Welcome friend, hope it’s okay to call you friend? It’s fairly personal and we probably don’t know each other but I do want you to know my heart is tender towards you. And while I’m not entangled with pornography, I’m much more like you than different. Yeah, you and I both have been tempted by the desires of our heart to look to creation rather than to the Creator for life, for comfort, for satisfaction in our souls as we seek distraction from something, someone, some feeling.
I dabbled in porn as a junior high girl, before the Internet was created, so my experience was with magazines I found in my neighbors’ closet. Secret, lingering and lustful gazes were happening every time I went to babysit and the kids were in bed. My body reacted . . . aroused by things I’d never seen before. So enticing! So mesmerizing! And . . . addicting. Amazingly though, those magazines were missing one day when I showed up for my neighborly duties, and try as I might, I couldn’t find them! And so . . . my porn history was cut short to my then disappointment, but now I shake my head in thankful wonder at God’s merciful intervention.
But I’ve more than dabbled in other addictive, ensnaring habits: food, entertainment, emotionally-enmeshing connections with people, and in particular with women. I’ve been the kind of person that Jesus came for: a captive needing to be set free, a broken-hearted woman needing healing. (See Luke 4:18-20 and Isaiah 61:1-3 if you’re interested in His job description!)
Your enslavement to pornography is the fruit of a process that’s happening in your heart, friend; or as Paul says in Galatians 6:7-8, it is the ‘harvest’ coming in from seeds you’ve sown. When desires and thoughts go astray from a Christ-ward and Word-centric focus, seeds are being sown toward the nurturing of our flesh. I wonder how you made your first click into a porn site? And how long you lingered there? And then how long it was before you were drinking in and feasting upon the images again? Then . . . when did you reach the sober destination of “How did I end up here? How in the world have I become so addicted to this stuff?”
You see, God’s promises often come to us with a combination sober warning and amazing hope. Galatians 6:7-8 is a passage I want to urge you to feast upon, to soak your thoughts upon and to take steps of obedience toward:
“Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked; a man reaps what he sows. The one who sows to please the sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life!”
For as many women who are addicted to pornography, there are as many paths of sowing seeds that lead each one closer to the edge of the pit, and then finally into a seemingly hopeless miry mess, a web of addiction from which escape seems impossible.
- A lonely heart, a heart in pain seeking escape so as to feel good
- Disappointment with life; selfishly clinging to a state of mind in which life must flow my way, on my own terms
- Thoughts unchecked and coasting in lust, secretly developed stories of sexual fantasy craving fulfillment
- A body that longs for sexual intimacy but settles for arousing images that lead towards sex with self
- Yearnings for romance with a man or woman; yearning for a person to fill my soul, with the easy click into a world of relating, where I am queen and have nothing asked of me . . . or so one thinks.
Seeking life in creation, which is sin and will cost us more than we could ever imagine and will take us further than we ever want to go.
For all of the above, JESUS has come and is a knowing, loving, present Savior, Healer and Rescuer! Desires, feelings, pain, dreams, fears, anxieties, soul ache, which happens to everyone in this world because it’s broken and fallen. This is why Jesus came: to restore creation from corruption and to return us to what we were created for:lives of glory-giving to God, to actually cause 2 Peter 1:3,4 to be reality:
“His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and goodness. Through these He has given us His very great and precious promises, so that through them you may ESCAPE the corruption in the world caused by evil desires and participate in the divine nature.”
Friend, there IS true freeing Hope for you…it is a person: Jesus. He knows the pains, sorrows, fears, anxieties, longings and groans that are in your heart. While porn will smother that pain for a brief time, it cannot heal it or strengthen you to be the woman God’s beautifully designed you to become! He is your designer and your healer. Will you take the courageous step to be honest about your broken-heartedness with God and a trusted person in your life? Jesus is saying to you, “Come to Me . . . as you are with your pornography enslavement, and I will set you free.”
Will you come?
Ive been having trouble with this . I noticed it happens when irregular change occurs in my life , i fill myself up this way almost in vanity . For the first time in many years im am single and because I have already had these relationships before I think that it will inspire me for the future person i am with if i am to marry.
I know thats totally wrong because along the way I become addicted and my own reasoning doesnt make sense because thats not what God said I should do
How do I overcome this?