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love&hate
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Posted: Fri Jun 27th, 2008 07:02 pm |
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Hello
Just thought i would share some of my thoughts and experiences as a Christian that is also a sex addict. Perhaps it will be beneficial for others and myself. I see this as somewhat of an journal.
I am a classic Jekyll and Hyde personality. I became a Christian as a youth and also began my porn and masturbation habit around that time. Today i am a 35 year old man that can sit in a bible study or church serive totally agreeing with the pastor and worshipping in spirit and hours/days later looking at very immoral and disgusting images on the internet and masturbating to them. It seems at times that i am living in both worlds, or at least trying to.
There is a war going on and even though we know how it will end there are many battles that may be won or lost in the meantime. My personal battles include lust but i have found out recently that even without lust i am not a wonderfull person.
My goal used to be sobriety. However now my goal is about loving God more than lust. I don't have all the answers on why people are sex addicted however i know there are multiple underlying causes. Perhaps the biggest reason is a spiritual vaccum? I am not sure however i am certain of this, if Jesus is the first love of my life, lust (and other sin) will lose it grip over me.
So this is a battle for desire. "Where your treasure is, your heart will be also" In my past i have treasured a specific sexual fantasy that would make my life complete i thought, guess where my heart was? I have also treasured wealth and early retirement, guess where my heart was? So on the days that Jesus is my treasure my heart is with Him. Those days are wonderfull. Allthough i am not perfect i have considerable more victory over lust and all other noticeable sins in my life. I have some joy.
This week so far has been good, i fell on the weekend, struggled alot early in the week and the last few days i have been victorious over sin. How long will that last? Maybe forever or maybe only minutes. Time will tell. I will try to continue to meditate on things i have read in God's word.
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sam
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Posted: Sat Jun 28th, 2008 08:01 pm |
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that was beautifully put love&. i completely agree that if jesus is first in our lives, everything else would pale in comparison. thus sexual sin will no longer have the hold it currently does on us. i am praying for you my dear brother.
sam
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love&hate
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Posted: Sat Jun 28th, 2008 08:07 pm |
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Another thing that was impressed on me recently was that it is wrong for me to pray to God to eliminate my lust. I tried praying that and it did not work... but what about God promising to answer all of our prayers?
I realized that my lust is something i need to willingly surrender to Christ. God is not interested in making my problems dissapear, rather he is interested in watching me to see how i respond to these tests. He wants me to build Christian character and mature. Sadly i have dissapointed him many times. Thank God for his mercy and forgiveness which i do not deserve!
So now i pray that the Devil's lies will be broken and i see the truthfull effects of porn. I pray for more faith, love and understanding. So that when i read God's word i can feel him speak to me more clearly. Then i can surrender lust as well as my other sins and walk away with joy instead of living in a prison cell of bondage.
This is very interesting to me. That when i was in bondage and had to look at porn and masturbate every day i was supposed to be free, after all i did whatever i pleased right? No sexual fantasy was withheld from me. Christ's ideal of sex only in marriage seemed so dull and restrictive. But i could not stop p & m even when i tried and i hated my life! Now when i am living this "dull and restrictive life" (as i thought before) i love it! I have true freedom. I can choose not to look at porn, not to masturbate or leer at women on the street. I have joy and alot more time on my hands. I am not in prison.
How many people in the world today have swallowed the Devi's lies like i have and thought lust was freedom only to find out later that they can't stop even when they try? Some freedom! But i guess that is why he is called the Father of Lies.
Last edited on Sat Jun 28th, 2008 08:09 pm by love&hate
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love&hate
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Posted: Sat Jun 28th, 2008 08:10 pm |
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Thank you for your prayers Samantha. I am also praying for you as i know you are nervous about your medical condition.
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sam
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Posted: Sat Jun 28th, 2008 08:26 pm |
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i am in that club of disappointing god many times myself. i have told myself over and over again to stop allowing this sin into my life. i have to stop. i need to control this factor or that one in order to achieve what it is god has planned for me. the surrender is the part i have difficulty with i guess. it is uncomfortable to be give something up, even if it is corrupting my soul. hang tough man, you sound like you are on the right track to experience true freedom from the lies the evil one has placed in this world.
thanks for your prayers as well. may god bless you greatly!
sam
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love&hate
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Posted: Mon Jul 7th, 2008 04:03 am |
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Well i wrote some nice sounding words but since then i have fell. In fact today i felt connected to God and was not distracted during the worship service. I had some good fellowship with other christians afterward. But this afternoon i made the choice to act out with with p&m, more than once. When i see attractive sights i get very frusturated and since i have no wife i tend to manifest this sexual tension in old sinful ways. So dissapointing. It is at times like this when i doubt my faith in God, my salvation status and my commitment to Him.
