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love&hate
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Posted: Tue Jul 24th, 2007 01:33 am |
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Hello all
So i am stuck in my cycle. For a week or so i am doing ok, i feel the presence of God in my life and i love it! Then after being tempted for a while I fall, do some hardcore P&M and then i regret what i have done (actually while doing it i regret it). So right now i want to stop from going back to the porn, i want to get to the repentance and feel God in my life again but how?
I pray or think about holy things or read the bible but for some reason it almost seems that i need a slap in the face or a shock of something for me to really feel repentance. You know to get to the stage of feeling remorse and sadness for what you have done instead of just realizing that it is wrong.
Any ideas? What brings you to real repentance?
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guitarist63
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Posted: Tue Jul 24th, 2007 02:02 am |
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Hi Love&Amp, sorry to hear about your struggle. The only way that I could feel repentent of my actions was to reflect long and hard on what Jesus did in dying for my sins. Reflecting upon his physical as well as his mental and spiritual sufferings that he endured in his last hours on this earth, so that I (we) could receive forgiveness for our sins who believe in Him. Psalm 51 is always (for me) a good way to focus on the need to have a right relationship with God. Verse 10 (New American Standard, p.585) "Create in me a clean heart O God..." Of course, we also believe as Christians that Christ was raised from the dead after three days and after appearing to the disciples and some others, was taken up into Heaven where He is seated at the right hand of God the Father, interceding for us - offering prayers for us. It's awesome to think that for more than 2000 years, Jesus has been praying for the saints. He has prayed and continues to pray for you.
It also helps me after sinning that I repent of it by coming to God in prayer, beginning with praise and thanks. That is so as to stop focusing on me which is part of the problem. Beginning with praise, focuses our hearts, minds, spirits on God and then we can confess our sins, repent and seek His forgiveness. It's hard to do that (to begin with praise) when the heart is heavy with the recent sin. I always find it difficult but we have to do that every time. Hope this helps. Guitarist63
Last edited on Tue Jul 24th, 2007 09:12 pm by guitarist63
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love&hate
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Posted: Tue Jul 24th, 2007 05:11 am |
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| Thx for the reply guitarist63. You are always here actively answering others peoples posts, thank you for that!
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TimM
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Posted: Tue Jul 24th, 2007 03:59 pm |
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I'll apologize in advance that I already wrote a lot this morning, and that this will be brief.
I spent many years praying alone to God for repentance. I really meant it very seriously, but in a deep way, it was still almost a game. I wanted something magic to happen, and I wanted a fantasy image of myself as a paradigm of repentance to become real. I ws earnest and I was desperate, but in a way I never really saw at the time, I still wasn't being honest.
If I want to get better, then I have to be willing to do whatever it takes to recover. For me, that means things like this:
I can't keep hiding my sin and asking God to do magic for me. I have to accept that I have messed up my life and that I have hurt the people around me and that I need a lot of help to get better. I have to be willing to do really uncomfortable things - to put myself under the care of a therapist, to be honest with my wife again and again day after day, to go sit in a church basement with a bunch of other addicts and to learn from them and follow their advice. I have to be willing to become a child and to do what others direct me to do, even if those others are people I never hoped to meet - people like psychotherapists and men who have done prison time for sex crimes. People like the wife with whom I was never willing to share my deepest self.
Repentance in Greek is metennoia - changing your mind. To repent, I have to be willing to change my mind about who I am, and I have to act in hard and concrete ways to learn to be a new person. I have to get really honest with a lot of people, and with God, and worst of all, with myself.
I have to be so desperate to get better and to change that I will do anything I need to do to make that happen. Even being weak and vulnerable and honest and trusting other people.
God's in there somewhere. I need to be honest with God and to trust God. But God put a lot of other sources of help and of love in my life, too: friends, and counselors and family and other addicts. If I really want to change my mind, I have to let those people help me too.
And you know, when I can really begin to do those things, they show me a way into a new world of joy.
Tim M.
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guitarist63
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Posted: Tue Jul 24th, 2007 09:18 pm |
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Glad that I can help a little, Love&Amp. Tim's added (a late welcome back Tim) a lot of very good advice (from personal experience) that I missed. That's because unlike Tim I haven't been to any 12-step group, although I do now have two accountability partners who I regularly e-mail. One sends me covenant eyes reports. I trust their honesty and they likewise trust me. Guitarist63
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Man
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Posted: Wed Jul 25th, 2007 02:23 am |
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love&hate wrote: Hello all
So i am stuck in my cycle. For a week or so i am doing ok, i feel the presence of God in my life and i love it! Then after being tempted for a while I fall, do some hardcore P&M and then i regret what i have done (actually while doing it i regret it). So right now i want to stop from going back to the porn, i want to get to the repentance and feel God in my life again but how?
