Beating Porn Step1
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Whenever the subject of pornography comes up the idea, “God made sex/sexual appetite/libido/etc” comes up. I agree, God made sex, your sex drive, your libido. But God made sex for a very specific time for a very specific person. God made sex for your marriage for your spouse. As a single as a virgin I have a sexual appetite with no God given way to express it. As such I am called to fast. Maybe you think this is a negative way to put it, but I have no other way to put it. Let’s be honest you went to this website because you are tired of the grief pornography brings to your life. When pornography becomes more grief than what you think fasting will be then you will fast.
Let me be clear here, breaking free of pornography is just like fasting. When you fast you are drawn to food, it hurts for a few days, you constantly try to not fantasias about food, everyone and their brother puts food in front of you when you are fasting. When you begin to break free from pornography you will still be drawn to it, it will hurt, you will constantly have to try not to fantasias about porn, and everyone will in one way or another put something you consider pornography in front of you. The difference between fasting for food and fasting for pornography is that you need food to survive, but as a single you do not have sexual needs. Married couples have sexual needs, singles do not. Sex was designed by God to bring two people closer together than anything else. Perhaps you think this is a retelling of the story about how a man had two dogs who always fought and the one that won was the one he fed more. Its not because that story is bull crap. The one who wins is the one who is more hungry. Many times I would look at porn and masturbate and afterword’s I would feel awful so I would read my Bible and pray afterwards for hours. Once my flesh was fed it did not care whether or not I fed my spirit. I have had times where I read my Bible and prayed only to be drawn by the flesh into looking at pornography because my flesh was so hungry for it. This fast is a fast flatly saying I will not have pornography. In the old testament book of Daniel, four Hebrews were captured and brought to Babylon. Once they were in Babylon they were to be fed the kings meat and wine. This meat and wine were offered to the Babylonian gods before they were given to the Hebrews. Eating anything offered to other gods was a big no no to the Jews. So the four Hebrews got together and decided that they would not defile themselves with the kings meat. So instead of meat and wine they had pulse (basically mixed vegetables) and water. Even though they no doubt hungered for the meat they ate the pulse to honor God. This is known as a Danielite fast. When you take pornography out of your life you are fasting. I Corinthians 7:5 says, “Defraud ye not one the other, except it be with consent for a time, that ye may give yourselves to fasting and prayer;” Here God is talking to married couples and telling them that sometimes part of fasting is abstaining from sex. If you are a single Christian you have been drafted to this fast. I can hear your flesh now. Its telling you, “If you stop looking at pornography you will never have sex, get an erection, have an orgasm. It would feel so good to go look at porn now.” All I can say is, “Do you trust God?” God is calling you to fast now. He is trying to teach you something, and make you better through this difficulty. You may be worried that you will die a virgin. I understand where you are coming from. Trust God. I am not going to sugar coat it for you, you may never get married, so this fast may last until you die. But despite that I ask you to trust God. God wants what is best for you when it is best for you. So trust God. I know what its like to think that I may never get married so through my impatience I look at porn, but I have since learned to trust God. You will never get over this addiction until you learn to trust God with your future. To start this fast from your addiction I want you to fast. When I say fast here, I do not mean just from porn, I mean fast. Unless you have a medical condition that does not allow you to fast you need to fast for 3 days on just water. No food, no other kind of drink. Water. The purpose of this fast is to show you where your walk with God is. You are probably not going to stop looking at porn today or this week because at this point you are not set up for success yet. The first thing that you need to do is see if you have enough of a walk with God that you can actually fast for three days. If you can not, then you will never overcome this addiction of yours. Currently the average engagement period is 18 months, if you can not last on this fast for 3 days, even if you met the right one today you would not be set up to fast from pornography during the entire engagement period. Prepare for this fast one week in advance, that gives you a week to eat the food you have in your house so nothing goes to waste, and it gives you a chance to prepare a good meal the day before the fast. Eating a bunch of sugary snacks and fried food the day before this fast is a very bad idea. It also allows you time to change your schedule in case you are always expected at someone’s house to eat. Take this week to prepare a Bible study. Pray about what you should be studying in your Bible. Personally I do not care if you are trying to read the Bible all the way through, wanting to do a word study, or a topical study or if you just want to read proverbs a million times. What matters is what God wants you to study in His Word. As you get ready to fast begin studying your Bible and seeking God’s face on what he would have you to study. Take this week to prepare a prayer time. Not everyone prays the same way. Because of my nature my prayer time has always been done