One thing is clear to me. God will not take lust away from me. I have been reading throught the old testament and one theme is clear though out the whole OT and NT. That God is or should be #1 in our lives. Nothing else must come between Him. God is never second best or second in line. What was the point of a sacrifice if it was not the best you had to offer in the OT? You did not take your second best animal or grain offering, you took the best. You gave your firstborn. The word sacrifice insinuates giving up something dear. One of the main focuses of tithing was to think of God first when were you materially blessed.
P&M has been noticeably destructive in my life but i have also held it very dear to me, consciously or not. It has been my refuge when i am hurting, my reward when i feel i deserve it, my crutch when i feel i "need" it and my outlet from sexual tension. It is my sex life and this includes my fantasies and the high i get from looking at beautiful women and certain body parts.
I know this is sinful behavior as the law has stated so. Jesus has clearly stated so as well. Even my own conscience knows it is not right no matter how i justifiy it at times. I need to in a sense sacrifice this to God. I need to give it to him, not quite the same as something without blemish in OT times but it is very important to me and i need to give the burden to Jesus and give him first place. The following scripture comes to mind:
Whoever tries to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will preserve it.
and also
Now those who belong to the Messiah Jesus have crucified their flesh with its passions and desires.
So i need to learn more about crucifying the flesh....
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MGH
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Posted: Tue Jul 8th, 2008 06:59 pm |
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| I think that it is true that God won't just take our lusts away even though we may ask him to do so over and over again. I have thought about it, and I think that the reason the He will not is because He wants us to deliberately choose to obey Him. He will not in effect force us into obediance by taking away our lusts. He frees us from sin, but not from temptation. That's my take on it anyway.
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Wilderness Voice
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Posted: Tue Jul 8th, 2008 10:24 pm |
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God hates lust just as much as He does sin. It is the first chapter in the trilogy of lust, sin, and death. None of these are present in His Kingdom.
The problem with battling sin and temptation is that you will forever lose unless you find the way of escape out of the temptation.
Getting rid of the lust is the surest way of escape. And getting rid of liking and loving the pleasure of lust is the surest way to get rid of the lust. As long as we like it, it will continue to be our friend and will continually conceive and bring forth sin.
It is possible to not like lust. But I don't think very many people actually want to "not like it." Usually people seek to enhance their lust, to make the experience hotter than the last time. There are exceptions.
God bless those who haved stopped looking at pornography which is nothing more than fuel to make the fire in the belly and organs hotter. God help them then work on ridding themselves of the love of lust and replace it for a love for God.
Wilderness Voice
Last edited on Wed Jul 9th, 2008 02:58 pm by Wilderness Voice
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love&hate
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Posted: Thu Jul 10th, 2008 11:00 pm |
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MGH
I agree with your statement. I really think these weaknesses are tests that God watches us and see's how we will react and His will is we obey Him and then build a Godly character.
WV
Your statement about the only victory over lust is to hate lust is biblical and true i believe. First we submit to God, the we can resist the Devil. It is all about desire right? What are the desires of a man's heart? Only God really knows and this is what he is really interested in. If our desires are Godly we will in time bear good fruit (fruit of the Spirit), if they are full of sin, we will in time bear bad fruit.
However the tough part of this easy sounding task is my own God given sex drive. I am a man. Never married, never had a normal relationship with a woman. I am a sexual being. I am attracted to curvy women. I attempt to bounce my eyes when i see attractive and provactively dressed women and keep in my heart Godly thoughts, (scripture, songs etc). This works for a while but after a week or two it seems that there are so many attractive women around me and i desire to have a relationship (sexual and otherwise) with one... but i am unable to so my frustruation grows.
Then in time i will find my glance lingering, my thougts drifiting and i will eventually fall. What i am unable to see and touch in real life i see and pretend to touch on the internet. Of course after i am "done" i feel bad. Very bad. Since i feel seperation from God i often turn back to p&m to cover the pain and emptiness that my first fall created. I need more perverted material to achieve the same high and the down ware spiral continues. In time hopefully i can bottom out and try to reconcile with God by feeling reptenance and asking for forgiveness.
