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buckets24
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Posted: Sat Dec 1st, 2007 05:58 am |
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| To live in continual purity in my mid 20's is really tough so please give suggestions. I've been struggling off and on with internet porn for years, even after becoming saved. Is there any lasting freedom because I'm almost ready to stop fighting but the Holy Spirit wont let me. I've fought, prayed, fasted, bought books, programs etc. I have CE on my computer and it still doesn't stop me at times. I know its going to take drastic measures but I don't know where to start. This will destroy my life, marriage, and calling to live pure before the Lord if not dealt with. I'm really just venting because I like this site. I've read all the pages and there good stuff. I guess I'm tired of it and I know its the haven't accepted grace experientially. that was good when I read that. I hate to use the father wasn't home when I was a kid thing but your article made me wonder. I'm at rock bottom emotionally and spiritually and I know I can't lead my wife like this. She's supportive but I'm sure it wears her thin. I have accoutability friends and everything but somethings missing. In my job, I will be away from my wife some and I want myself and her to trust that I will walk in integrity when it comes to this because I don't want it leading to other things. Any advice, encouragement will help. I'm really needing something real and effective that will allow this "Berlin" wall in my life broken down so I can be more intimate with Christ. Thanks again.
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guitarist63
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Posted: Sat Dec 1st, 2007 10:53 am |
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Welcome Buckets24
You appear to have tried a lot more things than I have so I am really not qualified to advise you as to how you can overcome this.
A lot of prayer should help.
You have to hate the sin. If you still treasure it, any aspect of it, you will not get free from it with all the accountability, CD, audio, book resources, conferences, in the world. At the end of the day it's just you and Him and your sin.
I have found great help in the penitential Psalms (51, 130, etc.). Especially 51. If you let that Psalm touch your heart then I think you'll be much closer to turning the corner with your sin.
Last edited on Sat Dec 1st, 2007 04:32 pm by guitarist63
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TimM
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Posted: Sat Dec 1st, 2007 02:15 pm |
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Welcome, buckets24!
Probably none of this is anything new if you have already done a lot of reading and work with others, but here is my experience.
For me, addiction is really about fear and isolation - isolation from others, isolation from God, and isolation from myself. I didn't know this when I started into recovery. I thought I wasn't really afraid of anything. It turned out, though, that I was filled with things I couldn't bear to face about myself, couldn't bear to show to others, couldn't bear to turn over and trust to God. And so I hid in fear and in pain and in addiction, hiding even the fear and the pain from myself.
Part of what helped me understand this dynamic in myself was reading things you've probably already encountered, particularly the works of Patrick Carnes and the big book "Alcoholics Anonymous".
At bottom, what is helping me find both sobriety and new life is cultivating surrender and trust instead of isolation and fear, working to be truly open to God and to other people and to myself.
For me, there is a lot more to that than simple accountability. Of course I have to confess my sins to God and to other people. But also, I have to be willing to look deep inside myself, walking into the fear with gentleness and acceptance, learning from what I find, and reporting it out honestly to others. I have to understand what has led me to hide and to isolate, I have to find what the real needs are that are being covered by that isolation and addiction, and I have to lovingly reunite the parts of myself that have been torn off and hidden in fear and shame.
For me, the 12-step program has been a hugely important part of that enterprise. It has offered me a framework in which to look inside myself and to address the fears and defects and guilt and shame that keep me walled up inside. It has brought me into contact with other people in a deep way. It has shown me that people do find sobriety and freedom every day. It has helped me meet people who really trust God with a profound faith I had never thought possible. It has started me down a path of faith and trust and connection with other people and honesty with myself and new life.
I've also found counseling extremely important as a way to begin to know what I am feeling and as a way to open up more parts of myself that are hidden from me and as a way to encourage me to walk calmly and faithfully through the world in awareness instead of in denial.
And of course, behind all this, but enabled by trusting other people, it is the beginnings of real surrender to God that allows me to turn over to Him the temptations that have always been too strong for me.
