Resentment the cause of many struggles........

As I sit here and write this blog entry I continue to struggle with the very thing that I have found to be foundational to my struggle with sexual addiction. The thing that I am talking about is my struggle with resentment. As I have worked through the 12 steps I have found that I harbor much resentment towards my parents, my wife, and even God at times. So why is resentment so deadly to my recovery some of you may be asking? For me resentment almost gives me permission to act out because when I dwell in this area I feed something that allows me to escape from my own sin and focus on the sin or faults of someone else. Essentially what I have done is formed an attitude against the person I have chosen to resent which then allows me to continue to act out sexually with very little thought as to how it has begun to impact my life as well as the people that I love so very much.

I have found that most of the resentment that I hold onto is not based in reality but comes from somewhere deep inside of me. From somewhere that is void of any light and anything good. It is the area that I have walled off from access to anyone even including God; the very one person who should have access.

So how have I begun to overcome resentment? For me the answer has been surrendering my resentments to Christ as soon as I begin experiencing them. This in turn has given him access to this area of my life. His light has begun to shine on areas that were once filled with darkness. By no means am I claiming to be even close to overcoming my struggle with resentment. However, I find much hope in knowing that with time and the power of the Holy Spirit in my life that I can move closer to a healthier way of dealing with pain in my life.

Thoughts?

James

Lust is not a Loving God

“Hello, my name is Job and I’m addicted to porn.”

That’s how integrity starts; admitting the obvious. There’s a lot of stigma in the above statement, but that’s ok. Fear and shame keep too many of us locked in secrecy, fighting porn all alone. The evidence is mounting that porn addiction is rampant; in and outside the church. God grant more of us the grace to come clean and get help.

But being addicted to porn is only half the story. The problem really isn’t porn. Most guys, given the choice of watching an explicit video or being in the video, will choose the latter option. Am I wrong? (nudge, nudge, wink, wink)

It turns out that most guys watch porn because, unlike Hugh Hefner, they do not have access to the young, lusty Playmates to fulfill their every desire. Porn only allows men to keep a harem of such beautiful women in their head… and their hard drive. But if porn is sloppy seconds, then what’s the real problem?

It must be sex itself, right? Then I should modify the opening line to,

“Hello, my name is Job and I’m a sex addict.”

!!??? Sweet holy biscuits, now there’s stigma for you. Only Will Ferrell can put the words sex and addict together and make it sound funny and not creepy, according to his character on “Blades of Glory”, it is “…"a real disease with doctors and medicine and everything!"

But if the problem were sex, then why isn’t marriage a cure? In marriage you can supposedly have sex as often as you want. I’ve run across alot of guys who’ve gotten married thinking that the "unlimited" access to sex would “cure” their problem with porn. I was one of them. But marriage is no cure for this malady as any married guy will attest. There seems to be something that makes sex with only one woman not enough.

Maybe we can use lust to describe the insatiable hunger that drives a man to never be satisfied with one woman or even one million images, videos, affairs, etc.

“Hello, my name is Job and I’m a lust addict.”

Lust is hard to define and it stretches far beyond just porn. I've made a list of characteristics of Lust. Please feel free to add your own definitions of lust by clicking the comments link.

1) Lust is what drives church-going, married men to secretly patronize strip clubs.

2) Lust is the force that compels a defeated man back to his computer to look for more porn, even though he swore he’d never do it again.

3) Lust is behind the fabulous scandal of that famous pastor or political figure.

4) Lust is the fuel that drives the global sex trafficking industry.

By the way, it seems that America is the leading customer driving the supply of sex slaves from Eastern Europe, southeast Asia, and states of the former USSR. http://www.uri.edu/artsci/wms/hughes/sex_traff_us.pdf

5) Lust can turn a father/brother/neighbor/uncle/friend into a sexual abuser.

6) Lust can horrifically recycle itself by often turning the sexually abused into abusers.

7) Lust can turn a beautiful woman, created in the image of God, into an object or a commodity.

8) Lust sells alcohol, deodorant, clothes, cars, diamonds, records, movies, chocolate, lifestyles, on and on and on…

9) Lust starts innocent and seemingly manageable, and before long, it turns ugly and becomes obviously unmanageable.

10) Lust tricks many people into trying to manage lust their whole lives. And, by the grace of Lust, most people remain socially acceptable lusters. But it seems that the number of scary lusters is increasing.

11) Lust is like a hunger.

12) Lust is like a drug. Unlike a drug, lust is available in our minds 24/7.

13) Lust seems to be a spiritual in nature.

I worshipped Lust for years. I was a fervent devotee of the beauty cult, following hard after Lust and the next great fix. From the outside, I looked pretty normal, but inside, most of my reason for living was to satisfy lust, in one way or another. It was very empty. For myself, I have found that Lust is truly neither a loving nor a gracious god.

Without the grace of Christ, I would worship lust right now. Sometimes I’m good at pretending I can handle it on my own, but eventually Lust proves to be more powerful than I am. I’ve only found One thing more powerful than Lust and that is Christ.

I am a lust addict; another description for a sinner. But I count myself fortunate. I know deeply how desperately I need mercy and grace. I am grateful for the shameful addiction that drove me to the feet of my Redeemer, the Friend of Sinners, Jesus.

thoughts?

Job

Grace Greater than Fear

When, by God’s grace, I stopped running, blaming, denying, and minimizing, I began recovering from my addiction to porn.