And the cycle starts all over again. If i could just stay on top. I know i will always be attracted to women allthough less as i grow older i hope. Somehow i need to stop the lingering looks and wandering mind after i feel i have been sober "so long"
Last edited on Thu Jul 10th, 2008 11:01 pm by love&hate
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Man
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Posted: Thu Jul 10th, 2008 11:41 pm |
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Love&hate;amp:
Thanks for your reply. I am single and for me it seems to be very easy to let my mind go when out among people.
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love&hate
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Posted: Tue Jul 22nd, 2008 04:22 am |
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I cannot speak for others but the more i think about it the more it seems that my sexual addiction is related to a lack of commitment and faith to God through Jesus Christ. I have always struggled with doubts, more than the average person. I sometimes wonder.... thousands of years after Jesus asended and the bible was written... is it really relevant in 2008 to a guy that lived in a country that was not known to the writers inspired by God? The apostles thought that the end of the world was coming soon and Jesus would arrive shortly... it has been 2000 years. Does Jesus ever think of me personally? What about countries where people grow up and Christian teaching is illegal and they don't get a chance to hear the message?
Truthseeker has said in a post that Christians that she knows seem to bubble with joy. I do not.
When i read through the bible (OT and NT) i get various themes that speak very loudly. One of them is we are a vessel for God. We are to surrender (submit) to God so that his will can be done. Why am i so scared to submit 100%? Why do i not trust God? Why does this rub me the wrong way and my rebellious will steps in and says just submit this and that... look around you. No one is totally submissive to God. That life would suck, you never have any fun. Just do this much and enjoy life, it will all work out in the end.
I read the bible, go to church, go to bible study, think alot about scripture. I know what to do but i openly refuse to submit to God 100%. If i was to die right now what would my excuse be? I hate myself for knowing the truth but not doing it. I think that Jesus will be ashamed of me before the angels in Heaven. If some people are willing to die for their faith and i live in an easy life in North America but no one even knows i am a Christian at work.. what is the point? Am i luke warm or cold? I wish i would not desire evil things or things of the self and that i would take joy in submitting to God and joy would bubble out and people would see a difference in me. Now that would be a life worth living.
I am sorry God for wasting my life and not doing submitting to you 100% or even 50% when i know i should. I am indeed a pathetic excuse of a Christian. My light is but a flicker and i hide it carefully so no one will see.
I
Last edited on Tue Jul 22nd, 2008 04:24 am by love&hate
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TimM
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Posted: Tue Jul 22nd, 2008 08:15 pm |
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Love&Hate,
In your last post, you ask a beautiful, if obviously very painful set of questions. You ask them of yourself, but they are questions I and probably others have also asked. Do you mind if I offer some partial answers that reflect where I am today in asking those questions of myself? Perhaps there might be something there of use to you as well.
Why do I not trust God 100%? For me, there is a more basic question: Why do I not trust? It's not just God I don't trust. I don't trust my family and my friends. I don't trust other people. I don't trust myself. I don't trust. At least, that has been my native state for most of my life. It's very important for me to be in control. It's very important for me to stay distant from other people and not to be known by them and not to be like them. It's very important for me to be right in every detail - not to be foolish, not to be mistaken, not to be human. Absolutely I don't trust God, but that lack of trust is part of a much more general lack of trust.
That lack of trust is deeply tied in with the whole pattern of my addiction. I don't trust other people enough to be open and intimate with them. Instead I isolate myself and I seek to medicate my pain and fears alone and in safety. That produces shame and more isolation, which just raises again the walls that make trust difficult.
To recover, I need to find and maintain trust - trust of God, trust of others, trust of myself. This isn't just an abstract theological problem. It's a part of the existential core of my addiction, my pain, my fear, my separation from other people and from God and from myself.
So you're asking a really good question here.
I won't write the long essay it would take to spell out what I know of my answer, because yours may well be different. For some people, abuse is part of the answer. For me, there was never overt abuse, but there are certainly childhood issues of feeling inadequate physically, teased by other kids, not seen as quite OK by my father and his family. I retreated into intellectualism and lack of emotion, finding safety in being alone, in not feeling, in academic perfectionism. I cut myself off from community on a lot of levels, and I didn't trust. I looked after myself.
That's why I don't trust others, and why I don't trust God. After all, God might not love me. God might not even exist. I'm safer if I hold my own life in my own hands.
Now, I realize that what I just said makes no sense. It's obviously not part of the Christian faith. Please don't anybody feel you need to come in and argue me Biblically out of this bad theology. I'm not advocating a coherent philosophic position here. I'm saying what some deep and emotional part of my soul really feels, though. It's bad thinking, but it's the truth I have always felt.