I pray or think about holy things or read the bible but for some reason it almost seems that i need a slap in the face or a shock of something for me to really feel repentance. You know to get to the stage of feeling remorse and sadness for what you have done instead of just realizing that it is wrong.
Any ideas? What brings you to real repentance?
You ask for ideas: http://www.settingcaptivesfree.com
____________________
May the Lord bless you all!
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broken
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Posted: Wed Jul 25th, 2007 04:55 pm |
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TimM
Thank you for this post. It gives me some hope that my husband will get to this point as well. He prays and asks God to forgive him....but he hasnt used the tools that are there for him. I think the main reason he hasnt is that others would know this side of him. He wants people to respect him. ... wish he felt the same about me.
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TimM
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Posted: Wed Jul 25th, 2007 06:12 pm |
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broken,
I think there is fantastic hope when we eventually manage to hit bottom and look for help - when we finally give up and become teachable. I really relate to your husband's desire to be respected. For me and for lots of men, that's a huge issue. We project of images of what we are not and of what we wish to be, hiding all the time from what we are.
In the end, though, do I really gain by being respected for what I am not? My wife and kids and the close friends with whom I have shared my story respect me a lot more as an addict who can admit that fact and do everything I can to live a new life than they could ever respect me as a cold, distant, abusive, angry, and incomprehensible figure struggling to project a control I don't have. And by being able to accept my own weakness and my own sin and my own failure and my own addiction, I am becoming vastly more able to listen in empathy and to offer love and support to the students I work with who come to me having failed tests, having cheated on papers, having gotten in trouble with the police, or struggling with their own mental illnesses. Until I could face myself honestly, I couldn't always see these kids as people like me.
The respect of a kid who knows I am hearing them without judging and who hears that I am sharing with them out of my own experience and my own pain and my own struggles (which I neither explain and detail nor minimize) means an awful lot more than the respect gained by being an awesomely competent and distant and unapproachable icon of scholarship.
Facing and sharing myself was and is incredibly scary to me. But I have to walk into that fear, supported by friends, and running away at times when it's too much for me, if I am to hope to live a life of wholeness and health instead of addiction and isolation and deception and pain.
There is huge hope for recovery from this and from any addiction. It's also the hardest and most important thing most of us addicts will ever do.
Tim M.
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setfree2
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Posted: Mon Jul 30th, 2007 09:39 pm |
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TimM wrote: Hey Tim. I just quoted a few of your remarks that I wanted to address.
I still wasn't being honest. Yeah, you do need to be honest, to yourself: that you have sinned, to God: He already knows but wants you to tell him anyway, to your wife and any accountability partners you may have.
I can't keep hiding my sin and asking God to do magic for me. I have to be willing to do really uncomfortable things - to put myself under the care of a therapist, to be honest with my wife again and again day after day, to go sit in a church Where in the Bible does it say to repent and go see a therapist? You need to be God's word. It deals with everything/ sin that you may have done. Jesus told the women at that was caught in adultry and taken to him to condem to "go and sin no more" John 8:11 She said, "No one, Lord." And Jesus said, "Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more."]] I think you will find that is exactly what he is telling you.
____________________
IN HIS GRIP
kb
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TimM
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Posted: Tue Jul 31st, 2007 06:47 am |
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setfree2,
I'm glad we agree about honesty. I certainly agree that Christ's words to the woman taken in adultery apply to us all.
On the utility of psychology and other support programs, we probably need to accept that we are going to walk different paths. Of course the Bible doesn't tell me to get psychological counseling or go to 12-step meetings. Neither does it tell me to see a doctor when experiencing chest pains or seizures, but I did those things anyway, and I'm gratefully alive and free of seizures as a result. Similarly, I've found that through exploring myself with the help of a counselor and through working my program I am developing a much richer relationship with God, with other people, and with myself, and I am finding a new life of sobriety and joy. I'm not interested in giving those things up, though I appreciate your concern about the tools I am using.
I perfectly respect that other people may not need the tools that have benefited me, and that people like you or like the Christian Scientists would make different physical and mental health care decisions than I. That's why I try to take care to tell my own story rather than to map out a course for others. My apologies if I've seemed to be dictating a universal program for everybody. That's not my intent.
Again, thanks for the remarks. Apologies in advance if I'm being incoherent; it's way past my bedtime.
Tim M.
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love&hate
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Posted: Tue Jul 31st, 2007 03:20 pm |
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Thx for your replies Tim. I understand exactly where you are going with this and i appreciate you sharing it. You obeyed God and did what you felt was necessary to walk the path submission and healing. For you it may have been sin not to go to the 12 step meeting or counselling if that is the direction God was moving you.
I feel that we should explore all the options we have before us and than obey God if we feel that we are being led in a direction. Unfortunately not all of us have these options. I am thinking there are these 12 step programs only in large cities. Also Chrisitan counselling can be difficult to find as well. In our town their is one place that does this, for $75 an hour. That is kinda pricey. They did not even respond to my email for more information... maybe i need to pay them for that too i dunno.
