Beating Porn Part 2
The only way you will overcome your addiction is through fasting AND counseling. If you are anything like me you have prayed and prayed and prayed that God would deliver you from this addiction. You have gone to the alter and tried to leave it there many times. Maybe you even wrote it on a piece of paper and left it at the alter. I have gone to Christian camp many times as a teenager and a councilor and tried to leave my addiction there. I have memorized many Bible verses like I Corinthians 10:13 and quoted to God that he said he would provide a way out. The truth is God has provided a way out of this addiction, its through spiritual counseling.
There are three types of sins. There is the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh and the pride of life. Pornography is a sin that deals with all three. You lust with your eyes when you look at a woman and lust after her in your heart. You lust with the flesh when your flesh screams out that it needs to masturbate. You have come to the place where you would gladly deal with those two types of sin in your life but you still have the pride of life. God says that if you are over taken in a fault those which are spiritual are to restore you (Galatians 6:1). How many years have you been addicted to pornography? You are overtaken in a fault, God commands those who are spiritual to restore you. But you are proud you do not want the people who can help you to know of your shame. Until you deal with your pride by sharing your shame with a Christian that can restore you, you will not be able to deal with the lust of the eyes or the lust of the flesh. Understanding that you have to have a councilor to help you overcome this addiction, you need to understand not everyone can be your councilor. First of all your parents probably should not be your councilor. When I first got addicted I did not think there was anything wrong reading about sex out of a text book, or one of james dobsons books. Nobody told me fantasizing about sex was wrong. My mom got me james dobsons book to help me with going through puberty apparently (I did not ask for it). But that led to masturbation and that led to me looking at nude art work. My mom believed that nude art work was bad so when I told her that I had looked at it, there was no council just punishment. I was grounded. Unfortunately parents are likely to treat you like a misbehaving 2 year old instead of a young adult with an addiction. Parents reflexively want to keep you from putting your finger in the electric socket or keep you from climbing the shelves or doing something that will hurt you. Regardless of the addiction, it could be drugs, alcohol or porn your parents are more likely to view you as being disobedient than an addict that needs help. Punishment doesn’t really help you because it hurts you more when you don’t partake of your addiction than whatever they do to you. You have an addiction now you are broken but they can not see that, because it is your heart and mind that are broken, and generally as long as you do not look hurt they will want to act like everything is okay. Once you are being counseled for this addiction it may be wise for your councilor and you to sit down with your parents and talk about your boundaries as you begin the healing process. But that should be seriously discussed with your councilor. One of the reasons why you should not consider your parents for councilors is that when you are old enough to be addicted to pornography it is a time in your life where you are designed to begin pulling away from your parents. Anyone who councils you on overcoming your pornography is going to become extremely close to you. If you are being counseled by your parents you will be naturally pulling away from them but because of the council be drawn toward them and that will lead to some problems. A girlfriend should not be your councilor. It is highly inappropriate to discuss this addiction with her. The very nature of the conversation is extremely sexual and will lead you two to sin. A friend who is also currently struggling with looking at pornography should not be your council, as these highly sexualized conversations will likely lead both of you back into porn. In fact I would suggest you not confide in a friend at all. This confession will lead you to being submissive to whomever you confess to and a close friend just is not in a position to be what you need here. I recommend against going to a group and confessing this. That may be wise for a married man who can be far more discreet about the intimate part of his life in a group setting but he can be very explicate with his wife about what he is going through. As a single you will find a need to be very explicate with your councilor about what you are going through and a group setting is a bad place for that. Someone who is too busy cannot be your councilor. As you seek council for your porn addiction you need to understand that as you gain victory over your addiction your flesh will tempt you with lots and lots of things over the next few months to get you back into this addiction. As you face new temptation week after week you will need to constantly share your struggle with your councilor so that they can help you bear your burden. Its very possible your pastor, Sunday school teacher, Bible college professor, high school teacher, etc that you feel trusty worthy enough to share this with is to busy to council you in the way you need to be counseled. When I was in Bible college I shared my addiction with one of my professors and I never received any counseling after that. Truth be told he was too busy to help me the way I needed to be helped. 7 years later I go to a new church and the pastor of the church has the time to help me with my addiction. I did not realize when I first shared my struggle with him how often I would need to share my struggle with him because honestly my flesh attacked me several different ways every week for three months. If he was not gracious with his time I would not have been able to overcome my addiction. I would suggest you seek counseling from someone you look up to and are already in a way submissive to. This could be a pastor, Sunday school teacher, deacon, or just a man in the church you look up to. Galations 6:1 is clear that those who are spiritual are supposed to restore you. Who do you know that is spiritual that you look up to, that you can submit yourself to? I do not encourage you to go up to someone you think is spiritual and just blurt out your addiction to them. I would strongly encourage you to begin sharing far less personal burdens with them. Find out if they have the time to help you with a much less sensitive fault. Find out if they keep it between you two or do they