through our computers, our cell phones, that a device filter or an internet filter is crucial on this journey to moral integrity. Now I’ve heard some people say, “A filter’s not the answer. It’s always gonna be available, so I’m just going to leave the filter off and just seek Jesus, because Jesus is enough without a filter.” Well, absolutely Jesus is enough without a filter, but let me tell you, if he’s enough for you without a filter, he’s also enough for you without your phone, because that’s exactly what you’re gonna need to give up if you’re not willing to take control and take the action steps available to make no provision for the flesh.

Now clearly I’m speaking to those of you who know that moral integrity is your battle. This is something you’ve struggled with in the past and you’re listening to this podcast because you need to be freed or to come to a deeper level of victory in this area. But if you know this is not your battle, you’re just listening to get the principles and maybe listening for someone else, but if you’re not susceptible to those things and you’ve never fallen on a device in that way before, then that’s between you and the Lord, how you handle that and how you decide to apply this and what making no provision for the flesh looks like to you. But for the rest of us who can say that we are susceptible to these things, it has been a thing in the past and maybe you’re still struggling and trying to find this victory, then I have no problem dictating dogmatically for you this is something that must happen. Why don’t you turn to Proverbs 5 and verse 8? We’re going to look at a simple truth here really quickly and then we’ll be done. Proverbs 5 and verse number 8. This is something that last summer really stood out to me as I was memorizing through this chapter. And it’s speaking obviously of the strange woman. Solomon here is writing to his sons to warn them of the strange woman and to give them advice on how they can come to moral integrity themselves.

So in Proverbs 5 verse 8, it says, “remove thy way far from her, (speaking of the strange woman), remove that way far from her and come not nigh the door of her house.” Now here’s Solomon saying, look, if you’re going to stay pure and stay righteous, I want you to stay on your side of town. So in other words, in that day, if you wanted to view pornography, you had to go to her house. I mean, she lived on the other side of town. So for that to be a temptation, you just, you stay over here. Solomon’s saying don’t go near there. Don’t worry about it. Stay on your side of town. I don’t care what’s over there. I don’t care if there’s a big theater called YouTube on one side of her house. And there’s the town square with all kinds of socializing on the other side of her house. I don’t care what good things might be over there. If it means you’re coming close anywhere close to her door, uh uh, ain’t happening. You stay on your side of town. There’s plenty of good things to do on this side of town. If you can do them on this side of town, that’s fine. But we’re not going close to her house.

Now let me tell you, I wish that it was that easy today. I wish you had to cross town to go find the strange woman. But oh boy, the devil has been at work and he has upped his game. And what once you had to cross town to find, now lives in our pockets on our cell phones. She’s floating around in the air on the wifi. She’s walking down the street. She’s coming in on the television, on the internet, on YouTube, on all these things. She is everywhere and so available. So what we need to do is take the principle from that day is that we’re not going to go anywhere close to this woman and we need to apply that to today. We’re not going to dance around her house to do all the fun things that are right nearby. We’re going to find a way to do those things on our side of town without her being so available. So for some that may mean no cell phone, it may mean no computer, no internet. I can’t make that specific application for you but what I’m going to suggest today is a filter. It is a filter and an accountability software program. Now I’ve used Covenant Eyes on my computer and on my phone for the last several years now and I’ve found that extremely helpful to decrease that availability to make no provision for the flesh. There’s a couple of different things that it does and I’ll let you go on and we’ll include a link in the description and you can read more about it and look that up for yourself. But there’s a couple of key things. Number one is the filter side of it so it’s going to block and best it can tell keep things out from ever entering. Coming up in a Google search or something like that, even without you meaning to, things might be coming up that it’s blocking, it’s keeping them out so those impurities don’t ever have a chance to get to you. So that’s one side is the filter side of it, but it’s also an accountability software. So it’s constantly tracking your different searches, different keywords that are being used or that are coming up. And now within the last couple of years, they have something called screen accountability, where even just anything that’s coming up on your screen, it’s constantly taking random screenshots and it can even in their algorithms detect whether something might be inappropriate on there and it’s sending those off to your accountability partner, your parents or youth pastor, or whoever you have that set up with. And so really this software is accomplishing two purposes. I was talking to a friend last week who told me that in conversation with his wife, they really broke down the pornography temptation to three things that are necessary. There have to be these three things if you’re going to fall to pornography. Number one is the desire, two is the availability, and three is isolation. So with those three things, now the desire aspect is exactly what we were talking about in the whole first part of this podcast, and that’s where we’re looking to Jesus to be satisfied and remove that desire to be gratified.

But look at those other two areas. The availability, well, guess what? That can be taken care of with a filter, at least largely. You’re never going to be able to root everything out. That’s not the point. The point is to take every step we can to make no provision for the flesh. So we can remove that availability as much as possible by adding a filter to our devices. And then thirdly on that list was the isolation. And when everything on my screen is being sent to an accountability partner, guess what? I don’t feel isolated anymore. I feel like someone’s looking over my shoulder the whole time and that’s exactly what we need to feel like. That’s what it needs to be.

So, guys, I would say either get rid of your phone, get rid of your computer, do away with the availability altogether in that arena, or figure out a way, find a filter, buy a filter, or be a filter. Figure out a way to lock this down to decrease the availability and the isolation. What are you willing to do to cut out the provision for the temptation in your life? It will make a difference, it’ll make a huge difference. Honestly, to lock down these things is to be freed. It’s no fun to be walking throughout a day with those things available. To be walking every day in your commute right in front of the strange woman’s house. It’s no fun. Stay on your side of town. It’s an absolutely crucial step towards your battle towards moral integrity.

Like I said, I will include a link to Covenant Eyes in the description. So go ahead and check that out if you’re not a part of that already. I think by using that link you can get two weeks of that free. And so use that, see if that’s something you want to use. There are other ones out there that I’m not familiar with but maybe you’ll come across those and they might be good as well. But this is the one that myself and a lot of the guys I’m familiar with use this and it’s been a big help to us. So Covenant Eyes, go ahead and just look in the description and you’ll find a link there for that. Also, if you guys have any questions, concerns, topics you want to be covered on this, go ahead and just reach out to me at satified@theegeneration.org. I got a few emails from some of you last month and I appreciated that. Appreciate you giving your feedback. So shoot me an email and let me know if there’s anything else I can be doing for you. Thanks so much for listening to this episode and I’m thrilled to be a part once again of your journey towards moral integrity as we seek to be less gratified and more satisfied.