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"Recovering Hearts" 		 Prevention and
Victim Resources

Recovering Hearts Initiative Synopsis:
Getting to the Heart of the Matter Within the Church

"Jesus mission on earth was to see God's power, love, and healing permeate every aspect of this broken world and our broken lives."

-- Francis Chan

Free Download: Christian Apologetics Journal - "The Internet Pornography Pandemic: 'The Largest Unregulated Social Experiment in Human History'" By: Donna Rice Hughes

The Enough Is Enough® (EIE) Recovering Hearts initiative serves as a blueprint for churches and faith-based communities to restore sexual wholeness, integrity, purity, and dignity within the church body. It is designed to elevate the call to bring biblical truth, light, healing, hope, and help to individuals, marriages, families, communities, and nations.

The vision is to implement a holistic strategy promoting healthy sexuality and genuine intimacy and to prevent sexual exploitation of children, women and men by incorporating prevention education, healing/recovery programs and victims/survivors assistance. Recovering Hearts serves as a model church program for faith-based communities nationwide.

People of faith are under constant spiritual attack as the enemy seeks to divide, destroy, and rob generations of their innocence and their youth. Lives are being shattered by gross consumption of sexually explicit content. The church is engaged in constant spiritual warfare as the enemy preys on the temptations of an already hyper-sexualized society; yet, the issues of sexual sin and sexual brokenness are often not brought to light within the church due to ignorance, shame, guilt or embarrassment.

Many want to place society’s problems on the government or hold others responsible. As this is first and foremost a spiritual battle, it needs to be addressed by the church. Sadly, as America has abandoned its spiritual roots and the vision of our nation’s founding fathers, many of today’s cultural problems can be linked to the failure of the church to function in society as God intended.

Spiritual renewal and revival must be steeped in prayer and begin with repentance. It starts with us—our own lives, our children, our family, our community, our local congregation.

If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

--2nd Chronicles 7:14

Recovering Hearts is a response to Jesus’ calling for healing, restoration, wholeness, and the abundant life. By permeating this message into every ministry the church has to offer—from children’s ministries to couple’s and adult ministries and everything in between—the church can begin to initiate a comprehensive approach of embracing God’s view of healthy biblical sexuality and preventing sexual exploitation and brokenness.

For those paralyzed by the shame and guilt of sexual sin and exploitation, there is great hope. Yet, many feel unworthy or unable to come forward in an effort to break the chains of sexual addiction, often left feeling ashamed and enslaved. Furthermore, many Christians and non-Christians alike stay trapped in sexual addictions because the church has not historically been a safe place for the sexually broken to bring these struggles into the light of Christ’s unconditional love and forgiveness and to receive the pastoral help, counseling, accountability and healing needed for restoration. Instead, many remain stuck in their shame, for fear of harsh judgment.

Restoration occurs when a renewing of the mind takes place through seeking forgiveness, love and healing through Jesus. The role of the church during this restoration process is crucial: It must be a safe place for those longing to find freedom, forgiveness, love and healing in the name of Jesus.
Victory can be found through the open arms of a welcoming church community. Jesus’ mission on earth was to see God’s power; love and healing permeate every aspect of this broken world and our broken lives. Healing our land starts with the people of God. It begins with us.

Recovering Hearts in the Church: What Does it Look Like?

Many resources and programs are currently available to faith-based communities in an effort to equip to the church leadership, staff, and congregation as they address issues of sexual exploitation, sexual immorality, as well as offer healing, recovery and hope to those in need. The key is to permeate God’s view of healthy sexuality throughout every ministry.

  1. Church Leadership – Educate and train leaders in educational, prevention and recovery programs and efforts being implemented. Address individual healing, deliverance and accountability as needed within the leadership.
  2. Prayer Teams – Establish prayer teams and expect spiritual warfare on all fronts. The enemy is killing, stealing and destroying youth, adults, marriages and families in the Body of Christ. The Body of Christ is fighting for victory against evil forces and bringing the light and healing of Jesus to give life abundantly.
  3. The Pulpit – Preaching/teaching on the various issues surrounding sexual brokenness and wholeness is integral. These issues need to be addressed by the pastor of the flock.
  4. Prevention Education (for use in Sunday schools/small groups)
    • Adult Education- Men, Women, Parents, Teachers, Young Adults, Singles
      • Child sex abuse prevention training programs- Darkness To Light or similar programs
      • Internet Safety programs – The Internet Safety 101® multimedia curriculum is designed to prevent Internet-initiated crimes against children through educating, equipping and empowering parents, educators and caring adults to protect children from online pornography, sexual predators, cyberbullies, and cyber security risks and dangers related to social networking, online gaming and mobile devices.
      • Parenting resources to counter pornification of youth
      • Sexual Integrity/Authenticity Resources (i.e. Arterburn book series: Every Man, Woman, Young Men, Young Woman’s Battle; Return to the Garden (Kay Arthur))
      • Healthy Vibrant Marriage Programs/Resources to encourage genuine intimacy as God intended.
    • Children and Youth (Sunday school, youth group, bible studies, etc)
      • Age-based healthy sexuality education. Focus on God’s plan for sexuality.
      • Age-based Internet safety and responsibly digital citizenship education programs (Netsmartz, iSafe Programs, etc.)
      • Youth-focused sexual integrity programs including biblically-centered abstinence education and accountability. (Abstinence Clearinghouse, Fight the New Drug, etc.)
      • Special needs kids and adults are particularly vulnerable to Internet porn and sexual abuse.
  5. Safe and Secure Internet Access- The church is encouraged to lead by example and implement safe and secure Internet and WiFi on church property. Research has shown that parental control software which includes accountability/monitoring software is essential. Covenant Eyes offers state of the art accountability and safety software designed specifically with faith communities in mind.
  6. Counseling and Recovery Ministry – Train and equip counselors to deal biblically with sex and pornography addiction & dysfunction, sexual abuse, spousal abuse, abortion, promiscuity, immorality, homosexuality, gender confusion, deliverance, and so forth. In addition, Implement Healing/Deliverance/Recovery/Accountability programs to address sexual brokenness, abuse, addiction and bondage. (ie: The Conquer Series:- Battle Plan for Purity;Every Man/Woman’s Battle workshops; Abortion recovery/healing; Sexual abuse recovery, etc)
  7. Church Discipline- Church leadership is encouraged to set up accountability with members. Men and Women can be held accountable if rebel and not willing to deal with ongoing sexual immorality in marriage (adultery, porn, etc.) For instance, a wife whose husband won’t end an affair or deal with pornography addiction should be able to come to church leadership to hold the husband accountable. (Tony Evans ministry has a great model as set forth by Apostle Paul)

The Enough Is Enough® Resource Center is a clearinghouse of recommended secular and faith-based resources including books, audiotapes, CD's, and Internet resources addressing sexual exploitation prevention, healthy sexuality, spiritual warfare, sexual abuse, addiction, Internet safety, parental control tools and other topics addressed in this document. It will also include resources available at the Set Free Summit 2016. The Recovering Hearts Initiative is spearheaded by Enough Is Enough®. For more information on the clarion call to the church to become part of the solution to deal with Internet pornography, please see The Internet Pornography Pandemic: "The Largest Unregulated Social Experiment In Human History" (Rice-Hughes, Donna. Christian Apologetics Journal. Vol 12, No. 1 (Spring 2014)

Additional Resource: Praying about the internet dangers harming our kids (IFA.org)