share everything you say. Find out if they give you Godly council and advice. Take a month or two and feel out this person. If you already have someone you can share your burden of an addiction with (galations 6:2 james 5:17) great, but if not pray about it and when you feel this person will help you with your addiction ask them for counseling in private. Then share your heartache with them. Be honest, you look at porn because your heart is wicked. You look through porn for hours looking for something that may satisfy you for the moment. Let them know your story about how you became addicted to porn. Tell them what you are cutting out of your life because it draws you to porn. Let him council and give you personal advice. I use the word council here instead of accountability partner because my pastor counseled me, he was never really in a position to keep me accountable. Many people put software on their computer and phone that sends their accountability partner every web site they have visited. It helps them stay right, and if that’s what you need to do let your councilor know that he needs to keep you accountable. For me that would not have worked because so much of my addiction revolved around watching rated r movies, I can go to a redbox pick up a movie play it on my tv and no software would have ever told him. I would have been very tempted to figure ways around the software on my computer or phone. What I needed was council and support and someone to help me bear my burden as my flesh continually shifted it around. One of the things you really need to pray about is whether or not you need council or an accountability partner. One of the things that I found helpful was that I could talk to my pastor privately face to face most Sundays and Wednesdays so as I begun overcoming my addiction when I faced a hard day I could always tell myself one or two or at the most three more days until I can tell my pastor about this struggle. It gave me an amazing amount of strength just thinking about how in another day my pastor would help me lift my burden. I want to be clear here. This council is not so that you can tell him how you looked up porn on the internet, or that you looked at a dirty magazine or watched a bad movie, if you do that you will really need to sit down and discuss some hard core decisions on how to overcome this sin. This council is to help you deal with how your mind is going to attack you, he needs to know so he can pray with you and offer you some advice. Besides it’s a great relief to share this stress with someone. Furthermore this council is to let him know that you stumbled into something that drew you to porn. Go ahead and let him know you were watching a tv show and they had a scene that made you want to look at porn, and now you have a struggle with your flesh because you want to watch that show because its interesting but it draws you to porn. Same thing with books, magazines, video games, going to the beach, whatever. If you do something that draws you to porn, that causes you to fantasize about sex, your councilor needs to know and you need to sit down and talk about how you are not going to let that in your life anymore. You will need to have many serious discussions not just about how you are turning away from porn but from all the many things that makes you want to seek porn. You will need to have serious discussions about how different people, and places are throwing this stuff at you constantly. James 5:16 says Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. Over the course of overcoming your addiction you will discover more and more faults in your life. Confess those faults to your councilor and in that you will be healed. Confessing one time will not heal you. You will find that over the course of months you have more things to confess than you ever thought possible and as those things come up in your mind and life as you confess them you will begin to heal in your life. I would like to note that James 5:17 tells us about Elijah and how his prayer resulted in a drought for 3 and a half years. That drought brought healing to the land of Israel, but it took years. It could easily take years of confessing and counseling to heal you. As you go about preparing to confess to receive this healing please note that most of your confessions will involve five or ten minute conversations. Sure the first two or three will be long conversations as you give as much of your past to your spiritual councilor as possible but as you overcome this addiction new facets of this addiction will become obvious to you but it will not take too long to confess those new facets to your spiritual councilor. As you confess you will find that the confession doesn’t so much heal those parts as your life but sheds light on a dark place in your life which takes away a lot of the strength from your sin. Once your sin looses power because you confessed then healing begins. Please note that healing will take a lot of time. In the next few months you will become extremely close with this man who you share this burden with. If you ever wondered why God never took this porn addiction away from you I would like to suggest that it is God’s will that you get that close to a Christian brother. Mentorship is a significant part of the new testament church and perhaps without this porn addiction you would never have been forced to find a mentor. Even in the misery of a porn addiction God intends something good to come out of it. As this man becomes your mentor you may be worried about getting to close. The first june that comes by you will be tempted to give him a fathers day card, by the time the second june comes by you will be so close that you will give this man a fathers day card. It’s okay. I Timothy, II Timothy, Titus and Philemon start off with Paul calling several young men in the faith his sons. I Thessalonians 2:11 says that paul treated that church like a father does his children. Getting so close to a man that he becomes a father to you is appropriate and if you study the subject in the new testament it appears to almost be a necessity. If you are unsure how to be this close to someone I highly recommend the book “The Seven Levels of Intimacy” by Matthew Kelly This book does a wonderful job of explaining how to develop intimacy. According to this guy sharing your problems is level 6 of 7 levels of intimacy and he clearly explains how to develop a relationship up to the point where you can share your problems. I started reading this book after I confessed my sin but it still helped a lot in allowing me to grow closer to my pastor at a time when I needed to be close to him. To be honest I picked up this book because it said that intimacy is not sex. I needed to know about that kind of intimacy. |