Welcome

Welcome and thank you for visiting my page.

If you are looking for spiritual truth and help in finding liberty from pornography and any other form of addiction, this page is written especially for you.

The following study will take you through an engaging, spiritually invasive, challenging process designed to set you free from any and every sin that may be entangling you so that you can walk with God with a clean conscience, secure in His love, full of knowledge and power, and led by the Holy Spirit.

I will be releasing a new section every week or so, and I strongly emphasize and encourage you to read them in order, from the beginning.  No one starts a journey at the halfway point. Thus, the categories to the right are numbered to help you keep track of where you left off.

The study is designed to first make you aware of your need for true freedom available only through God’s power at work in us.  After this, you learn to identify and expose the forces working against you in the spiritual realm, and finally how to walk in freedom from this enslaving addiction.

This study will require a committment from you, and only a person who is serious about their spiritual future with God should pursue it.  This is not for the casual observer or the lukewarm.  However, it is for anyone who is hungry for truth, freedom from sin, and to know the love and power of God that surpasses all understanding.

My prayer for anyone who reads it is that you will come to know God and His true nature, power, and perspective on you in a new and liberating way.  My study is based upon the great teaching I have received over the years from several pastors and teachers, my own experiences and research in overcoming this battle, my study of the Bible, and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, without Whom, we can do nothing.

Feel free to comment and refer this page to anyone you know who needs it.

DJM

Reasons: Introduction

“You’ve got to let it all go.  Fear, doubt, and disbelief.  Free your mind.”
-Morpheus, to Neo, in The Matrix (1999)

Now that you have determined you want the freedom found only through the promises and the power of God, it’s worth it to spend some time considering all the reasons this freedom is so desirable.  Before exploring the keys to overcoming sexual sins and addictions in your life, you need to know what kind of life it is you want after that happens.  What does the Bible promise?  What are the blessings?  What kind of life does God offer?  What will He require from your life?

“So much potential.”  In education, teachers routinely marvel at all the potential burning within so many students.  And so many of those students, for a variety of reasons, totally or partially spoil that potential during their formative years, and are doomed to spend the rest of them looking back at what might have been.  We root for them all, but at some point, the students choose what kind of life they want.

When Neo hears the above statement from Morpheus, he has no idea what kind of life awaits.  He knows just an inkling of what is possible.  But what will be expected of him once he becomes who he was made to be?  Will he be ready?  We can ask the same questions of ourselves.  What will we do with our freedom?  What should we do?

But first, we must overcome the three hindrances of fear, doubt, and disbelief.  And the truth is this triad of timidity doesn’t just imprison our minds, but our hearts.  A fearful heart that doubts and does not really believe or trust in God is the one that seeks out comfort in the known, the familiar.  Addictions offer this comfort, and billions of people are enslaved to them in some form. But God says something different:

Colossians 3:1-6
If then you were raised with Christ, be seeking the things above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God.  Be thinking the things above, not the things upon the earth.  For you died, and your life has been hidden with Christ in God.  When Christ appears–your life–then you also will appear with Him in glory.  Therefore, put to death your body-part things on earth–sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed–which is idolatry.  Because of which things the wrath of God is coming upon the sons of disobedience. (NT Transline)

What God promises here and in many other places has been hidden with Christ.  Someday, we will appear with Him in glory.  This is the resurrection, and our greatest hope.  And it is far off, hard to imagine, and even harder to properly evaluate for its worth.  So we begin by asking God to start reorienting our minds, to set our minds on things above.

The disgusting and filthy comforts we run to in this life, such as pornography, alcohol, drugs, technology dependence, food, and thrill-seeking offer only temporary solace.  I know, you’ve heard that before.  Haven’t you learned yet that it’s true?  It seems that knowing this truth doesn’t help us overcome the tug of its addiction on our hearts.  Why?  Because we have set our minds on the wrong things.  We have missed the true message of Christ.

We don’t overcome sin by concentrating on avoiding it.  Thus, people often say we have to get our minds off ourselves.  That’s true, but what do we place it on?  Some people place it on others.  They get into causes, and want to serve and help other people. If I put my whole life, heart, and mind into helping others, then I won’t be so obsessed or controlled by my own flesh, and I’ll find freedom.  There’s a measure of truth in this, and serving others is one of the reasons we’re here.  But this is not the starting point on the road to freedom.  This is one possible ending point.

We rather must begin by setting our minds on the things of heaven.  The things in God’s presence.  We get our minds off ourselves, yes.  But we also get our minds off of others.  We aren’t going to find freedom by focusing on a bunch of other people who are enslaved to their own flesh, and also don’t know God.  We must think first about God, about heaven, about a life totally separate from this one.  To the atheist, this is insanity.  But it is the most rational choice you can make.

And what are the things in the presence of God?

-The absence of sin.
One of my previous pastors once described God’s plan in this way: First, Jesus died for our sins to set us free from the penalty of sin.  Second, during this life, He conforms us into His image by the renewing of our mind, and we are set free from the power of sin.  And one day, the greatest day of our lives, He will set us free from the presence of sin.  Penalty, power, and presence.  The first thing I think of when I consider the “things above” is that we are free from the presence of sin.  No hate, no theft, no racism, no lust, no abuse, no violence, no war, no exploitation, no selfishness.  And no fear, no discouragement, no apathy.  There’s no mediocrity.  I hate mediocrity.  Perhaps it’s the teacher in me.  Mediocrity is unmet potential.  Apathy is the surest way to get there.  There’s none of this in the presence of God.

