I think we can agree that we live in a highly sexually charged world. Whether it’s in movies, books, or video games, every scene is heavy with sexual imagery.
Chocolate Cake Spoils Your Appetite
Before we dive into the main point of this blog, I would like all the readers to join me in this exercise. Get comfortable where you are and
close your eyes.
Let’s say you are at a party. There is lots of food at this party like lobster, sushi, fried chicken, Gordon Ramsay making his signature steak, and Wolfgang Puck making his Oscar-worthy salmon wellington. You see celebrity chef after celebrity chef making their signature dishes. Then as you look, there is a chocolate cake. It is placed in a random spot, but it looks delicious.
You look, but you want to eat other things first before you get to the cake. However, this cake keeps drawing you back. You find yourself staring at it, mesmerized at the way the chocolate drops to the side, the strawberries garnishing the cake are glistening from the syrup they have been encased in. You know once you eat a bite, you will be very happy. You want to have a taste, but you still don’t want to spoil your appetite.
You convince yourself that you will go back to the other food once you try this cake. So you cut yourself a big slice and look at it like a cat about to take the first sip of forbidden cream. After what seems like a long time of anticipation, you take a bite, then you realize that the cake is not good. In fact, the chocolate is grainy, and the cake is so dry it tastes like cardboard.
You know what the cake is supposed to taste like. The chocolate should taste dark, rich, and sweet. The cake is supposed to be fluffy and moist. However, all you taste is a disappointment. You regret taking a bite because not you don’t want to eat any of the other food. Now open your eyes. Do you see where I am going with this?
The Truth About Porn
Porn portrays sex as a way for physical gratification. God has a different image of sex. He made it to be a way to connect with a spouse in the blessing of marriage. God views sex as a covenant between a man and woman. In fact when you have sex with someone, God views it as though you’ve married that person.
He made it a way for couples to come together and give each other love beyond what anyone can feel outside of marriage. Sex is how you connect with your partner physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Sex is private and not meant to be displayed. I have heard it said that sex is a worshipful act.
When we watch porn, sex that is meant to bless and bring spouses together gets portrayed in a way that only shows the physical side of the spiritual side. Porn changes the mindset that God put in us originally about sex to something lackluster, disillusioning, and sometimes a violent act.
For single people, the devil can lie and tell us that since we are not hurting anyone or having sex with anyone, then this is the perfectly acceptable thing to do. Of course, we know from the word that we should be thinking about good and praiseworthy things (Philippians 4:8). Porn changes our mindset from the idea that God had into nothing more than physical gratification, like an itch or even a sneeze.
God’s original design for sex was meant to change us by binding us to a spouse. Porn, like that chocolate cake, might look pleasurable for a few seconds. However once gratified, it doesn’t make us a different person it only leaves us empty.
The images from porn never leave us. They keep replaying and repeating in our minds. They take root in an area of our minds that God meant for another more holy act.
The Even Harder Truth
Remember that chocolate cake, think about you going back to it and at some point finding yourself staring at it. We knew the impact that the cake would have on our appetite and we knew how the cake is supposed to taste in the right context, yet we still took a bite before it was time.
In the same way, know the effect that porn will have on our walk with Christ, on our future intimate relationships, on our self-esteem and yet the proverbial chocolate cake seems tastier in that second while it devastates us in the next.
Since porn is tricky, knowing how to start our battle is important. The devil tries to make us think that one taste of the chocolate cake is okay, then turns around and condemns us. The devil is always using the same tricks. His modus operandi of tempt, condemn, shame, repeat has not changed since creation began.
The word says that “we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12). In order to fight, we need to know how to fight. Porn is not an easy battle. It requires humility, surrendering to God, repentance of all sin, and wisdom to recognize attacks and lies. These steps will help in starting the battle.
However, everyone’s journey is different. It is very important to be in constant communication with God. Jesus says that He is “The light of the world.” (John 8:12). Let Him be the light in this battle. We don’t serve a God who doesn’t speak. If we listen and wait, God is waiting to speak to us. With this in mind, let’s get into how we can start fighting this battle with the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.
Step 1: Acknowledge the Problem and Hand it to God
With this theme of bringing the problem to light, let us talk about how we can defeat porn by bringing it to God. Sins that are covered up are like mold. They grow and fester, making us think they are bigger than it is by shaming us.
When we bring our addiction before the light of the world, it suddenly loses a lot of its power against the light of Jesus Christ. The first step to recovery is acknowledging the problem. When we come before God and tell him what we struggle with, it gives him permission to work with us.
God gives us free will, He is a gentleman. He will not force you to change. God does tell us in Matthew 11:28 that if we are weary or burdened, then God is willing and able to carry us.
Porn addiction should not be a burden we carry with us. Sexual immorality is serious because, unlike other sins, it is a sin against our own bodies (1 Corinthian 6:18). When we accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, we invite him to live in our hearts.
Living with this sin defiles the temple we have given Christ (1 Corinthians 6:19). Once we recognize that we have a problem, then handing it to God can begin to ease the burden of shame and guilt and can begin to forge a path forward away from addiction.
