Foundational Concepts for Sexual Healing

When compared to alternatives, the Pure Desire process reveals three critical distinctions:

The Pure Desire process is both THEOLOGICALLY and CLINICALLY sound
The Pure Desire process addresses sexual addiction from a FAMILY SYSTEMS perspective.
The Pure Desire process is to develop HEALING COMMUNITIES among local churches.

Based on this unique approach, Pure Desire Ministries bases all work on seven foundational concepts:

Given our society’s Culture of Shame, a contrasting Culture of Pure Desire must be integral to the local church. Pure Desire is not a recovery small group isolated from the local church. It is foundational to local church culture, and a significant contribution to the surrounding community. Pure Desire needs to be deeply embraced by the senior pastor and leadership. The Church has the only Answer to the deep shame dynamics that so many hurting people quietly wrestle with in their lives (Hebrews 12:2).

Pure Desire is led by lay men and women through small groups. To effectively reach the public – the average person sitting in church on Sunday morning – a lay vs. “top down” ministry can most effectively address the huge shame issues that must be encountered. A lay “champion” is at the core of Pure Desire in the local church, a liaison with the senior pastor. The champion draws leaders together for training. Men lead For Men Only groups, women lead For Women Only groups.

Sexual bondage, at its core, is a direct attack on the health of all family relationships. Sexual addiction or bondage is usually seen as a “guy’s problem”. But recent data indicates a rapid rise in sexual addictive behavior among women. For a man – or woman – to get healthy, the entire relationship between the husband and wife needs to be transformed.

Pure Desire goes beyond the typical church’s first level of treatment, to the much deeper second and third levels. The first level of temptation is “enticement”. At this level, you can choose to resist the temptation and walk free of bondage. But spiritual bombardment today is so sexually intense that most folks struggle at level two or three –getting in a group, confessing their sins, and praying is not enough! But – teams trained theologically in the sexual addiction cycle and equipped with clinical methods can enable our families to walk to freedom. It is a renewing process, with a miracle needed every step of the way.

With the recent explosion in brain research, we now understand just how effective the technical tools of bondage really are. To an addict, every new technology brings opportunities for deeper bondage. Illicit content on social networks is rapidly replacing visits to adult sites among the primary users – youth ages 12 to 17. The reason? It becomes possible to fulfill in person the sexual fantasy they were pursuing online. Pure Desire in the local church isn’t a static experience. PDMI University offers the continuing education and training required to protect our families from sexual addiction.

The spiritual battle for the soul takes place in the mind – sexual addiction is about spiritual warfare. Healthy sexuality is not about establishing some conservative or cultural form of prudishness. God delights in healthy sexual relationships, in the sexual freedom and delight that is available to a husband and wife in Christ. The Sexy Christians seminar will enable a local church to demonstrate to their community a passionate purity that will make our sex-drunk world hunger for God’s definition of sexuality.

Pure Desire creates healing communities that cross denominational lines and brings local churches together. The entire goal of Pure Desire is to bring healing and transformation to the Church worldwide! By any measurement, sexual addiction is the largest, most potentially devastating challenge facing the global Church today. The content of Pure Desire is designed to be delivered and implemented in community – not just by lecture. As local churches select Champions, who develop leaders, who establish small groups…the training process is duplicated and multiplied, crossing cultural and denominational boundaries.