-Absolute joy and peace.
The pacifists often get ridiculed for foolish idealism.  “That’s not the way the world works.  We have enemies, and if we just sit here waving flags, they’ll walk over us.  They hate us.”  In heaven, the pacifists win.  There are no enemies.  And it’s not just external peace, but even better, it’s internal.  Our hearts will be at rest.  Our souls will be satisfied.  Our rest will be complete.  There will be no longing for something we know is missing.  The joy of the Lord will truly and completely be our strength.

-The presence of God.
Moses refused to enter the Promised Land if God’s presence did not go with the people.  He would rather have stayed put and died in the wilderness than take the whole land, but do so without God’s presence by his side.  Why?  Because he understood the value of God’s presence to be greater than anything else on Earth.  In God’s presence is fullness of joy.  Understanding.  Acceptance.  Security.

We could go on.  That’s a small list.  But if you spend a day, or an hour, or even one minute seriously thinking about those three things, you will suddenly discover a very different feeling inside your heart.  Your mind is now thinking about the things above.  And God begins to change you when you value the things He values.  When you think about these things, it means you believe what His word reveals about heaven.  It means you trust that He really will provide an eternal, resurrected life that shatters anything we can think of in this one.  It means you don’t fear anything that comes against you here, because what comes after is so much better.

Courage, trust, and faith.  The antidotes to our three great enemies of fear, doubt, and disbelief.

Once the things above start to saturate our spirits, then we can start imagining a new life, and we find new reasons to want this freedom now.  I don’t want to wait until I die for this.  Does the Bible say we can have this now, or do we have to wait?  The freedom available to us in heaven would do us a little good right now as well.

What follows are 13 reasons to desire freedom now, in this life.

Why Freedom Matters

Matthew 11:12
But the kingdom of the heavens is being treated violently from the days of John the Baptist until now. And violent ones are snatching it away.  (NT Transline)

When beginning a serious quest, a person must first decide why to pursue it.  Why now?  What is the goal?  What will be required of him in order to succeed?

In our quest for freedom and victory over sin, especially sins of addiction, we must first decide why it matters to us.  If we cannot answer that question, then the goal will continue to elude us.

The violent ones “snatching” the kingdom do so because they want it.  They see its value.  It is worth fighting for.  The merchant sold everything to buy the pearl.  The man who stumbled on the treasure sold everything to buy the field.  The kingdom is worth all we have. All that is within us, and all that we possess.

The word “snatching” can also mean ‘take by force, seize, or steal.’  The ones who want the kingdom seize it.  They pursue it.  Like David who went after the Philistines until he had crushed them, we must desire the kingdom more than life itself.  And because God wants more than anything to give it to us, He will surely provide the strength and the power necessary to seize it.

But if God can just give it to us, why must we take it by force?  And how does this relate to freedom from sin?

The Key:
If we don’t hunger and desire for God, for freedom from sin, and to know the riches of our inheritance, then we will not find any of them.  We will fall short.  We will stop at some point and settle for less.  Sin and comfort are too easy.

Matthew 5:6
Blessed are the ones hungering and thirsting as to righteousness, because they will be filled to satisfaction.  (NT Transline)

God blesses and rewards those who long for what He offers.  If we don’t want it, then it is only by God’s mercy or grace that we may even stumble upon it. And even then, at some point, we must recognize its value for ourselves, or eventually it will slip away and elude us.

The half-hearted skeptic never reaches the top of the mountain.

Proverbs 21:21
He who pursues righteousness and loyalty finds life, righteousness, and honor. (NAS)

All these verses imply, along with their urging to long for life in God, that the flip side is also true.  The one who does not hunger for righteousness will not be satisfied, but will be left empty and wanting.  They know something is missing, but can’t figure out what it is.  They are like people trapped in the Matrix.  They know something is wrong with the world, but don’t know what.  The one wandering aimlessly does not find honor or life, but dishonor, irrelevance, and disillusionment.

So if you’re reading this and say you want freedom from sexual sin (or other addictions and idolatries), you need to stop right now and ask yourself: Do I mean it?  Do I really want freedom?  Because the only way to freedom is through desire.  Your desire for God, His kingdom, Spirit, presence, word, and life must be stronger than anything else.  It must be strong enough to make you sacrifice things.  Things you have had or wanted for a long time.

This kind of freedom was never given freely.  God gave us forgiveness.  Victory over death.  Salvation in Christ.  But that was just the seed.  Its growth must be fought for.  The mustard seed starts small, and it has to be cultivated, grown, watered, and cared for.  Otherwise our freedom will lie dormant in a garden in the desert, unfruitful.  Unnoticed.  Parched.

Jesus tells us this very truth in the parable of the sower:

Luke 8:14
And the seed having fallen into the thorns–these people are the ones having heard, and while proceeding are being choked by the anxieties and riches and pleasures of life. And they are not bringing fruit to maturity.  (NT Transline)

This is what happens when we fail to make a quality decision to pursue the fullness of freedom from depression, self-loathing, fear, cynicism, selfishness, lust, bigotry, self-righteousness, and addiction that is available through Jesus Christ alone.

How we find that freedom is the point of this study, which focuses on sexual sins but applies to all the others as well.  But before we can even start looking at the details, each of us must assess our hearts.  God in the Old Testament was always wanting to test what was in the people’s hearts.  But really, He already knew.  He wanted them to discover what was already in their own hearts.

So we must search our hearts.  How badly do we want to put our sinful habits and tendencies and weaknesses behind us?  Do we really want a life where the things our flesh depends on for comfort and security are totally and completely absent?  If you are honest with yourself, you will be a little afraid at that thought.

