Siege Warfare
In this battle against porn I can not think of a better picture than a siege.
In times long past cities would have thick walls, motes, towers, and lots and lots of food supply to protect against armies. If a city had a good enough defense it would often take years for an army to capture the city. They had to starve them out.
Many times in antiquity a single city would rebel and the nation would have to recapture one of its own cities. That is what you are faced with. You have many parts of you, but the libido part of you has rebelled and likely rebelled for years. Not necessarily against you, but against God.
When you became a Christian you stopped being your own and became his. Every part of you needs to obey God, and your libido does not want to. God’s Word says not to lust after women (Matthew 5:28) and your flesh looks at porn and wants to look at porn and fantasize about sex. But you have to enforce God’s rule in your flesh. So you have to perform a siege against it.
We are not doing this siege so we can burn down a city and kill all of its inhabitants. We are not trying to neuter you so you never have sexual feelings again. But we recognize God made sex to bring you closer to your wife than anything else in the world can. And although you are not yet married, porn is destroying the purpose of your libido. I would encourage you to go online and read the comments under the articles about how porn destroys marriages, and see women complaining how they haven’t had sex with their husband in YEARS because of porn.
Because this city is not doing what it was constructed to do we are going to start a siege campaign. Siege campaigns all start the same way. You burn all the farms, food supply, and kill all the food animals. You divert all the rivers and streams going into the city you are sieging. Your goal is to starve them.
As stated in the fasting section on this website, your first goal is to get rid of anything that draws you to porn. We recognize what feeds this addiction by fasting. Once you remove one of the things that draws you to porn you remove one of the food sources from your libido in this siege.
During the early stages of all sieges the city defenders would contest the army doing the siege. If they could make it too costly to attack them then the siege would end and they could get right back to how everything has always been. So what if a farm is destroyed, one farm can easily be replaced. So what if a canal has been damaged, cost of doing business.
I know your heart on this matter, you are hoping that as you take down one of the things that draws you to porn, or a few of the things that draws you to porn that you will stop looking at it and overcome it. I know how frustrating it is to get something out of your life that you know draws you to porn only to have your flesh contest your decision and you look at porn anyway. I know how depressing it is to get rid of several things that draw you to porn and still you look at porn anyway. Your libido is going to contest every farm you destroy, every irrigation systems you break, every river you divert.
But everything you destroy that feeds the libido weakens it. Sieges are all about time. Has the libido stored enough porn in its fortress to out wait your siege, or have you destroyed enough of its farmland that you can starve your libido out? Losing to porn is expected at the farm burning stage of the siege. But sieges are not just about burning farms and diverting rivers.
The first part of the siege is all about raiders destroying farms, irrigation, food supply, and water supply. Some raiders win, some loose. We are not expecting victory here. We are only cutting off as much food supply as possible so that the city starves faster. A hungry libido can fight you really well. A starving libido does not have the strength to fight you.
The second part of the siege is surrounding the city. The purpose here is not to storm the city walls and get a quick victory, the purpose here is to starve the city into submission. It turns from raiding food supply to bottling everything up. Whatever they have in the city, that’s it, they will use it up in a matter of months or years. Of course those inside the city know they are in a bad situation so they will do everything they can to smuggle more food inside the city, or redirect the water sources back to the city. Or even try to get another army to help them break the siege.
This is the part of the siege on your libido where you confess your sin to someone spiritual (Galatians 6:1-2 James 5:17) and they in effect help you besiege your libido. A siege is only effective when those besieging the city outnumber those in the city.
If you do not trust anyone enough to reveal your sin to them today, that is fine. Today or this week begin building a relationship with someone you consider very Godly so that in a few weeks or months you can confess your sin to them so they can help you besiege your libido. Until you confess your sin, you are not in a place to surround the city, you are not out numbering your opponent. But until you are in a place to where you can confess your sin destroy anything feeding your libido. Its okay if this process takes a couple of months. It did for me.
Once the city was surrounded anything going to the city would die, anything leaving the city would die. At times things would get through but over time they would become less and less. Once you confess your sin and they begin to counsel you, you will immeditly see victories over this sin that you have never had before. But as you are totally starving your libido, its hunger gives it strength at first, a type of desperate strength. It will fight you harder than its ever fought you before. But as the weeks and months pass its hunger will turn into starvation, which will supremely weaken it. But you have to starve it and that takes time.