That's a very quick outline of the last 3 years of my life, and of the 30 years of active addiction that preceded it.
For me, admitting weakness and surrendering instead of continuing to fight is critical; and to me, deep sharing of all parts of ourselves and deep communion with God, with others, and with ourselves is essential.
If your sharing has been too narrowly focused on your addiction, you might try seeing what happens if you open up more widely. If there are things you can identify that still seem too scary to do, you might try doing them and seeing what happens. If you haven't tried things like really taking counseling seriously or like attending 12-step meetings and getting a sponsor and seriously working the steps, you might see what would happen if you did.
For me, the discovery within the program that ordinary people in the thousands were really trusting God and really facing themselves and really being honest with one another, and that this process was not only keeping them sober but also restoring communion with God, fellowship with other humans, and peace with themselves, seemed like the greatest hope anyone could have offered me. That project and its ramifications are still what is bringing me both sobriety and new growth and serenity and joy now, uowards ot 2 years down the road.
As I say, that's only my experience. There may be nothing here you haven't tried. I'm also more than twice your age, and my background of more than 40 years of pain puts me in a different starting place than you. It's great you are beginning now. I hope you can find a way to peace that avoids the 30 years of hell that were apparently a prerequisite for me.
Keep coming back!
Tim M.
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buckets24
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Posted: Sat Dec 1st, 2007 05:35 pm |
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| Thanks to all that responded to my blog. My spirit and emotions feel very raw and yes, I've heard a lot of things both of you have said. Honestly, I feel that God hates me because I do these things and I'm not sure He has the patience to tolerate this wickedness. After all, I'm tired to asking for forgiveness and doing it all over again. What is the root to my problem and how do I dig deep enough to face it. Its kind of scary to find out what's in there(heart). I struggle with how much He loves me honestly. Is there any one that has been where I am and now lives in freedom that will walk me through this. I mean daily accountability until the Holy Spirit builds my inner man enough to where I can learn how to walk. Right now I'm barely crawling. The enemy is planting thoughts about me being saved. I sometimes wonder am I really born again but I really do hate the things that I do like Paul said in Romans. Not because I've gotten caught because I haven't. But it saddens the heart of Him to gave His life for me. I understand the consequences and that's why I'm coming here so if anybody is willing to give up their time and "disciple" me in this area, its appreciated. I hope I made sense with what I said because I'm really being honest and it might sound like a bunch of mumbo jumbo. Until next time.
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TimM
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Posted: Sat Dec 1st, 2007 06:10 pm |
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buckets24,
I certainly relate to the belief that God hates me. By the end of my time as an active addict, all I thought I knew about God was that He was demanding me to do things I couldn't do. I absolutely felt hated by God, and I found myself looking for other religions and wishing I could convince myself that God didn't exist. All that was a wrong understanding, of course, but all that was very real in my heart.
You say it's sort of scary to look deep. For me it's not sort of scary. For me, there's a raw, elemental dread of knowing myself that I ran from all my life. "Sort of scary" doesn't begin to touch it.
But feeling that fear is feeling something. Embracing that fear as a teacher is touching something deep and real and critically important inside myself. Those fears and things I don't want to do are precisely the things it's critical to me to walk toward and to take up if I am to become well.
I'm really persuaded that addiction is very much about isolation. That means I'm really persuaded that a critical part of getting out is to learn to meet and share with other people as whole human beings. The best person to guide you through recovery is someone you can actually meet as a real human in the flesh, not a source of disembodied text on a screen. For me, those guides have been fellow addicts who really know what addiction is like from the inside, and they have been professional counselors who have the expertise to help direct the deep personal exploration that I personally need, and they have been people close to me personally who can share their love and with whom I am demanded to be honest. I've found those guides in 12-step meetings and within my family and by finding the right professionals.
What sorts of people are you confiding in now? Are there possibilities of finding additional professional help or additional support groups in your area, or of using the support people you have in deeper ways? Your notion of finding others to work with is really good and really important. How can you put it into practice?