Addiction is about finding security in something other than God’s love.  The longer you have sought security (become enslaved) in some particular sin, the more fearful you will be at the contemplation of a life without it.

But faith triumphs over fear.  The one who fears is the one who doubts, but faith is the conviction of things not seen.  An unseen future is promised to us by God who never fails in His word. If you want to see this future, then I urge you to invest the time in going through this study/blog. It is the length of book, and will take you several days.

Is your freedom from addiction and idolatry worth it to you?

Decision #4: I Will Pray

Why?  Because God desires it, and because you need it.

If all the power resides with God, and you never talk to Him, just how do you expect that power to transfer to you?  Prayer demonstrates to God that you believe in Him.  Prayer helps you get to know Him.  Prayer also allows you to reflect on your own thinking.  Often, when you start honestly praying about something, you discover what you really believe.  Or don’t believe.  Prayer opens you up to be influenced by the Holy Spirit.  And that’s the primary reason to do it, in our context.  Prayer is another weapon of our warfare, able to tear down strongholds.

So let’s look at five things to start praying for.  These need to become part of your regular prayer time.  They are not one-time requests.

Pray for your needs
Because so much shame gets associated with porn or any addiction, it is difficult to talk to anyone about it.  Talking to other people is good, but talking to God–that’s absolutely vital.  Until you are able to be honest–and I mean completely honest–with God about your problems, how are you really going to expect Him to help you with them?  This is especially true in light of the legitimacy of your sexual needs, as we established previously.  When you accept that God created you with needs, and that these needs in themselves are not sin, then that means you can ask God to meet them.

I started getting really specific when I realized this.  I told God the kinds of women I was attracted to.  I told God how much I was looking forward to having sex with my wife, before I even met her.  I described to Him the kinds of physical features I desired most.  Without getting too detailed here, you get the idea.  There is no limit to the detail you can express to God.  Guess what?  He knows women too.  He knows all about them.  He doesn’t blush when you talk about the aspects of them you find desirable.  And this is not sin, to pray about this stuff.  I realized, when I started doing this, that God longs for us to talk to Him about this stuff.  This is how we trust Him to meet these needs–by asking.

Jesus says, “You have not because you ask not.”  You don’t just have to pray general prayers like “Lord, please give me a wife.”  I started praying things like, “Lord, I thank you someday that I will have delightful sex with a woman I love, whom you have given to me.”  That’s a prayer of faith, based upon the Bible verses we saw previously in Proverbs and Song of Solomon.  I mean, what else does it mean to “be exhilarated” with her love?

Now, some people always ask about making specific requests like this.  Isn’t it presumptuous to give God a list of features and measurements?  Hair and eye color, height, personality, etc.  The answer is, it could be.  It depends on your motives for asking.  But if you ask because you recognize that God alone is the one who is able to provide for your needs, this is a faith-based motive.  You recognize you might not receive the specific details you ask for, but in asking for them, you have given God the right to provide for your needs.  You have put your trust in Him, and He will find the person that meets your needs the best.  I cannot emphasize enough how crucial this is.  Prayer is fundamentally about trust, when it comes to things you need or want.

When Jesus taught us to pray, one part of it was to “give us this day our daily bread.”  This is the part of the prayer where we pray for our needs.  Now, don’t neglect all the other parts of this prayer.  You aren’t the only person in the world.  But when you do pray for your needs, remember that your sexuality is one of them!  How many men who struggle with porn can honestly say they pray about this stuff, in this much detail, with God?  Based on my own experience, when I was at my worst, I would guess hardly anyone, because I didn’t.

Why don’t we?  It goes back again to the false belief that sex is shameful and dirty and inappropriate for prayer.  Prayer is “holy,” whatever that means.  Well, sex is holy too then, in the right context.  How do I know that?  Because God created and instituted it as a part of marriage before sin entered the world.  Sex was here before sin, and was never meant to be corrupted or abused.

The Fruits of Prayer
This kind of prayer demonstrates faith, and God longs for us to ask Him about these things.  And you don’t pray just to get answers.  You pray because it changes you.  Philippians says it better than I can:

Philippians 4:6,7
Be anxious about nothing, but in everything–by prayer and petition with thanksgiving–let your requests be made known to God, and the peace of God surpassing all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (NT Transline)

Think about this stuff.  This is a tremendous verse to speak out loud every day for a year.  When we present our anxieties to God in prayer (with thankfulness, notice that there…), it results in peace that surpasses understanding, and this peace guards our hearts and minds.  This peace is beyond our understanding.  What does that mean?  It means, where did this come from?  It means the stress, the fear, the discouragement–they just aren’t there any more and I can’t explain it.

And this peace guards your heart and mind.  Think about that!  What two areas does the enemy attack the most?  And which piece of armor protects us?  The shield of faith.  So praying for our needs, releasing our anxieties, builds your faith!  It protects your heart and mind from the lies we’ve exposed, lies the whole world believes.  I have come to know this peace over the years, and it truly is beyond understanding.  You just don’t feel like sinning.  You don’t want to, because God is here, and there is joy in His presence.  The joy of the Lord is our strength, it says.