Part of my sense that sobriety, right relations with others, right understanding of myself, and right worship of God are really all the same thing comes from the fact that all these blessings are blocked by the same need of the ego to be in control and not to trust. For me, surrender is exactly the way out of my multi-faceted hell and toward all these blessings.
I thought I had found that surrender for good and all, but since the start of this year, I have really been struggling to let go and let God, to find that surrender again. But I absolutely believe not only that this surrender is possible, but that it is the only thing possible for us addicts. That's the whole content of the first 3 steps of the 12-step program: that my attempts to control my life have resulted in total disaster, that I believe that God is the only hope to bring something good out of this shambles, and that I am willing to give up and let God act.
Right now, I can't always do that. After all, I've spent around 50 years not acting that way, and that much conditioning dies hard. There's a lot I'm hiding from, a lot I've buried very deeply, a lot that still stands in my way.
When I can trust, though, when I can be utterly submissive, my life works better than I could ever have imagined. There's one point at which my experience and yours may differ. My episodes of surrender have in fact been episodes of pure joy and love and peace. What has sucked for me hasn't been surrender. It has been the whole rest of my life when I struggle not to surrender. Only by accepting my failure to run my life and by coming to live life on life's terms, only by letting go and surrendering and finding space and openness and God can I experience a life that doesn't suck.
One of my big projects right nw is making that process of surrender and trust something that really persists every day and every moment. I've made the mistake of making a little museum of those moments of surrender, and of thinking those past moments will keep me open and trusting for good. That doesn't work. I have to keep surrendering. But some of those moments of surrender from out of the museum still show me just how great the blessings of trust are.
I'll just tell one. I spent years of my life doubting God, angry at God for requiring of me things I couldn't do, and fearing God's judgement. I feared death, both because I feared judgment and because I feared that in death, all the secrets I had hidden would finally come to light. But 9 months after I got into recovery, I found myself suddenly facing possible death - having a heart attack and riding to the hospital in an ambulance, not clear about whether I would be alive in an hour or not. Before I got into recovery, this would have been my worst nightmare. But when it actually happened, it was a time of peace and joy. I had a lot to live for - especially the family with whom I was now at peace and the friends I now had. But had I died, I would have died in peace. I could lie in the ambulance feeling that I was doing what I was supposed to do, that I was at peace with my family and my God, and that I could relax, knowing that I did not control what would come next, and that whatever happened, things would be all right.
That experience by itself probably formed the nucleus of my recovery and my commitment for the next two years. In the end, it wasn't enough. I can't live in the past, in the museum. I need to be trusting more, surrendering more, opening up more. My trust and surrender have to be alive each moment of today. But I am sure that that is possible, and I am sure that only in that way do I have any hope.
All that is my story and not yours. If you and I are alike, though, then there are things you might ask yourself. For me, perhaps the central question has been, "So how is lack of trust working? If I continue the way I am going now, what can I look forward to for the rest of my life?" Real change for me started when I could answer with utter conviction that the only thing my life still held was more pain, more isolation, more separation from my family, more alienation from God, more splintering of my own self, followed in the end by death (possibly at my own hand) and judgment. Once it becomes clear that there's nothing left to lose, then surrender gets a lot easier. I remember the power of saying, "Maybe giving everything over to God won't work. Maybe there is no God, or God won't help me. But if not, then I can always kill myself later and be no worse off than I am now." That was part of my hitting bottom, and part of how despair opens the door to hope and to joy.
For me, further hating myself and hating my sin at this point weren't the way forward. I had done those things all my life and found no progress. Letting go and trusting and surrendering were the next step - dropping the self-loathing that had consumed me, asking to be forgiven and to serve, and then really trying to discern what God would have me do, and to do it.
To my great dismay, that's still a work in progress, but I'm pretty clear that the course I struggle to follow is at least the right course for me.
Be well, and thank you for sharing from the heart with such honesty.
Tim M.
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Wilderness Voice
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Posted: Wed Jul 23rd, 2008 03:50 pm |
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LAH:
I completely understand what you said. I found myself in the same place so many times and having so many of the same thoughts. I think the way you are seeing yourself is almost 100% correct.
Try something though. Try imagining/seeing/envisioning yourself as a different person. What you would be like if you were still you, yet had a heart willing toward God and void of the desire to sin. Ask God to show you what His vision is for you, not an abstract ideal person, but rather the intimate exact you. How does God see you perfected?
