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

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