Here then are two more spiritual weapons:  Peace and joy.  This is the best part about the story of Joshua and Jericho.  They march around the city seven times, and they’re worshiping.  The physical walls crumble.  When did they crumble?  When they shouted and played their instruments.  Those were their weapons.  There’s another passage featuring Gideon where they bang on their pots in the middle of the night, and the enemy flees.  God is more than able to fight our battles and meet our needs.  But we have to ask Him.  When we do, He comes.  Do you think He wants you mired in sin all the days of your life?  If you really desire His help, you will receive it.  Remember the Sermon on the Mount:

Matthew 5:6
Blessed are the ones hungering and thirsting as to righteousness, because they will be filled to satisfaction.  (NT Transline)

Blessed are those.  See, it’s not complicated, it’s just hidden.  You do have to search a little.  This is why I started this whole study the way I did, with the reasons to want freedom.  If you don’t desire the freedom God offers; if you don’t fervently, passionately desire it like a dying man in the desert needs food and water, then you probably won’t find it.  You have to perceive and believe in the value of eternal life before you will be motivated to go after it.

So then, do not denigrate your sexual needs.  Do not call them sins, and do not be ashamed of them.  Know the difference between a legitimate need and a lack of trust.  This is why God hates idols–because an idol is something a person puts their trust in to meet their needs.  God wants to be the one who does this (also, not coincidentally, He’s the only one who can).

See, we think too much of ourselves.  This is why one of the steps listed before is to accept that humanity is evil.  I used to look through the Ten Commandments and think that I was meeting most of them.  Kind of like the rich young ruler who went to Jesus looking for eternal life.  He thought he was keeping the commandments.  He thought he wasn’t stealing, or lusting, or lying, or committing adultery.  We also often think that hey, I’m not lighting any candles around statues or praying to any pieces of wood.  That second command is an easy one.

Oh no it isn’t.  It’s the most commonly violated one.  Anything you put trust in before God is an idol.  And you put trust in something when you turn to it instead of Him.  The more you know the Bible, the more you realize how sinful you are.  But, at the same time, you learn all these great truths, so you don’t feel condemned for it.  I know God loves and has forgiven me, so I accept that I am wretched, poor, blind, and naked without Him.  That’s my true state, and I know it more now than ever.  Yet I feel closer and more accepted by God at the same time.

God doesn’t want our sins dividing us from Him.  But until we accept that they’re there, the division remains.  There are so many hidden sins–the ones that do the real damage–that we don’t even know exist.  In America, especially among white Christians, probably the most common unacknowledged sin is racial prejudice.  I had the good fortune to have this challenged in me during my college years.  God opened my eyes to some things, and I had to accept that I owned a lot of prejudicial and fearful attitudes toward other races.

Yet what do we hear all the time in the media (and in many of our homes)?  We hear racism is overblown.  Those days are over.  We hear complaints and accusations and labels with no substance.  We hear very few honest conversations, especially introspective ones.  Our culture is losing its ability to reflect.  If you don’t know yourself, how will you know what to pray for?

Pray to be Transformed
Next, pray for God to fashion you into the person He wants.  This is what we call humility– releasing our ambitions and self-definition and letting God determine the direction our lives should take.  When you open yourself up to this, God takes everything you care about and throws it away, and makes you do what you hate.  No, actually, He doesn’t.  But if you struggle believing God is good, then that last sentence caught you.  This is another reason we pray–so we may know our God, and start to believe He is as great as the Bible describes Him.

But, what does God want to do in us?  Into what new creation does He plan to transform us?

In the Bible we read a lot about fruit.  Jesus talks extensively about producing fruit; in fact, it’s the central theme of the parable of the sower.  The thorns choke the word and make it unfruitful.  The irrelevant lives of many Christians today produce nothing of value for God.  But fruit is not only about people being saved.  Fruit doesn’t come in bundles of converts for $7.77 a pound.  Fruit also applies to your heart.  In Galatians 5, we read about the fruit of the Spirit

Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and everyone’s favorite, self-control–God will grow all these excellent character qualities in you, by the Holy Spirit.  But the religious right–meaning many Christians in America today, just kind of assumes that because we’re Christians, we have all these.

This is the poison of religious thinking.  It’s the exact same thing the Jews did in Jesus’ time.  They overlook or justify their own sins, and look down on all the other people who don’t live up to the ones they’re doing right.  They assume all these promises just happen to them because they’re “saved,” and they overemphasize or just plain misread certain verses, such as that we aren’t saved by works.  True, we aren’t, but as should be clear if you’ve read everything prior to this, growing in Christ requires a lot of work.  It doesn’t just happen.  A seed does not instantly transform into a tree full of fruit.  And this is the work we were called to when we were saved.  Look what Paul prayed:

I Thess 3:12,13
And may the Lord cause you to increase and abound in love for one another and for everyone (just as we also for you), so that He may establish your hearts so as to be blameless in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all His holy ones. Amen (NT Transline)

This lifelong process does not just fall into your lap because you grow up in church.  It is seized, violently, by a faith and a hunger that are willing to sacrifice present desires for future glory with God in the resurrection, when Jesus comes.  Establishment of heart implies a spiritual maturity that gets produced by the work of the Holy Spirit.  And Paul says here we can be blameless and holy in this life, on earth.

Become a True Christian
Many of us today have distorted our understanding of what it means to be a Christian.  I fight this battle regularly with my liberal friends at work (and they are my friends too…amazing, huh? Imagine if we would all step out of the comfortable, shielded, hermitic enclaves we’ve constructed and actually talk to people who don’t think or believe like us…we could change the world).  But my liberal friends struggle mightily with the concept of what it means to be a Christian.  They think it means you look down on people who are different, that you’re against abortion and don’t care about the needs of others, and that you judge anyone who doesn’t think, act, or look like you.

Now, some of their beliefs have been distorted by other sources, like the religious left and the media, and their own worldviews.  But some of this is because we have a lot of “Christians” out there.  The tea party likes to accuse some Republicans of being “RINOs,” Republicans in Name Only.  I wonder though, how many people might admit that we have a problem with CINOs as well.  Are you a Christian?  What does it mean to be one?  When we lap up the pornified culture and drool over all the enslaved women, we’re tarnishing our witness and the image of God, and the world is watching.  God will hold us accountable for this.