This is a time to be careful. On one hand you have destroyed many sources that feed your libido. On the other hand if it gets fed at all and you look at porn you will be tempted to give up the siege. Don’t give up the siege. I strongly encourage you to write down the things you have given up to fight this battle. I strongly encourage you to weekly write down how the flesh has tempted you, because even if you mess up and are tempted to go back to the previous life, once you see the 10,20,30 things you have given up, and recognize once you give up only one more thing this siege will be complete it will encourage you and your counselor to shore up your defenses and finish the siege.
As time goes on and a siege went from days, to weeks, to months, to years the besieging armies would build walls around the walled city to make sure the nothing could reach the city, that there was no escape for those in the city, and that in the off chance those in the city decided to perform a desperate attack then the besiegers would be protected.
This is what you are essentially doing with your councilor. You are building walls around your libido. Some of those walls are started before you confess your sins. When you add things to your schedule, or exercise. Some of those walls will be started by your councilors advice. The purpose of the wall is to not give your flesh the ability to sin. Perhaps you need a computer program to report everywhere you go online, perhaps you can not go to the beach, perhaps you have to learn to always look at womens faces and stop checking them out. All of these are walls.
So whats the end game to the siege? In a normal siege the end game is for the city to submit, in our end game it is for our flesh particularly our libido to submit to God. The thing is though that in a normal siege once the city submits those outer walls come down, but for us those walls will never come down. Those walls are preparing us for the exclusivity of marriage , but once married those walls have got to stay up.
God is not telling us to not lust after women because he just wants us to do very hard things. God designed marriage, and if you are like me you really really want to be married, and its God who put that desire in your heart. As we force our libido to submit to God, God has a plan that has to do with the exclusivity of marriage.
I Corinthians 7:3-5 describes the exclusivity of marriage “Let the husband render unto the wife due benevolence: and likewise also the wife unto the husband. The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband: and likewise also the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife. Defraud ye not one the other, except it be with consent for a time, that ye may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again, that Satan tempt you not for your incontinency.”
Its easy to sit here and say the exclusivity of marriage means no adultery. The world gets upset when you take this verse of scripture and points out that it also means that because you cannot have sex with someone else then both parties have to be unselfish and meet the needs of their partner. But the number one need a woman has is security. If you ever look at porn as a married you will never be able to meet you wifes sexual need because you will make her feel insecure.
I feel that I have defrauded my future wife enough with what I have seen and heard. I am very heartbroken over that. Everything that leads to porn is gone out of my life and that will extend to marriage my libido is permanently walled off.
Understanding that my libido is walled off for the exclusivity of my future marriage does mean that one day when I am engaged I will begin to build a gate on that wall for the exclusive use of my spouse. In many ways I am preparing for that wall building exercise by writing down how I got involved in pornography, what things I had to take out of my life, the different pains I endured during the withdraws, getting emotionally and spiritually intimate with my councilor. After the engagement starts I plan on sharing with her my past, to ask forgiveness and letting her know I will never look at porn again. She will be the exclusive woman I look at.
I must let her know this because the wall has got to stay up. I know personally I can not have Netflix in my house. I know personally I can not go to the beach. I know God expects me as a husband to only ever look at my wife but to do that there will be several things not allowed in our home.
God gave me a libido to exclusively draw me closer to my wife one day. It is meant to only be fed by her. But as a single I have allowed it to feed on anything and everything. But I am starving it now.
Consider this if a man is having sex with a bunch of women, looking at porn, going to strip clubs, doing all sorts of sexual sins, and he gets married what does his wife become? She becomes his ball and chain. But if you got a man who is either a virgin or abstinent until he gets married, does not look at porn, does not check out women, tries not to let his mind wander into sexual fantasy and he gets married what does his wife become? His wife is sexual freedom.
You got guys thinking that they will get married and that’s how they will get porn out of their life, but the truth is that their wife is going to be their ball and chain. She will restrict him from looking at porn. But if a guy gets porn out of his life and then gets married especially if its more than a year after he kicks the porn addiction his wife is freedom.
That’s what this siege is about. Freedom God’s way. Gods plan is that while you are single you restrain yourself so that while you are married you are a free man. But if you are like me and you have failed at restraining yourself let the siege begin.