In the beginning, I was afraid of my sexuality. I was afraid of acting out, or relapsing. I was afraid of hurting my wife again. I was afraid that because I had admitted that I was a sex addict that meant I was uniquely damaged and disturbed. I was afraid that if left unchecked, my problem with porn would escalate to affairs, prostitutes, or possibly even a sex crime.

Before I came clean, I felt doomed to live with this struggle and fight it alone. As I saw it, I would either wind up married, miserable, and monogamous, or a pathetic, 50 year-old “playa” hitting on cheer-leaders, or I would go to the “dark side” and show up on a Dateline Special Report.

In any case, I didn’t believe there was hope for purity. Purity was misery because lust was so much fun! I certainly didn’t believe there existed communities of blessed and courageous men pursuing their own recovery from sexual sin. And more so, I didn’t believe that a godly life could be led with anything approaching joy and peace. I saw black and white; damned if I lived for lust, or miserable if I tried to be a “good boy”.

Fear kept me in bondage and in secrecy. Denial kept me believing that porn was no big deal. Pride kept me believing I could handle it on my own. And the grace of Jesus Christ broke through those webs of deceit… amazing love.

The tragedy is how this cancer thrives in secret, and yet keeps so many of us locked in secrecy.

CNN) -- An evangelical preacher killed his wife several years ago and
stuffed her body in a freezer after she caught him abusing their daughter,
according to police and court documents.

Anthony Hopkins, 37, was arrested Monday night at the Inspirational Tabernacle Church of God in Christ in Jackson, Alabama, just after he had delivered a sermon to a congregation that included his seven other children, officials said.

He faces charges including murder, rape, sodomy, sexual abuse and incest.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/07/31/preacher.freezer/index.html

Grace and Peace,

Job

Solo Recovery?

So is it possible to overcome lust and pornography on your own with the help of Christ? Does saying otherwise diminish the very power that the Holy Spirit offers us? These are some of the ideas I would like to throw out there and discuss.

I believe that it may be possible for Christ to offer a spontaneous healing to someone that is struggling with sexual sin just by asking for forgiveness and having a repentant heart. However, that is not what I have found to be the case in my own recovery and in the lives of the many men that I have had the privilege of being surrounded by in recovery.

It is only now after two years that I am beginning to appreciate the very thing that I was so frustrated about for so long. I have realized that through this journey of frustration and pain I have been able to learn many lessons that I can hopefully pass on to other men who choose to fight this tough battle as well.

For many years I would go to 1st John 1:9,

“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our
sins and purify us from all unrighteousness”

and wonder why I was unable to overcome this struggle. I kept going to Christ and confessing my struggle to him but I still went back to the very thing I despised so much.

It was only after attending a recovery workshop put on by Pure Warrior Ministries that I realized I was missing a key piece in my recovery. This missing piece is found in James 5:16

“Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you
may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.”

That is when the light bulb went on. What I was missing all along was the support and prayers of other Godly men in my life. I needed to be connected with other guys that would be willing to hold me accountable to the very standards that I so longed to achieve.

On top of that I needed to retrain my mind so that I would look to Christ to fill all of the voids in my life and not towards my addiction. This was not an easy thing to admit because it now meant that I would be unable to keep falling back into my sin like I had in the past.

Finally, I realized that this is what Christ has desired for us from the very beginning and following this model does not diminish Christ’s power at all.

Thoughts?

James

Porn Again Christian

This free e-Book was written by Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill in Ballard, WA, and is free for download, printing, and distribution.

From the amazingly clever title to Mark's way frank way dealing with sexual sin, this book is pretty much right on. Plus, it's hilarious.

http://relit.org/porn_again_christian/

one of my favorite quotes from the book:


"...what you do with your eyes and your penis is not simply your business. If you belong to
the Lord Jesus Christ then there is urgent kingdom and gospel business for you to be
about and neither time or money for you to waste while standing on the sidelines with
your pants around your ankles looking for a bottle of lotion."

....FINALLY!!.... wow, honesty and humor. Turns out it's ok to laugh about porn and our abysmal failure as men in this area.

peace and grace,

Job

What's the big deal??!!

Hello,

This blog, if not obvious, is about shining a light and creating a discussion over the issue of porn and lust, from the perspective of real-live sinners in need of the Real-Live Jesus.

So why is porn a big deal? Most of us have heard the statistics. Here are some interesting/frightening ones:

Worldwide visitors to pornographic web sites 72 million visitors to pornography: Monthly

80% of 15-17 year olds have had multiple hard-core pornography exposures

There are 116,000 Daily Gnutella "child pornography" requests

47% of Christians who said pornography is a major problem in the home

(http://www.familysafemedia.com/pornography_statistics.html)

Is it a bigger problem if you're married as opposed to being single? If you're single is porn an acceptable form of release that prevents pregnancy and disease? If married, is it an acceptable way to keep from having an affair? These rationalizations sound reasonable.

So, is it a big deal? If Job lived in our culture would he change that verse to say, "I've made a covenant with my eyes to not look lustfully at a live girl, but digital girls are ok...nobody's getting hurt"?

Is anybody hurt by looking at pictures/videos of women (or men) digitally fulfilling our sexual fantasies? If I visually consume that stuff, am I hurt by it? Are those around me hurt by it? Does it somehow toxify my soul? Or is it victimless?

Does being a man of God leave room for secret sexual sin? Are godliness and porn compatible as long as I keep the problem to a minimum, and confess it occasionally? If we know it exists in our churches, what do we, as men, do about it?

grace and peace,

Job