I think we should stop looking down at all those other people, and get the porn out of our houses.  Until we do that, let’s knock off all the superiority-posturing.  Let’s get honest about our own spiritual depravity.  Let’s get the logs out of our own eyes.  Before I came to terms with my porn addiction, my racial prejudice, my cynicism, and my self-righteousness, I had about as much compassion as a monkey.  Do you have any of these sinful attitudes and beliefs?  Or maybe others?  Think about your reaction whenever a racially-inflamed event takes place in the news.  What’s really inside your heart?

But what does a real Christian look like?  A real Christian grows!  After ten years, you ought to see a little fruit of the Spirit developing.  If you don’t, something is deeply out of place.  If you’re as complacent, angry, arrogant, proud, selfish, apathetic, materialistic, or lustful as you were ten years ago, that’s a big problem!  You’re not growing.  That means you’re not pursuing God.  You can’t be.  How do I know that?  Because Jesus taught it.  “Draw near to me and I will draw near to you,” He said.  Remain in the vine.  Hunger and thirst for righteousness.  What does He promise?  You will be filled for the next few hours.  No, you will be filled until next week.  No.  You will be filled to satisfaction.

That last phrase, “filled to satisfaction,” is actually one word in the Greek.  It also shows up in another place, in one of the best passages I know about relying on God’s strength, rather than our own:

Philippians 4:11-13
Not that I speak in relation to a need, for I learned to be content in the things in which I am.  I indeed know how to be humbled; I also know how to abound.  In anything and in all things, I have learned the secret–both to be filled to satisfaction and to be hungry, both to abound and to be in need.  I can do all things by means of the One strengthening me. (NT Transline)

Pray for God to Be Your Strength
Jesus is the source of our strength.  No matter what circumstances in which Paul found himself, he learned–and this didn’t come to him the day he fell off the horse; you don’t know everything about being a Christian because you grew up in church or got saved ten years ago–he learned to persevere through it because of the strength of God working through him.  And he didn’t just scrape by.  We can do all things.  All things.  We can go years, decades, entire lifetimes, without falling into sexual sin.  Yes we can.  But not because we grew up in church and know stuff (or think we do).  We can achieve victory because God lives in us.  Because we live by faith, not by what we see around us.  We live by trusting in God, not in all the slimy temptations that sit behind the counter at the convenience store.  We walk by the grace of God, and we don’t have to abuse the internet.

You too must learn to rely on God’s strength and not your own.  I think it’s an incorrect prayer to ask God to “give me strength.”  I don’t have any strength.  You ask God to fill you with His strength.  You ask Him to “be your strength.”

Psalms 46:10
Cease striving and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth. (NAS)

Cease striving.  Stop working so hard.  You can’t do it.  You will fail.  Your willpower is weak.  It’s like Darth Vader says: “Your powers are weak, old man.”  More than weak, I have no power.  This verse is amazing, actually. What does it say to do after we stop trying so hard?  It just says to “know.”  Just “know” that God is the Lord of all.  Wow.  Remember what we read before in II Corinthians?  Our struggle is against every height raised up against the “knowledge of God.”

What Do You Know?
To “know” that God is the Lord is the key to total freedom.  It will take your whole life to know that He is God.  Your whole life.  The enemy fights against this in the battle for your mind.

What happens if we lose?  We start striving and working and straining again.  We start worshiping the idols of self-reliance, willpower, and lust (in the general sense).  It’s interesting to look at the world and see them doing this fervently.  They’re trying desperately to figure out how to overcome all these problems.  We’ve got to solve the crime problem, the drug problem, the poverty problem, the health problems, the budget problem, the education problem, the anger problem, the depression problem.  We need more training, more awareness, more seminars, more brochures, and most of all, more money.

And what is the end result of it all? (I’m not saying not to care and be active in these areas, please understand my point).  The result is we can’t solve these problems on our own strength.  How do I know this?  Jesus taught it.

Mark 14:7
For you always have the poor with you. And whenever you want, you are able to do good for them. But you do not always have me. (NT Transline)

Jesus and the apostles go to great lengths to minister to the poor, so He’s not saying we should ignore social problems.  But He is saying that we will always have them.  These problems will not go away.  You will not eradicate disease.  Cure one; another takes its place.  The death rate of life is 100%.  You’re not going to cure life.  Again, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t ease suffering.  But we can try and try and try to solve the world’s problems, and there will be more problems to solve.  People will continue to suffer, one way or another.  That’s life apart from God.  You cannot legislate or educate or masturbate your way out of it.

And you can’t solve your own problems either.  Evidence for that?  All the failed “resolutions” every year after the arbitrary New Year.  People declare they’ll do a lot of things, but they seldom do any of them.  And if they do, new problems surface they didn’t plan on.  An illness, a death in the family, a job loss, a son goes to jail.  Boom, life changes, and you don’t know how to handle it.

Pray for God to Protect You from Evil
When you pray, and thereby walk with God, He helps you through all this stuff.  Porn addiction is no different.  God alone can protect you from sin and evil.  How do I know this?  Jesus taught it.  It’s in His instructions to us on how to pray!

Matthew 6:13
And do not bring us into a temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. (NT Transline)

Do you pray and ask God to protect you?  To deliver you from evil?  We spend so much time praying for ourselves, but how often do we pray for the stuff God himself tells us to pray for?  We need God’s help with this!  I don’t have a demon-gun in my house. I ordered one online, but it never arrived.