In times long past cities would have thick walls, motes, towers, and lots and lots of food supply to protect against armies. If a city had a good enough defense it would often take years for an army to capture the city. They had to starve them out.
Many times in antiquity a single city would rebel and the nation would have to recapture one of its own cities. That is what you are faced with. You have many parts of you, but the libido part of you has rebelled and likely rebelled for years. Not necessarily against you, but against God.
When you became a Christian you stopped being your own and became his. Every part of you needs to obey God, and your libido does not want to. God’s Word says not to lust after women (Matthew 5:28) and your flesh looks at porn and wants to look at porn and fantasize about sex. But you have to enforce God’s rule in your flesh. So you have to perform a siege against it.
We are not doing this siege so we can burn down a city and kill all of its inhabitants. We are not trying to neuter you so you never have sexual feelings again. But we recognize God made sex to bring you closer to your wife than anything else in the world can. And although you are not yet married, porn is destroying the purpose of your libido. I would encourage you to go online and read the comments under the articles about how porn destroys marriages, and see women complaining how they haven’t had sex with their husband in YEARS because of porn.
Because this city is not doing what it was constructed to do we are going to start a siege campaign. Siege campaigns all start the same way. You burn all the farms, food supply, and kill all the food animals. You divert all the rivers and streams going into the city you are sieging. Your goal is to starve them.
As stated in the fasting section on this website, your first goal is to get rid of anything that draws you to porn. We recognize what feeds this addiction by fasting. Once you remove one of the things that draws you to porn you remove one of the food sources from your libido in this siege.
During the early stages of all sieges the city defenders would contest the army doing the siege. If they could make it too costly to attack them then the siege would end and they could get right back to how everything has always been. So what if a farm is destroyed, one farm can easily be replaced. So what if a canal has been damaged, cost of doing business.
I know your heart on this matter, you are hoping that as you take down one of the things that draws you to porn, or a few of the things that draws you to porn that you will stop looking at it and overcome it. I know how frustrating it is to get something out of your life that you know draws you to porn only to have your flesh contest your decision and you look at porn anyway. I know how depressing it is to get rid of several things that draw you to porn and still you look at porn anyway. Your libido is going to contest every farm you destroy, every irrigation systems you break, every river you divert.
But everything you destroy that feeds the libido weakens it. Sieges are all about time. Has the libido stored enough porn in its fortress to out wait your siege, or have you destroyed enough of its farmland that you can starve your libido out? Losing to porn is expected at the farm burning stage of the siege. But sieges are not just about burning farms and diverting rivers.
The first part of the siege is all about raiders destroying farms, irrigation, food supply, and water supply. Some raiders win, some loose. We are not expecting victory here. We are only cutting off as much food supply as possible so that the city starves faster. A hungry libido can fight you really well. A starving libido does not have the strength to fight you.
The second part of the siege is surrounding the city. The purpose here is not to storm the city walls and get a quick victory, the purpose here is to starve the city into submission. It turns from raiding food supply to bottling everything up. Whatever they have in the city, that’s it, they will use it up in a matter of months or years. Of course those inside the city know they are in a bad situation so they will do everything they can to smuggle more food inside the city, or redirect the water sources back to the city. Or even try to get another army to help them break the siege.
This is the part of the siege on your libido where you confess your sin to someone spiritual (Galatians 6:1-2 James 5:17) and they in effect help you besiege your libido. A siege is only effective when those besieging the city outnumber those in the city.
If you do not trust anyone enough to reveal your sin to them today, that is fine. Today or this week begin building a relationship with someone you consider very Godly so that in a few weeks or months you can confess your sin to them so they can help you besiege your libido. Until you confess your sin, you are not in a place to surround the city, you are not out numbering your opponent. But until you are in a place to where you can confess your sin destroy anything feeding your libido. Its okay if this process takes a couple of months. It did for me.
Once the city was surrounded anything going to the city would die, anything leaving the city would die. At times things would get through but over time they would become less and less. Once you confess your sin and they begin to counsel you, you will immeditly see victories over this sin that you have never had before. But as you are totally starving your libido, its hunger gives it strength at first, a type of desperate strength. It will fight you harder than its ever fought you before. But as the weeks and months pass its hunger will turn into starvation, which will supremely weaken it. But you have to starve it and that takes time.