Tim M.
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truthseeker
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Posted: Sat Dec 1st, 2007 06:43 pm |
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Hi buckets24,
"I'm not sure He has the patience to tolerate this wickedness."
Psalms 86, 103, and 145 speak of God's love and faithfulness, and being slow to anger.
Praying for you...
TruthSeeker
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guitarist63
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Posted: Sat Dec 1st, 2007 07:36 pm |
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Buckets24,
I relate to what you say about hating yourself because of the continual falls into this sin.
I hated myself for sin a lot - not just sexual sins. I did some wicked things as a child of 8-16, for example, that had nothing to do with sex. So when a Christian told me at 16 that I was going to Hell, I believed it because I had a deep conviction of the evil I had committed. Of course, I was going to Hell on the end of a poker anyway because I did not know Jesus as my Saviour.
There was a time in the last twenty years or so when I developed a hardness of heart so that I compartmentalized my sinful, secret life, and shut down any emotions of guilt so for a time, I deliberately did not make myself feel bad about the sins I was committing. My testimony as a Christian is a rocky one. I started with joy at hearing the Word at the age of 16, then the trials of life choked the faith, the joy that I had until last year, I had reached the lowest ebb and had also managed (in my estimation) to scour the depths of human depravity.
I have been going through a year of repentance, of grief for sin, of brokeness and out of this has come a new joy. A growing love for Jesus Christ and a revelation of His love for me. So I no longer hate myself for all those sins but I accept that Christ is changing me into the "new man" and that this is a gradual process, not an instant one. I have sinned since this change in my heart but the pornography that once dominated my life is gone, and the desire to look at it. God has enabled me to hate it but not myself.
It's not only counterproductive to hate yourself but it is doing that which is contrary to what God wants you to be. He wants you to love yourself. You need your self-esteem restored so I'd pray for that and also to receive His love and accept that He loves you, in spite of your sin.
There is an old Wesley hymn that has a line in it, "His blood can make the foulest clean." So your pile of sins are not too great for God to forgive. Isaiah 59, verse 1 says, "Behold, the Lord's hand is not so short that it cannot save; neither is His ear so dull that it cannot hear." I know the next verse is contrasted with this, verse 2, "But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He does not hear." If you repent of your sins, and confess with a broken heart, He will forgive you. Psalm 51, verse 17 "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise."
Psalm 103 - verse 10 "He has not dealt with us according to our sins, nor rewarded us according to our iniquities. V.11 For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is His lovingkindness toward those who fear Him. V.12 As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us."
If you think of Jesus, arms outstretched on the cross for your sins, think of one arm representing east, the other west. Think of that and how much God's love embraces even you and how far He has removed your sins from you.
I also find the parable of the two debtors has taught me that the one who has the greatest debt (that God cancels) is the one who loves God the most. So know that if you have repented and confessed your sins, He has cancelled out your huge debt of sin and you should receive His forgiveness, His peace in your heart. The passage is in Luke, Chapter 7, verses 36-48. I have given verses prior to the actual telling of the parable because it needs to be read in the context of the woman with the alabastar vial of perfume.
Last edited on Sat Dec 1st, 2007 09:21 pm by guitarist63
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Seeking God
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Posted: Mon Dec 3rd, 2007 02:12 am |
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Bucket 24,
Welcome, thank you for sharing with us here. In a way, I could share your worries, because I've been there, done that, and bought a T-shirt about it.
I've been baptized into Christ 6 years ago. But it was an up and down (mostly down) battle. I have continually struggled with porn, and self gratification, my heart hardens, and each fall made my faith weaker.
Praise God! He is faithful, by His grace, I've been free for 3 months! My life has changed in a way that I can't imagine before, He has given me more than I want. When I come to Him, I came in need, but He runs to me, and satisfies. He replaces the torn and filthy rags with a new garment called purity, and put the ring of righteousness on my finger, started a feast, and it's been a celebration ever since.