God has wanted to protect us from evil since the beginning.  Here’s another great verse:

Isaiah 52:12
But you will not go out in haste, nor will you go as fugitives; for the Lord will go before you, and the God of Israel will be your rear guard. (NAS)

See that?  God protects us.  In this image, He protects us from behind, and He leads the way to protect us from what lies ahead.  He guards us all around.  As we saw earlier, one way He guards us is through peace.  Do you know how much suffering, heartache, and regret you can avoid if you get filled with the peace of God? Another of my favorites:

Isaiah 41:10
Do not fear, for I am with you; do not anxiously look about you, for I am your God.  I will strengthen you, surely I will help you, surely I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. (NAS)

The Bible is full of promises like this.  Build your faith.  I’ve been speaking that last verse out loud for years now.  And you know what?  I’m starting to believe it.  We can also go back to Psalm 23, that most famous of psalms.  It’s famous for a reason.  Listen to this:

Psalm 23:4
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for You are with me.  Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me. (NAS)

The valley of the shadow of death.  That’s suffering.  That’s isolation, loneliness, the threat of despair, hopelessness.  But we must fight for hope by the power and grace of God.  It anchors our souls.  Don’t give in to fear, which leads to insecurity, which is the source of all our sexual sins.  God with us is enough.

I also started praying for my future children, that God will protect them from evil.  With all the vile corruption out there at school, on the internet, in the grocery aisles, and at the mall (what about television?), it’s basically impossible to shield your kids from it.  But God will shield them from the stuff He knows will harm them that is avoidable.  When I hear the kinds of things other people have been exposed to, I realize even in my own life what God shielded me from.  If you don’t go looking for it, you can avoid a lot of evil, and God will protect you.

Pray for things like these, and your life will change.  Watch one by one as the fruits of the Spirit start manifesting in your life.  You’ll start being more generous.  You’ll stop swearing as much at other drivers.  You’ll stop being so angry, without knowing the reason.  You’ll stop sizing up every woman who walks by.  All this takes time.  Perseverance.  Desire.  Hunger.

Pray for Mercy and Restoration
Confess your sins to God.  Confess your fear, your discouragement, your selfishness, and your greed.  Turn from them, by His power.  Ask God to heal your soul, your heart.  To refresh your spirit.  To purify and renew your mind.

Ask God to cause you to hate your sin.  I prayed this prayer for several weeks a few years back, along with praying for the porn stars.  This is a prayer God will answer.  I guarantee it.  If you want to hate your sin, hate it so much that it repulses you, that you see it for what it is, God will answer that prayer.  He hates it too, and wants it out of your life.

Shift your life such that prayer becomes part of it.  You must make this decision if you want freedom.  It brings you close to God, and Him close to you.  When you get close to God, your sin flees from you.  The two cannot coexist.

This is one of the best things about the book of Revelation.  Read the whole book, but don’t get all hung up on all the symbolism the end-times fanatics spend all their money and time obsessing over.  Dwell instead on the pictures of heaven.  The glory and majesty of God.  How awesome He is.  When you read Revelation with this goal in mind, it’s an incredible book!  It encourages and strengthens your spirit in a big way, especially in the New Testament Transline, because the structure is clearer.  I don’t believe Revelation was primarily written to tell us the future.  It was written to encourage us to keep going.  That’s why it starts with the seven churches.  As we saw at the outset of this section, each one ends with the phrase, “To the one overcoming…”  This book is about winning.  We can win in this life, and we must live out the whole thing in expectant faith, because God wins it all in the end.

Decision #3: I Will Believe

Romans 8:1,2
Therefore, there is now no condemnation for the ones in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus set you free from the law of sin and death. (NT Transline)

I love this verse, and the whole chapter that follows.  It is a declaration of our freedom from sin.  God does not continue to condemn us.  Rather, He has set us free from condemnation and empowered us to walk in newness of life.  That new identity in Christ I talked about?  It’s here.  Forgiving yourself?  It’s here too.  “There is no condemnation” means that if you feel guilty and ashamed and condemned after repenting, then you are doing that to yourself, because God has forgotten your sin.

Therefore, the third decision you must make is to believe all this stuff.  We can throw Bible verses at you until we rip out all the pages.  But you have to believe it.  Paul, toward the end of his life, says to Timothy these words:

II Timothy 4:7
I have fought the good fight.  I have finished the course.  I have kept the faith. (NT Transline)

In his first letter, he told him to do the same thing:

I Timothy 6:12
Be fighting the good fight of faith.  Take hold of eternal life, into which you were called and confessed the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. (NT Transline)

Interesting that while we live, we are continually fighting.  Fighting.  At the end of his life, Paul could say he had “fought” the fight.  Is this the same struggle we talked about in II Corinthians 10:4?  The struggle for which we have been given weapons of divine power?  Yes.  It is the fight of faith–the fight to believe.

There are whole books and courses on faith, so I’m not going to dwell as extensively here as they do.  But a few key principles must be understood.

The Fight of Faith
Faith is a battle.  It is a fight.  Yet another misconception floating in some churches is that you either have faith or you don’t.  If you’re a Christian, you have faith.  Some secular people even say that each religion is “a faith,” using it like a noun.  But faith is not a set quantity.  You can have more faith, or less faith.  You can have strong faith, or weak faith.  You can have the spirit of faith, or the spirit of doubt and uncertainty and fear.  Once again, Jesus taught all this.  It makes it so much easier for me when Jesus taught something.  He taught us about having the faith of the mustard seed, that this is enough to move a mountain.  That implies you can have more faith than that.  Several times He chides His disciples for having little faith, or weak faith.  He says the centurion had “great faith.”