This is a time to be careful. On one hand you have destroyed many sources that feed your libido. On the other hand if it gets fed at all and you look at porn you will be tempted to give up the siege. Don’t give up the siege. I strongly encourage you to write down the things you have given up to fight this battle. I strongly encourage you to weekly write down how the flesh has tempted you, because even if you mess up and are tempted to go back to the previous life, once you see the 10,20,30 things you have given up, and recognize once you give up only one more thing this siege will be complete it will encourage you and your counselor to shore up your defenses and finish the siege.
As time goes on and a siege went from days, to weeks, to months, to years the besieging armies would build walls around the walled city to make sure the nothing could reach the city, that there was no escape for those in the city, and that in the off chance those in the city decided to perform a desperate attack then the besiegers would be protected.
This is what you are essentially doing with your councilor. You are building walls around your libido. Some of those walls are started before you confess your sins. When you add things to your schedule, or exercise. Some of those walls will be started by your councilors advice. The purpose of the wall is to not give your flesh the ability to sin. Perhaps you need a computer program to report everywhere you go online, perhaps you can not go to the beach, perhaps you have to learn to always look at womens faces and stop checking them out. All of these are walls.
So whats the end game to the siege? In a normal siege the end game is for the city to submit, in our end game it is for our flesh particularly our libido to submit to God. The thing is though that in a normal siege once the city submits those outer walls come down, but for us those walls will never come down. Those walls are preparing us for the exclusivity of marriage , but once married those walls have got to stay up.
God is not telling us to not lust after women because he just wants us to do very hard things. God designed marriage, and if you are like me you really really want to be married, and its God who put that desire in your heart. As we force our libido to submit to God, God has a plan that has to do with the exclusivity of marriage.
I Corinthians 7:3-5 describes the exclusivity of marriage “Let the husband render unto the wife due benevolence: and likewise also the wife unto the husband. The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband: and likewise also the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife. Defraud ye not one the other, except it be with consent for a time, that ye may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again, that Satan tempt you not for your incontinency.”
Its easy to sit here and say the exclusivity of marriage means no adultery. The world gets upset when you take this verse of scripture and points out that it also means that because you cannot have sex with someone else then both parties have to be unselfish and meet the needs of their partner. But the number one need a woman has is security. If you ever look at porn as a married you will never be able to meet you wifes sexual need because you will make her feel insecure.
I feel that I have defrauded my future wife enough with what I have seen and heard. I am very heartbroken over that. Everything that leads to porn is gone out of my life and that will extend to marriage my libido is permanently walled off.
Understanding that my libido is walled off for the exclusivity of my future marriage does mean that one day when I am engaged I will begin to build a gate on that wall for the exclusive use of my spouse. In many ways I am preparing for that wall building exercise by writing down how I got involved in pornography, what things I had to take out of my life, the different pains I endured during the withdraws, getting emotionally and spiritually intimate with my councilor. After the engagement starts I plan on sharing with her my past, to ask forgiveness and letting her know I will never look at porn again. She will be the exclusive woman I look at.
I must let her know this because the wall has got to stay up. I know personally I can not have Netflix in my house. I know personally I can not go to the beach. I know God expects me as a husband to only ever look at my wife but to do that there will be several things not allowed in our home.
God gave me a libido to exclusively draw me closer to my wife one day. It is meant to only be fed by her. But as a single I have allowed it to feed on anything and everything. But I am starving it now.
Consider this if a man is having sex with a bunch of women, looking at porn, going to strip clubs, doing all sorts of sexual sins, and he gets married what does his wife become? She becomes his ball and chain. But if you got a man who is either a virgin or abstinent until he gets married, does not look at porn, does not check out women, tries not to let his mind wander into sexual fantasy and he gets married what does his wife become? His wife is sexual freedom.
You got guys thinking that they will get married and that’s how they will get porn out of their life, but the truth is that their wife is going to be their ball and chain. She will restrict him from looking at porn. But if a guy gets porn out of his life and then gets married especially if its more than a year after he kicks the porn addiction his wife is freedom.
That’s what this siege is about. Freedom God’s way. Gods plan is that while you are single you restrain yourself so that while you are married you are a free man. But if you are like me and you have failed at restraining yourself let the siege begin.