in my Bible study and reading time. As I read the Bible I pray, as I go throughout the day and meditate on God’s Word I pray. Others are more like the psalmist and their prayer life is wrapped around praising God. Others have to write down their prayers and go down a list and others have to build an alter. Take this week to begin building a prayer life that works for you. Your nature is not like everyone elses nature so your prayer life will not be like everyone elses. If you want to really ramp up your prayer life read the book “E.M. Bounds on prayer” If during this week you are startled to find that your walk with God is so weak you utterly unable to fast, then that is good. This is one of the purposes of this fast, to really examine where your walk with God is at. Without a close walk with God you will not overcome this addiction. Go ahead and develop your walk with God and within a month or so you should be able to begin a three day fast. As you prepare for this fast do not go into thinking you are just going to pray and read your Bible all day and that’s it. You will likely have to work during your fast, and that’s fine. Maybe you will go to church during your fast, again that’s fine. Fasting is not about being a monk its about focusing on God during your everyday walk. Go to work, school, church whatever you normally do but in that pray, read your Bible and give up your food. The biggest problem you will find in fasting is the time you are at home. Particularly those time you always watch tv, surf the internet, play video games or otherwise waste your time. I suggest that you prepare Christian books, sermons from preachers you like (I suggest Kenny Baldwin), Christian music, maybe even a Biography for this time. The idea during the fast is focusing on God and you do not necessarily have to only read your Bible and pray during this time for this to take place, focusing on the testimonies of God’s people is also a very good thing to do. Listen to unshackled (google unshackled at the pacific garden mission). The point here is to start replacing some worldly things with Godly things. As you start to fast you are seriously praying for some things. First of all you are praying to overcome pornography. This is not going to happen overnight. If you are struggling with pornography your gift is not the gift of singleness, God has put a desire in you for the marriage and your flesh, the world and the devil have taken that God given desire and perverted it into porn. God is not going to take away that desire, if he did he would also be taking away your desire for marriage and that’s very likely part of his plan for your life. Pray for your future spouse and your relationship. Porn has already left marks on it and you may not have met the one yet. Understand as you pray to overcome pornography you are praying for patience. It is a struggle to not fantasize about sex, to not masturbate, to wait for what God has for you when He has it for you. Even if you met the one tomorrow you would still have to wait months or years to get married so a part of this prayer and fasting process must be praying for patience. Your choice is to suffer from all the effects of pornography or suffer in patience. But they are two different types of suffering pornography is suffering that makes you weaker, patience is suffering that makes you stronger and better and brings joy. As you fast pray that God would bring someone into your life that can help you with your struggle. You will never overcome this addiction without someone helping you bear your burden. Pray God brings someone into your life who you can trust enough to share this shame with. I know the shame you feel, pray for the courage to share it with someone else. Pray that God would make it clear who you should share this with. Ask God if you need to move someone else to find this person. You absolutely must obey Galations 6:1-2, but in that you must find a brother in Christ to obey it with you. You can not obey it by yourself. During the fast you do not watch tv, play video games, read comics, listen to secular music. The reason for this is for 3 days none of that stuff needs to be on your mind because after the three days is up I want you to pay close attention to what you watch, read, and listen to. What draws you to porn? I enjoy reading manga, one of my favorite mangas is “History’s Strongest Disciple” its funny, it has great action, but because of how the girls are dressed in the manga it draws me to porn. After my fast it was extremely obvious that it drew me that way so I got it out of my life. I used to enjoy watching several tv shows but after my fast it became very obvious what shows and movies drew me to porn and I began the process of getting them out of my life. I am a book reader, I love sci fi after my fast it became very obvious that some of my books drew me to porn so they had to go. There are many authors I used to read that I do not read now. Porn is anything that gets you to fantasize about sex. At this point though we are trying to get stuff out of our life that gets us to look at naked images or videos. We are starting to fix the biggest areas of our addiction. One of the things I cannot do is go to the beach. I cannot go there because I will lust after the women in bikinis and one piece swimsuits. Its not the mixed swimming it’s the mixed nudity that gets me. If I go to the beach I will go home and look at porn. And before you say I am just an uptight Christian or a prude consider this, One sit com made a joke about how the guys were going to the beach and then going into the water to masturbate while looking at the girls in swimsuits. If this is what the world says about the beach why should I go there? Anything that draws me to porn has got to go. If I can never read another comic book, go to the beach, or go on the internet again, so be it. Fasting shows me the way. |