How do you get great faith?  You have to want it, because it is a fight.  You have to fight to believe.  There are a thousand other things to occupy your mind than this, so if you don’t perceive its value and go after it like your life depends on it, then you won’t get very much of it.

You wage this battle using the weapons of warfare alluded to in II Cor 10:4, which are able to destroy spiritual forces and strongholds.  What are these weapons?  The first one is to speak the Bible out of your mouth.  Study it.  Think about it.  Be open to it.  If it says something that contradicts what you heard in church, but you’re pretty sure you’re reading it right, what do you believe?

Picture Leo and Abby from Pornified once again.  Her pastor says that “all men struggle with pornography,” so she’ll just have to deal with it.  Well, what if she had filled herself with the word of God, and knew beyond any doubt what God says?

I John 5:4
Whatever is born of God overcomes the world.  And this is the victory that has overcome the world–my faith. (NAS, personalized)

If Abby knew this, she’d go to her pastor (with respect) and tell him this is what the Bible says.  By faith we have the victory over the world.  It doesn’t hold me down, but I break free by my faith and trample on the snakes and scorpions that Jesus Christ personally gave me authority over!  She’d tell him that he who lives by the Spirit walks by the Spirit, and he who walks by the Spirit does not carry out the desires of the flesh (Gal 5:16).  She’d talk about Revelation 2 and 3, which tell us what awaits the one who overcomes the world and perseveres through the trials of life, that “the one overcoming will never be harmed by the second death. (Rev 2:11)”

Faith doesn’t let appeasement or pacification get in its way.  Abby could have said, “Don’t tell me to settle down, and not get so worked up about this.  Don’t tell me to just let it go, to not disturb the water.  The water is infested with leeches, sucking our fire for God from our hearts.  My husband is spiritually dying, and this is the best you can say?”

Faith comes.  The more it comes, the more you have.  And it comes much faster when you dwell in the word of God, and not as much on your cell phone:

Romans 10:17
So the faith comes from a report-hearing, and the report-hearing through a word about Christ. (NT Transline)

I like the specificity of “report-hearing” in this translation.  This word also carries with it the idea of listening and obeying.  They heard the report and they responded to it.  They acted based upon the word they heard, not based upon sight.  The more truth we hear about Christ, the more faith comes.  And there’s a whole lotta truth about God in the Bible.

Do You Really Want It?
You cannot have victory if you don’t learn your Bible.  It’s the hunger for righteousness.  Galatians and Romans talk extensively about how we are righteous by faith, and not by our works–what we do.  But if you don’t know the Bible says that, or what it means, and haven’t thought about what it means for your life, then you aren’t righteous by faith!

Wait a minute…that’s heresy.  No, I’m not talking about salvation.  I’m talking about the very reason Galatians was written.  The whole letter is written to a people who had forgotten that they were righteous by faith, set free from the Law, and empowered by grace to live for God.  The recipients of the letter had reverted to living by the merits of their performance, by their own effort.  That’s why Paul wrote the letter.  When we don’t know the incredible truth that God has declared us righteous, apart from anything we’ve done, then we will return to believing it’s all about what we do.  We’ll return to thinking God only accepts us based on our performance. And then we get insecure again, because our performance is never good enough. And then we run to things other than God to regain our security. Things like porn.

So if you don’t keep your heart saturated with the truth of the Bible, you’ll forget this, and I guarantee it, you will start living and thinking in terms of performance.  You’ll forget the power of faith, and the freedom you have in Christ.  You will return to the yoke of slavery, just like the Galatians did.

Faith comes, and it grows, but it’s a battle.  The good news is, winning this battle just takes a little bit of discipline, a whole lot of desire, and a godly perspective.  A godly perspective considers these questions: What is most important in life?  What matters most to me (eternity) and to God?  When you get that straight, you will adjust your life so that no matter what else happens, I’ve got to read the word.  I can’t live without it.  That’s the attitude of victory in this battle. God responds to this kind of faith. He does the work we can’t do. He empowers us. He emboldens us. He leads us beside still waters, and delivers us from evil.

And that’s the next key to victory.  I must have victory.  Refuse to lose.  You must be so desperate for victory that you will do anything to keep it.

Desperation leads to decisions.  And decisions lead to declarations.  You start declaring the word of God to yourself.  To the enemy.  To God.  You keep it up.  Life gets harder.  You gave up all your porn hookups.  And now you’re lonely.  It’s hard.  No one understands.  But wait, I just read about what God says about me.  I’m His child.  And He knows my needs.  He knows it hurts me, deep and prolonged, to be alone like this.  He knows my unmet, parched desires.

And you keep fighting.  No one is saying it’s easy.  But in the process, you’ll be learning things about God that you wouldn’t even know to think about if you were still jacked in to the porn machine.

I Declare
When making declarations, you don’t just declare things God has done.  That’s easy. You start declaring absurd things.  Ridiculous things.  Things far in the future that you’d be a loon to say in front of anyone else.  I thank you Lord that you will send someone to Jenna Jameson and tell her about your love.  I thank you that one day, she will stand in public and declare Jesus to be the love of her life, and to renounce all her dead works.  And she will even forgive those judgmental letter writers who steered her even farther down the wrong path.

Crazy, huh?  And that’s why it’s so good.  Because God is honored that you ask for things like this in faith.  And it builds your own confidence.  It builds you up on the inside, where true strength lies, and continually reinforces who you are in Christ.  It keeps your eyes off yourself for a few minutes, and on the world that desperately needs God’s love as much as you.  It touches God’s heart, who so loves the world that He gave His only Son for it.