I found years ago, to my sad dismay, that I couldn't even see myself (in the future) as changed and innocent. I couldn't imagine a life without sin or a mind that wasn't eaten away with lust. It frightened me so much, but I kept thinking and thinking on it and kept telling God: "God, I really have ruined my life. I have chosen things wrong and wrong and wrong and am so damaged I can't even imagine myself as fixed. Surely God this is not what you see for me. This is not what you created, I have ruined what you created. God please change me, please change everything, even my mind."
These are just the best words I could print. But God does work miracles. My heart doesn't desire lust and what a miracle this is. But I have to say that He could only work those works when I'd reached the point of being utterly sick of it. I don't mean just tired of the cycle of sin and dispair = I mean sick of the lust itself. Where it is so repulsive and ugly and horrible that temptation isn't temptation. Temptation now is like an offer to go to prison. An offer to remove my peace, my freedom, my family. It is not tempting, it is a useless irritant.
LAH, it is your heart. You are so close to discovering the great secret to this. Look into God's pure heart. You've seen the darkness in yours. Look into His and find the image that you can behold and behold and behold and just as the scripture says, we are transformed from glory to glory.
God Bless you, I am so sorry you are suffering, but this kind of suffering leads to the path out. There is nothing good inside the old heart, it has to be cut away. But there is a real person there that God made. That person is not a sinner, is not filled with evil desires, does not have a wicked heart. All those things are to be crucified with Christ and we walk anew.
It is real. It is for 2008. Being in a mixed state is so absolutely miserable. The love of God is fleeting in three cases: when we love to lust with our eyes (we find pleasure doing it) when we love to lust with our flesh (we find pleasure doing it) when we love being envied (we find pleasure in other's envying us). "If any man love the world (the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life) the love of the Father is not in him.
The reverse reveals the cure: The love of the Father will chase out the love of the world.
WV
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Wilderness Voice
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Posted: Thu Jul 24th, 2008 05:17 pm |
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LAH:
From another post:
We behold, O Lord, Thy Vision for us; yea, Thy Immaculate Vision of our cleanliness in every attribute of our lives. May we, each one, truly and definitely live up to those endearing standards, and press them to our hearts with the same love in which they were given. - Donna Boneck
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CB
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Posted: Thu Jul 24th, 2008 05:58 pm |
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That was very well said WV. You described everything I was going through almost step by step, which makes sense, because it's the same demonic spirit that has the same "hook" into our flesh.
These are just the best words I could print. But God does work miracles. My heart doesn't desire lust and what a miracle this is. But I have to say that He could only work those works when I'd reached the point of being utterly sick of it. I don't mean just tired of the cycle of sin and dispair = I mean sick of the lust itself. Where it is so repulsive and ugly and horrible that temptation isn't temptation. Temptation now is like an offer to go to prison. An offer to remove my peace, my freedom, my family. It is not tempting, it is a useless irritant.
This paragraph is so key. I'm sorry to say that in my case, it took hurting my wife over and over and over again, and seeing the pain I was causing her and potentially others (I have 4 kids) to finally hit my bottom.
I like how you describe the temptation now, as a "useless irritant". It's really amazing to me how ineffectual this temptation is, when there's true repentance and God is able to change your heart.
I really admire the single people on this board that are trying to break free from this. And if you can, it'll save you so much heartache when you do get married. A friend of mine told me a LONG time ago, "These guys, looking at pornography, are destroying their marriages, before they're even married."
CB!
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guitarist63
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Posted: Thu Jul 24th, 2008 10:26 pm |
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The end should not be marriage but to please God first and foremost either in the married or the single state. Otherwise, there would be no reason for God's Word to say that eunnuch's who kept faithful to God have special memorial in His kingdom. I need to look the verse up.
I don't see myself ever getting married. So celibacy for life (or rather, what's left of it) is one of the aims I have and of course only to God's glory and for no other reason.
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CB
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Posted: Fri Jul 25th, 2008 12:51 am |
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I'm not saying you should find freedom, so you can have a healthy marriage. You misunderstood me, or maybe I wasn't clear. My admiration for the single person trying to overcome this has to do with the way I struggled with this sin, and the fact that my wife (and the hurt I was causing her) was a key element to my recovery. When I was single, I didn't care enough to change. And that's what I find admirable.
CB!
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Man
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Posted: Sat Jul 26th, 2008 05:47 pm |
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Thanks for your feedback CB...
I am single..
Last edited on Sat Jul 26th, 2008 05:47 pm by Man
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