Have faith Bucket,
God can
God wants
and
God will
Set you free
Let us humble ourselves,
Mourn for our wickedness, even though after we have "felt" better, still, let us still drop on our knees, and plead for Him to save us from this deadly sin.
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Man
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Posted: Fri Dec 28th, 2007 03:04 am |
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Felt I got irritated by some of the comments here. Just feel that it is unserious and therefor maybe also disrespectful to come with Bible verses and that's it, but I also think it was very good some other things on here.
Am I the only one? I don't understand why people answer like that? Answers like "Go to the Lord" and that's it. Of course he knows that, I guess. Why not say how he can do that?..
Another thing that I think, why can't the Lord come to us if He exists.. Why not?
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Lilly
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Posted: Tue Jan 8th, 2008 10:00 am |
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Purity is a state of the heart.Purhaps taking note of other influences will also assist.
Also, i would like to ask on the intimacy with christ thing; how do you come to Him with inpurity of heart?
Matt 5:8 the pure of heart shall see God; and Titus 1:15-16
They profess that they know God; but in works they deny him, being abominable, and disobedient, and unto every good work reprobate.
Being too 'precious' to hear the rebuke of God is not going to help, the fact is, that even if you do 90% of what God has asked of you, you may as well have done nothing....as the 10% that wasnt done shall undo everything.
God wont change, its us who has to do the changing.
Also, there will be a day when God will reveal the depths of each and every heart, purhaps the knowledge of such embarassment will also assist you.
Besides, if you give more authority to the flesh, it will over take you, its not rocket science; if fasting was good enough for christ, its good enough for the rest of us.
Mabee you could try giving up time on your internet, and spend that time on you knees in the presence of God; that helps everything 
Last edited on Tue Jan 8th, 2008 10:02 am by Lilly
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Lilly
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Posted: Tue Jan 8th, 2008 10:10 am |
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Because Man, God does come to us, He is always with us and trying to direct our paths, we have the responsability to go to Him.....and honour Him by activly showing Him that He is more important than anything else.
Its a 2 way street, He did all the saving with Jesus and His sacrifice, you want to live in the freedom christ got for you, then you have to do some things as well, sacrifice of time to spend with the Lord, sacrifice of pleasures etc
And to be honest, seeking God and His presence is not a hard thing to do, He is waiting for His people to come and spend time with Him and be open to His direction.
Personally i dont think He is asking much at all, in fact, its reasonable service for all He has done for us, in reality there is no choice in the matter, christians are bondservents of the Lord, which means you dont have a choice to do other things, your life is not your own any more, mabee if you understood that concept, it wouldnt be such a struggle for you 'Man'
Last edited on Tue Jan 8th, 2008 10:11 am by Lilly
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Man
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Posted: Tue Jan 8th, 2008 01:31 pm |
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Hi Lilly, I must confess, I got a little bit irritated, telling me what I shall do and how easy it is.
Do you dp all these things yourself and is it easy?
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Lilly
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Posted: Tue Jan 8th, 2008 04:04 pm |
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Man wrote: Hi Lilly, I must confess, I got a little bit irritated, telling me what I shall do and how easy it is.
Do you dp all these things yourself and is it easy?
Hi Man, yeah i do these things myself, and i have found them to work and be effective. Ive recovered from a host of addictions and my recovery has been stable for many years.
I still have many things to sacrifice, the more you give up for the kingdom, the more you realsie how much you are holding on to- that doesnt end, as God always has more for all of us.
Sorry if i offended you.
I feel there is alot of comfortability in addiction being expressed in this forum, and behaviours dont change while people are comfortable or in otherways making some form of excuse for the behaviour.
Christ has set us free so we can live in that liberty, not strive to achieve it. In Him all things are possible, but scripture is very clear on what to do-sometimes taking scripture for what it is may be confronting-but its ment to be.
Christianity is not a comfortable belief, it is a challenging one.
Last edited on Tue Jan 8th, 2008 04:06 pm by Lilly
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