1 Corinthians 10:13
13 No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.
Carl’s hooked. Badly. He didn’t intend to become addicted but he’s caught now and can’t see how to get free. The pornographic pictures just fire him up; they make his brain blaze with lust. And there is the intense, gratifying release that always results, driving Carl on into more and more images, and lust, and bondage. He knew what he was doing was wrong. He knew it would bend him, corrupt his thinking, and darken his soul. But the pleasure of his sinful addiction is fierce and powerfully habit-forming!13 No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.
Everywhere Carl looks there is something that provokes his sexual lust. On billboards, magazine covers, in t. v. commercials, music videos; on ten-foot store signs at the mall, Carl sees women in various states of undress, lips slightly parted, heavy-lidded eyes staring suggestively, arching invitingly toward him; all around Carl, females in skin-tight yoga pants that reveal every crevice, and curve, and crease of their womanly form walk past, careless of the blaze they ignite in Carl’s mind. After a few hours out-and-about, what choice does Carl have but to return home powerfully aroused and dive headlong into the sexual images he’s collected on his phone or p.c.?
It’s so easy to find the foul images he so strongly craves! Way too easy. It seems like there are millions of pictures and videos to see; millions of women eager to satisfy Carl’s addiction. What can he do? He’s helpless before the tidal wave of sexuality sweeping over him from the ‘net and the world around him. This scares him, this feeling of being on the edge of a kind of lust-madness. And he’s slowly spiraling downward into harder, more violent, more warped images and videos. If he can’t find a way out, he’s terrified of what he might become - and do.
To the few people to whom Carl has spoken of his…problem, the advice has been less than helpful: Take a cold shower, stay busy, work-out lots, go for a run, think of the naked women he looks at as his sisters, get a girlfriend with whom he can fornicate, install controls on his phone and p.c. None of this stuff has helped. Is Carl out of luck, then, doomed to be a slowly self-destructing porn addict?
No. God’s got a way out. Here it is:
Romans 13:12-14
12 The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.
13 Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy.
14 But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.
There are two parts to the advice given here:
- Walk properly: Put on the armor of Light who is Christ.
- Cast off the works of darkness; make no provision for the flesh.
Make no provision for the flesh. Get rid of the p.c.. Get rid of the cell-phone. Stay away from the mall. Stop watching t.v.. As much as possible, remove everything through which temptation is entering your life. The drunk must avoid the pub and the porn addict must avoid the internet. Usually, “making no provision for the flesh” is where the addict to sin finds out how serious he (or she) is about breaking out of their addiction.
There are lots of addicted Christians, though, aren’t there? Yes, more and more, it seems – especially to porn. How come they’re addicted if the Holy Spirit is in them? Shouldn’t the Spirit free them from all addictions?
Well, God doesn’t make puppets of His children. The Spirit gives believers spiritual life, but he won’t coerce those in whom he dwells to live as he wants them to live. At every turn, they must be agreeing to his transformation, his changing, of them. This is done by way of submission to the Holy Spirit, by a constant yielding to his will and way throughout every day.
Romans 6:12-18
12 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions.
13 Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness.
14 For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.
15 What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means!
16 Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?
17 But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed,
18 and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.
Continued below.