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Chautona Havig

Chautona Havig

Using story to connect YOU to the Master Storyteller

Do I Really Think This Book Will Help Fight Sexual Impurity?

by Chautona Havig · 2 Comments

I didn’t understand pornography. My understanding of it was rather… simplistic. A picture of a woman—half or less dressed. Provocative position or possibly outright sexual posing. That’s what I assumed.

Look, I’ve never really seen anything that labels itself as “porn.” I’ve seen stuff I consider porn, and I’ve seen movies that I think should have been reclassified. My computer has been hijacked by images that I immediately shut out as I did a hard shutdown after clicking on the WRONG link. Hint to the wise. Scarlet fever is not just a disease. You’ve been warned.

So when a guy was talking about how he actually preferred porn to sex, I was stunned. And I said so. I said, “I don’t get it. I mean, you can give me the most perfect picture of a steak with everything just how I like it, but after ogling it for as long as my salivating mouth wants to, I’m still going to walk away from that picture unsatisfied It’s not real.

The guy said, “That’s the lie of porn. It convinces you that the real thing is inferior to the imitation. It’s why you starve emotionally.”

And then I got it.

Sort of. I mean, you can’t “really” get something like that without steeping yourself in it, and I won’t do it. And, then there’s that guy vs. girl difference thing. While women lust, too, many of us just aren’t affected in the same way by pornography as many men. It’s how our brains are wired.

So, ever since that conversation, I’ve tried to find ways to understand it without becoming too close… without dipping into the muck, so to speak. That’s why, when Celebrate Lit offered Live Pure and Free for review, I jumped at it. I mean, most of my readers are women. I doubt that most of them have a pornography issue. Why would I choose a book that is about helping men overcome an addiction to lust?

Because if I want to understand and help my brothers (and the occasional sister) in Christ who fight this temptation daily, I need a safe way to learn about it. And I figured this book would help with that.

Do I Really Think This Book Will Help Fight Sexual Impurity?

Note: Links may be affiliate links that provide me with a small commission at no extra expense to you. Additionally, I requested a review copy of this book. Opinions are mine.

Do I Really Think This Book Will Help Fight Sexual Impurity?

Live Pure and Free is written in a devotional-slash-workbook style. It’s a daily roadmap to “taking every [lustful] thought captive.” And it is written by an overcomer—not a guy sitting in a lofty tower of “look how great I am,” but a humbled man willing to be vulnerable to help other men trapped in the same pit as he was. The same pit he knows he could fling himself into if he gets careless and cocky.

This book won’t do it for you. You can’t pick it up, read the daily 3/4 page bit of encouragement, fill out the other page of answers, and say you’ve put on your armor for the day. It won’t work that way.

But yes, I do think Live Pure and Free can help fight habitual sexual impurity. It’s a little like a good workout routine. You can’t do your routine, walk away, and binge on every unhealthy food you want, only to go back in the next day and “work it off.” But a good workout routine, combined with healthy choices, can reap great health rewards. The same is true for this book.

One of the things I like most about it is that his stories are carefully crafted to avoid sparking temptation.

David Howe must have been alert to the fact that thoughtless word choices could paint images in the minds of his already struggling readers when he wrote this. Not once did my brain send off warning bells that I might want to skip that one. I get more of those bells in “clean Christian fiction!”

While this book is written to and for married men, Howe makes note that single men need this, too, and he works with them in the pages as well.

Did I love reading it? No. But honestly, should I? I hate that this book has to exist! But because the need is there, I’m glad the book is, too. And if I ever have anyone tell me they’re struggling, man or woman, I intend to send them to it.

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Comments

  1. Cathe says

    September 14, 2018 at 5:42 am

    That sounds like a really good book.

    Reply
    • Chautona Havig says

      September 14, 2018 at 8:34 am

      I really like how they did it.

      Reply

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The Because Fiction Podcast

The Because Fiction Podcast
The Because Fiction Podcast

Taking the pulse of Christian fiction

Because Fiction: A Chat with Split-Time Author, Melanie Dobson
byChautona Havig

I chatted with Melanie Dobson a few weeks ago, and boy was it a wonderful time of talking about my favorite books of hers and her latest release, The Wings of Poppy Pendleton. Listen in to the heartwrenching story that sparked the idea for the book and the delicious (and fascinating) research she did to write it!

Note: links may be affiliate links that provide me with a small commission at no extra expense to you.

How a Family Mystery Sparked the Idea for a Beautiful Story

The Wings of Poppy Pendleton takes place during the dichotomous Gilded Age among New York’s famous Thousand Islands.  Combining a family mystery with that era, Melanie Dobson creates a wonderful story that echoes the tumultuous time at the turn of the 20th century.

We chatted about the research involved–both for Melanie’s family mystery of a missing child who was in a photo but no one knew who she was and for the era and area as well.  I loved hearing how her mother got involved in trying to discover what happened to… was it Marjorie?  I think.  And, of course, how that helped shape the story of this book.

The Wings of Poppy Pendleton by Melanie Dobson

In this compelling new time-slip mystery, a little girl goes missing from her family’s castle in the Thousand Islands of New York. Eighty-five years later, a journalist teams up with a woman living on Koster Isle to find out what happened to Poppy, once and for all.

1907. On the eve of her fifth birthday, Poppy Pendleton is tucked safely in her bed, listening to her parents entertain New York’s gilded society in their Thousand Islands castle; the next morning, she is gone, and her father is found dead in his smoking room.

1992. Though Chloe Ridell lives in the shadows of Poppy’s castle, now in ruins, she has little interest in the mystery that still captivates tourists and locals alike. She is focused on preserving the island she inherited from her grandparents and reviving their vintage candy shop. Until the day a girl named Emma shows up on Chloe’s doorstep, with few possessions, save a tattered scrapbook that connects her to the Pendleton family. When a reporter arrives at Chloe’s store, asking questions about her grandfather, Chloe decides to help him dig into a past she’d thought best left buried. The haunting truth about Poppy, they soon discover, could save Emma’s life, so Chloe and Logan must work together to investigate exactly what happened long ago on Koster Isle.

You can learn more about Melanie Dobson on her WEBSITE.  Also follow her on GoodReads and BookBub.

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