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TimM
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Posted: Tue Jul 31st, 2007 09:23 pm |
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Love&Hate,
It's true that finding S fellowship 12-step meetings can be hard outside cities, but it's really a question of where meetings hapen to have gotten started - the luck of the draw. The city of 35,000 15 minutes from here doesn't have meetings, but a city of about half a million an hour from here has meetings almost every day of the week. It's worth looking at the web sites for listings. Go to
http://sexaa.org/
http://slaafws.org/
http://sca-recovery.org/
http://sa.org/
and follow the links to search for meetings. It's also worth phoning the closest meetings you can find. The people there may know closer meetings that aren't on the web pages.
If you can't find local meetings and you still want to explore this path, you can try the phone and on-line meetings. I have benefited a lot from the people at the meeting whose web page is
http://slaaonline.org/
It's also possible to attend open AA meetings (those open to non-alcoholics), to identify like "I'm Tim, and I'm an addict," and to listen. I've done that at times when I was unable to drive. There is often wonderful recovery there, but it may feel awkward.
You could also call local churches and mental health providers and see if there are other support meetings in the area. There is enough shame associated with our situation that meetings can sometimes exist but be hard to find.
On counseling, yeah the cost can be daunting. Some counselors accept payment on a sliding scale. If you have health insurance that includes mental health coverage, don't forget to factor that in, too. When I started out, I was too naive even to think of that possibility, but it turns out my insurance picks up 80% of the going rate here of $110/hour. Many insurance plans are less generous, though.
Depending on your own feelings and beliefs, you might also find it worth exploring counselors who don't bill themselves explicitly as Christian counselors. The person I see is not a Christian, but he is comfortable working with my religious understanding. In interviewing him on the phone before scheduling a first session, I was explicit in saying that part of my pain was feeling alienated from God, and that I wanted to be sure he was comfortable helping me work with that side of my pain. His immediate response was that he thought that the only way to work with addictions was from an approach that included some spiritual component, and that he was only able to work with me under that understanding. To me, this was a basis on which I was completely OK continuing. Of course, that's a personal matter; my spiritual eclecticism doesn't have to work for other people.
As always, none of these ramblings are intended to be prescriptive. I'm just throwing out possibilities for dealing with problems that often require some creativity to address in the face of limited resources and understanding.
Do well.
Tim M.
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Journey
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Posted: Wed Aug 1st, 2007 01:27 am |
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It was encouraging to read this thread. Love&, I so appreciate the question of how to come to repentance. I am currently reading a book called the Wounded Heart by Dan Allender. He says, basically, that we cannot manufacture repentance in our own strength, but we can prepare ourselves for God to do this work in our hearts by being honest in our brokenness, and asking God to work in our hearts.
I know that I tried many times to make myself repent and be good and turn from the fantasy and M and sometimes P, and I could stay away for so long, and then it was back to the same, a cycle, like you said.
Have you ever tried just asking God to teach you more about repentance? I'm thinking it may actually look different for each of us. What I am learning to do is humble myself before God. In my own experience, I may "feel" deep remorse or I may not. But I have returned to God in my heart, confessed my sin, and claimed His forgiveness and grace. This is very humbling. "God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble."
Regarding therapy, I so agree that God leads each person in the way He has for them. Isn't there room for therapy in the verse, "Confess your faults to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed?"
I grew up thinking that therapy was for people with mental illness, and that Christians had the Bible and that was all they needed. Over the years I asked for help about my problem several times from Christians who knew the Bible very well, but I got no help. I am so grateful that in our present church, when I asked for help, they did not look down on me. The counselor they referred me to didn't work out, though, so I kept praying and looking. And God has provided a wonderful counselor, and free of charge, which is so amazing to me. Sometimes I wonder why, even tho I started asking for help over 20 years ago, God has just now provided what it seems like I need, but I guess I'll just have to ask Him when we get to Heaven.
Well, I think I'm rambling, sorry. Thanks to all who comment on here, this is my support group right now as I have not found any in our area.
Journey
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Man
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Posted: Wed Aug 1st, 2007 07:27 am |
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I think that using therapy could be good. When people are ill, they can pray and/ or go to the doctor. The doctor might help. I think a therapist can help as well. He can see many of the emtional things that maybe other can't see. He is trained in that and there might be many things and emotions that are generally valid for people.
What if you don't go to the doctor because you think he/ she can't help because he/ she is not saved, you might sin if God has told you to go. And maybe the same with therapy. For some it could be God that calls them to normal therapy? So in this case I would think that people try to get people away from Gods plan. That means you must not allways listen to other people- They can try to get you away from the plan.
____________________
May the Lord bless you all!
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