Other things you can declare over yourself: I belong to God, and He loves me.  I have received righteousness as a gift.  I will stand approved before Jesus one day.  I will fix my eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of my faith.  God fought for me.  God chose me.  I am a minister of reconciliation.  I have the fruit of the Spirit.  I am blameless in the sight of God.  I am accepted and secure in God’s love.  I will receive the resurrection power of God.  I will one day be saved from the presence of sin.  This sin will not plague me my whole life.

You can go on and on with this stuff all day.  And it’s a lot easier to think these things up when you’ve read them and know them from the Bible.

To win the faith battle, you must defeat discouragement.  Remember, this is a gateway sin.  It initiates so many others much worse than itself.  You feel yourself getting discouraged?  Learn to catch it, repent of it, and declare the truth about yourself.  I am strong and courageous.  The joy of the one who delivered me is the joy that lives inside me.  The Kingdom of God is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.  But don’t skip that repentance part.

Discouragement is a sin, against the commandment of God.  Don’t get all offended at the idea of this being a sin.  And don’t condemn yourself because you keep getting discouraged.

There is now no condemnation in Christ, and I am free from the law of sin and death.  You accept it as sin and you expose it right there.  Sin flees from light.  It thrives in darkness.  That’s why confessing our sins to other people is as important as to God.  And that’s why keeping a short account prevents these sins from taking root.

Your discouragement will fade if you do this.  God says so.  I’ve lived it.  When this hit me, and I finally accepted it as the truth and started living this way, my discouragement went away.  Did I ever fail?  Of course.  Did the discouragement come back too?  Naturally.

But here’s the key.  This is why this is a lifestyle shift, and not a series of steps.

Get Back Up
Will you ever stumble in your lust or these other sins of the mind again?  Probably.  But will you become enslaved to them again?  Never.  Stumbling is not enslavement.  When you stumble, you get up and keep walking.  When you’re slave, you stop moving.  You’re confined.  The key is that when you start living and thinking this way, you rebound from your failures much faster than before.  I used to wallow for months–months!–before finally digging my way out.  Some of you are thinking, “months, that’s nothing…I’ve got years.”  All the more so, then.

At this point in my life, I rebound the same day!  I stumble, and do something I know is wrong, but I rebound that same day, cry to God to restore and save me, and I get moving again.

And every time, I believe that will be the last time I stumble in this area.  And someday, I’m going to be right.  My spirit of faith declares my freedom.  I am free.  I will not be enslaved again.  God is good, and He won’t let me.  He’s on my side.  He’s for me, so who can be against me?  He knows I’m not perfect.  He doesn’t give up on me when I stumble.

But if I just lay there and despair, and hate myself, then God has to stand there waiting for me to figure it all out again.  When you know your God, and know your destiny, you want to get back up.  You want to move on.  You don’t want to dwell on your failure.  And you are secure in God’s love enough to turn right back to Him, and away from your failure.

The American Christian
Finally, I want to share a verse from the Sermon on the Mount.  It’s a famous verse and a well-known song, but its truth guides us along the path of righteousness.

Matthew 6:33
But be seeking first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. (NT Transline)

Be seeking.  Again, an ongoing process (so the song got that part wrong, oh well).  Continually seek first the things God values most, and He will take care of your needs.  By faith, you will believe this verse, and then it will finally start to affect your life.  But only if you properly perceive the value of “His righteousness.”  If you don’t want it, you won’t seek it, and you will also not have all these things added to you.

Compare this to the parable of the sower, and the thorny soil, where the seed withers because that person is so distracted by the cares of this life.  This verse is the living testimony of millions of American Christians:

Luke 8:14
And the seed having fallen into the thorns–these people are the ones having heard, and while proceeding are being choked by the anxieties and riches and pleasures of life, and they are not bringing fruit to maturity. (NT Transline)

Distracted hearts, half-heartedly pursuing God.  Never producing any lasting, mature fruit in their own lives, much less anyone else’s.  Their kids rebel against them and all their arbitrary rules and superficial faith, and get lost in their own addictions, whether porn, video games, drugs, parties, thrillseeking, or all of the above.  They all call themselves Christians, and think they’re being a “witness” because they vote Republican and are against abortion.  But not even their closest non-Christian friends know they go to church, because they don’t get much out of it anyway, and are looking for a new one with better worship.  And, the now 50-year-old dad still can’t bring himself to throw away the Playboys he’s hidden in the closet the past twenty years.  He’s pretty sure his wife and kids never found them here.  He thought about tossing them several times, and threw away a few of the torn ones.  But man, this one lady is so beautiful, and he just can’t bring himself to do it.  Oh well, it’s not that bad.  It’s only a magazine, and this girl’s at least forty by now.  Probably doesn’t look that good anymore.  Let’s go see what’s on TV.

That’s not a life of faith.  That’s a wasted life.  That’s not a life I want, and if you are serious about your freedom and walk with God, it’s not a life you want either.  God didn’t save us to live like that.  We were saved by faith, and we should live by faith.

When you make this third decision and say, “I will believe,” you are deciding to pursue the truth of the gospel with all your heart, and to build up your faith until it revolutionizes your life, your walk with God, and most importantly, the effectiveness of your witness to the rest of the world.  You are deciding that you can’t live without the Bible, that you want to know and understand all it has to say about God, you, and the rest of the world.  You are deciding that God is on your side, and that you’re going to keep jumping back into His arms when you stumble, because you want to go where He’s taking you, and not get “left behind” in the lukewarm waters of anemic faith.