I could draw you the scene.
In some ways it feels seared into my memory.
I pulled open the heavy door of the silver truck and a playing card fell out from the wad of papers and business cards and folders wedged behind the passenger seat. When I bent down to pick it up, my eyes were filled with their first and most memorable dose of graphic pornography. I turned that card over to shove it back in the recesses of the cluttered cab and saw on it a man and a woman doing things I instantly felt dirty for even seeing. My heart wanted to pound out of my chest and my hands started to sweat as I tried my hardest to act like I hadn’t seen a thing when the daddy I loved climbed into the driver’s seat.
Porn — on a novelty poker card of all things. And I, an 8-year-old little girl, was instantly consumed by shame and guilt and, in full transparency, a lingering curiosity around what I’d just seen.
I tell this story in my book, Sex, Jesus, and the Conversations the Church Forgot, so women addicted to porn can hear my story and have hope. After I found that card, curiosity led me to secretly seek out pornographic things. Before I knew it, porn was regularly at the forefront on my mind. Like a siren from the cliffs, it called to me. I felt guilty for acting on my curiosity, but I was growing an appetite for the interest and stimulation I felt when I stumbled across the images I wasn’t supposed to see. My nervous internet clicks evolved into bold, obsessive searching. Eventually I began drawing nude images, trying to imitate the things I saw, and I was held captive by the grip of habitual masturbation.
As a not-even-preteen.
My struggle with pornography began when I was a child and oppressed me for over a decade. It effectively trained me to justify sin, quench the conviction of the Holy Spirit, and live with little to no self-control over the urges of my flesh. It desensitized me to more and more graphic and grotesque things and, even worse, it dehumanized my perspective of the people I watched for my own entertainment.
When were you exposed? We all carry such unique stories.
I emphasize just how foul the expressions of my perceived “sexual freedom” and “power” and “autonomy” were in order to truly emphasize just how miraculous and transformative it was when, by the grace of God, Jesus delivered me and set me free!
He wants to do the same for you, you know. After all, He came to set the captives free — and that includes women addicted to porn! Within our lives, our marriages, and our walks of faith, God’s best for us is that we be delivered and healed so that we might walk in faithfulness, not adultery. We are intended to walk in freedom, not hypocrisy. God wants you to be made well. Here’s what you need to know as you seek healing.
The Word of God reminds us in Ecclesiastes 1:9 that there is nothing new under the sun. Sexual perversion, in many of its various forms, has been a weapon in the Enemy’s arsenal from the earliest times of human history. Sex, after all, is God’s invention. He created it as a beautiful, unifying tangler of souls, as an act of worship that’s the physical expression of a rhythmically renewed spiritual covenant. A powerful, vulnerable, and life-giving act within the proper context of His design, sex was always intended to be an enjoyable expression of God’s goodness and glory between a husband and wife within a healthy, monogamous marriage.
But, just as there is nothing new under the sun, the adversary’s efforts are consistent — to pollute the good things of God, bring what’s holy down to a carnal and perverted form, and then entice people to choose for themselves what they desire. What was once a gift is twisted into a gimmick used to steal, kill, and destroy the lives of the image bearing creations of God. And the foul fruit is always the same: shame, bondage, pain, and compulsion.
Does any of that sound familiar?
The adversary’s efforts are not hard to discern or uncommon. He wants to steal, kill, and destroy your soul, your life, your marriage, and your family. He wants to influence your mind, will, and emotions in order to shipwreck your faith, and he will use any means necessary to deceive you concerning your true identity and the true heart of God. He wants women addicted to porn.
But porn is just one means to an end.
Please hear me when I say that “No temptation has overtaken you that is uncommon to mankind” (1 Corinthians 10:13). I believe many people, women especially, would be shocked to know the number of other believers (yes, female believers) within the Body of Christ who live at war with perverse sexual temptation, bondage, and addiction. Shame effectively silences many women who are addicted to porn, but do not mistake the Church’s awkward navigation around “taboo topics” for a Body void of very real battles. You aren’t alone.