Step 2: Find the Root
A lot of times porn addiction or any addiction for that matter stems from the fact that we lack something in our lives only God can fill. However, in our quest to find that thing, we get roped into an addiction that mimics pleasure but is guilt and shame-ridden.
As stated earlier, the bible tells us that our fight is not against flesh and blood. Like John 10:10 says the enemy comes to kill, steal, and destroy. By destroying our identity, stealing our joy, and making us think we have destroyed our relationship with God, he can tempt us to fill in our lives with a few seconds of pleasure continued by a lifetime of shame.
However, finding the cause, where it is loneliness, stress, lack of sleep, fear of rejection, fear of intimacy, addiction, or pain can help us cut it off at the root. In order to fight the temptation before it begins, we need to know and believe our identity in Christ. It is when we don’t know our worth that we seek other things to fill in a void that is created through our lack of knowledge (Hosea 4:6). We can seek to fill that through God instead of other means.
The Word of God can be a great tool to cut through the lies, shame, and confusion while we try to find the root of the addiction. This is where time with Jesus comes into play. Keeping with the theme of bringing our sin to the light, the more we are exposed to Jesus’s light, the more the lies fall away and we are able to see what we need God to fill. God knows what we need, but He needs us to ask Him to fill that part of us.
Step 3: Accountability
A lot of times a battle fought with a friend is easier to win than a battle fought in the dark. As described in step 1 addiction is like mold and it flourishes in dark places. Fighting this battle with someone we trust brings it to light. Once it is brought to the light it loses a lot of its strength (Ephesians 5:13).
The bible tells us in Ephesians 6:2 that we must carry each other’s burdens while keeping ourselves out of the path of temptations. As said previously, evil will try to keep us from sharing and bringing it to light. We need to be wise in our selection of accountability. Having an accountability partner weakens the power of addiction by exposing it to light and easing the burden.
The best accountability partner is God because it helps build that relationship. Going back to step 1, we have the added benefit of a Father who will carry our shame, guilt, and burden without being tired. God takes His responsibility of being an accountability partner seriously.
The bible tells us that every temptation has a way to bear it (1 Corinthians 10;13). When we endure temptation, it is like building an immunity. However, the devil, once again, will try to make us believe that it’s okay if we sin if we tell God about it later. When we build immunity to temptation, we are able to detect the lies that evil uses. Evil uses the same lies again and again.
Step 4: Break Agreement with Shame
Shame is one of those lies the devil uses again and again. Breaking free of shame will bring us closer to winning the battle. Shame and condemnation are some of the biggest mountains that will keep us from breakthrough.
Jesus tells us that even though there are trials in this world, He tells us to have courage because He has overcome the world. This means that through Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection, we have overcome the world i.e shame.
The Word of God should be the sword we should fight with because it has the power to cut through lies devised by the enemy (Hebrew 4:12). One of the main parts of scripture that we can apply to our lives is the passage on the Amour of God.
We have talked a little about the word of God which is the sword, another part of the Armour we can use to defeat the arrows of evil is our faith. Faith acts as a shield from attacks of the devil. Through our faith, we have the ability to deflect arrows and tell a mountain to uproot and go into the sea (Mark 11:23). Our faith in the Word of God and our identity in who God made us cast the mountain of shame into the sea. Another sword in our arsenal is that there is no condemnation in Christ (Romans 8:1-3).
The lie of shame brings with it the lie of condemnation. Evil will try to make us forget the goodness of God and forget the word that is written for us. This does not mean that we can keep on sinning. However, this means that we can come with our sins in front of God and deliverance is available to us at the throne room.
Step 5: Prepare to Conquer
As we have already learned, evil likes to lie to us and wants us to keep our sins under wraps. If we knew our worth or that we have already conquered, then we know that Christ has already defeated our sins at the cross 2,000 years ago. When we prepare to conquer, we must believe that we have already conquered because Jesus tells us that He has already overcome (John 16:33).
Lets us stand on that verse as our foundation and conquer. As we have stated multiple times, we must stand on the truth of God; which is the word. A foundation built on Jesus remains unshaken.
When we believe that we have conquered, that faith we talked about from Mark 11:23 that has the power to make a mountain obey and throw itself into the sea will be a shield that deflects any attacks from the devil (Ephesians 6: 16).
Our Identity in Christ is Embedded in the Word of God.
To conclude our thoughts, we have learned that having a foundation in Christ and His word is the biggest weapon in our arsenal. Our identity in Christ is embedded in the word of God. Evil will trick us so that we will not bring our temptations and sins to the Light.
Evil always uses the same motto; to steal, kill, or destroy. Jesus on the other hand wants us to live a full and satisfying life as written in John 10:10. Wisdom will help us in recognizing the attacks of the devil and the weapons we need to destroy it. To defeat, porn addiction, we must know our worth and the power that Christ gives us when we ask him to be part of our life. When we stand on the truth that Jesus provides, it sets us free (John 8:31-32).
Did you find this blog helpful? If so download the guide to remind you of the 5 steps to recovery when you are struggling.
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