If the Enemy’s efforts are to pervert what is covenantal and make it carnal, then it would be wise for us to ask the Lord to make it sacred once again in our sight. When we do that, we see that healthy sexual expression within the confines of God’s design was always meant to reveal to us the beauty of honest, faithful, transformative intimacy. And honest, faithful, transformative intimacy is the ultimate invitation of the Gospel — the invitation for two to become one.
Just as the man prophesies Christ and the woman prophesies the Church (Ephesians 5:31-32), Christ left His father’s house to come and retrieve His Bride, the Body of Christ. And when we receive Him by faith, the work of the Gospel is to reconcile us again with God and to transform us into the very likeness of our Bridegroom, through intimacy with the Holy Spirit. We are invited to draw near to Him, that He might draw near to us. To know Him and be known, fully. To bear spiritual fruit as evidence of the love and power of God at work in our lives.
No wonder when we have a defiled perspective and carnal mindset, we’re confused about healthy intimacy. No wonder we often equate intimacy with that which is objectifying, and love with that which is self-seeking and self-serving. If the adversary can distort our understanding of healthy intimacy, he can manipulate us out of the loving presence of God. Or, worse, cause us to treat God as Gomer treated Hosea. As Israel often treated YHWH. He can pervert the proper relationship between Christ and the Church in whatever ways he sees fit, ultimately putting our very souls at risk.
In the natural, watching porn, viewing explicit images, fantasizing and bringing porn into the bedroom is a counterfeit copy of intimacy that is staged, defiling, often physically and verbally violent, and a cheap, lustful imitation of love. As I write in my book, Fully Known:
And just as viewing porn often keeps a spouse out of the arms of the one they shared vows with, if we avoid the nearness and touch of God’s presence in our own life, spiritually, our walk with the Lord can become a seated observation of other’s lives rather than a life-laid-down, cross-carrying, Spirit-filled reality.
Porn is a spectator sport that gives us a false rush and does not conceive life within us.
A faith void of true intimacy with the Lord is also a spectator sport that gives us a counterfeit rush and does not conceive spiritual fruit within us.
You know you are worthy of receiving and engaging in genuine intimacy, right?
Counterfeit intimacy is not your portion as a child of God. Jesus has made a way for us to know personal, safe, authentic love. He wants you to experience true intimacy with Him — not just observe relayed intimacy from other’s time in His presence. He desires you experience the fullness of relationship — not just the second-hand reflection of relationship through other’s lives. If porn is training our minds to believe intimacy is exploitative and ultimately still leaves us empty, then how are we being formed as disciples who can be vulnerable and humble in the presence of the Lord?
Remember, God wants you to be made well. He desires we make no provision for the flesh in regard to its lusts (Romans 13:14), but instead love Him with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. It is, after all, His loving kindness and mercy that leads us to repentance (Romans 2:4), and when we fully turn our hearts back to Him we can know true life (Ezekiel 18:30-32). He wants you to know healing in the natural and healing in the spiritual realm.
Do you want the same? Do you want to be made well? (John 5:6)
Remember the Samaritan woman at the well? Yoked by shame, her encounter with Jesus changed everything. When the very things that held her captive were brought into the light, the mercy and love of God spoke a better word over her story. She ran back to town to evangelize concerning the One who carried the anointing capable of breaking the yoke, and as a result, many came to believe. I hope you know Jesus is excellent at delivering His people. While you may feel the weight of shame at this present moment, He is eager to call you redeemed.
A decade of my life was spent in the clutches of pornography. But at 19 years old, when I received revelation of the pure and undefiled love of God, I humbled myself before Him, cried out for His forgiveness, and accepted the invitation to right-natured intimacy. By His grace I was delivered from the yoke of sexual perversion and completely set free.
The moment you were exposed to pornography does not hold the right to write the rest of your story. The cross of Christ declares you redeemed!
The post Women Addicted to Porn: God Wants to Set You Free appeared first on Focus on the Family.
Continue reading...
In some ways it feels seared into my memory.
I pulled open the heavy door of the silver truck and a playing card fell out from the wad of papers and business cards and folders wedged behind the passenger seat. When I bent down to pick it up, my eyes were filled with their first and most memorable dose of graphic pornography. I turned that card over to shove it back in the recesses of the cluttered cab and saw on it a man and a woman doing things I instantly felt dirty for even seeing. My heart wanted to pound out of my chest and my hands started to sweat as I tried my hardest to act like I hadn’t seen a thing when the daddy I loved climbed into the driver’s seat.
Porn — on a novelty poker card of all things. And I, an 8-year-old little girl, was instantly consumed by shame and guilt and, in full transparency, a lingering curiosity around what I’d just seen.
I tell this story in my book, Sex, Jesus, and the Conversations the Church Forgot, so women addicted to porn can hear my story and have hope. After I found that card, curiosity led me to secretly seek out pornographic things. Before I knew it, porn was regularly at the forefront on my mind. Like a siren from the cliffs, it called to me. I felt guilty for acting on my curiosity, but I was growing an appetite for the interest and stimulation I felt when I stumbled across the images I wasn’t supposed to see. My nervous internet clicks evolved into bold, obsessive searching. Eventually I began drawing nude images, trying to imitate the things I saw, and I was held captive by the grip of habitual masturbation.
As a not-even-preteen.
My struggle with pornography began when I was a child and oppressed me for over a decade. It effectively trained me to justify sin, quench the conviction of the Holy Spirit, and live with little to no self-control over the urges of my flesh. It desensitized me to more and more graphic and grotesque things and, even worse, it dehumanized my perspective of the people I watched for my own entertainment.
When were you exposed? We all carry such unique stories.
I emphasize just how foul the expressions of my perceived “sexual freedom” and “power” and “autonomy” were in order to truly emphasize just how miraculous and transformative it was when, by the grace of God, Jesus delivered me and set me free!
He wants to do the same for you, you know. After all, He came to set the captives free — and that includes women addicted to porn! Within our lives, our marriages, and our walks of faith, God’s best for us is that we be delivered and healed so that we might walk in faithfulness, not adultery. We are intended to walk in freedom, not hypocrisy. God wants you to be made well. Here’s what you need to know as you seek healing.
Discern the fruit of porn
The Word of God reminds us in Ecclesiastes 1:9 that there is nothing new under the sun. Sexual perversion, in many of its various forms, has been a weapon in the Enemy’s arsenal from the earliest times of human history. Sex, after all, is God’s invention. He created it as a beautiful, unifying tangler of souls, as an act of worship that’s the physical expression of a rhythmically renewed spiritual covenant. A powerful, vulnerable, and life-giving act within the proper context of His design, sex was always intended to be an enjoyable expression of God’s goodness and glory between a husband and wife within a healthy, monogamous marriage.
But, just as there is nothing new under the sun, the adversary’s efforts are consistent — to pollute the good things of God, bring what’s holy down to a carnal and perverted form, and then entice people to choose for themselves what they desire. What was once a gift is twisted into a gimmick used to steal, kill, and destroy the lives of the image bearing creations of God. And the foul fruit is always the same: shame, bondage, pain, and compulsion.
Does any of that sound familiar?
The adversary’s efforts are not hard to discern or uncommon. He wants to steal, kill, and destroy your soul, your life, your marriage, and your family. He wants to influence your mind, will, and emotions in order to shipwreck your faith, and he will use any means necessary to deceive you concerning your true identity and the true heart of God. He wants women addicted to porn.
But porn is just one means to an end.
Please hear me when I say that “No temptation has overtaken you that is uncommon to mankind” (1 Corinthians 10:13). I believe many people, women especially, would be shocked to know the number of other believers (yes, female believers) within the Body of Christ who live at war with perverse sexual temptation, bondage, and addiction. Shame effectively silences many women who are addicted to porn, but do not mistake the Church’s awkward navigation around “taboo topics” for a Body void of very real battles. You aren’t alone.
Perceive the parallel
If the Enemy’s efforts are to pervert what is covenantal and make it carnal, then it would be wise for us to ask the Lord to make it sacred once again in our sight. When we do that, we see that healthy sexual expression within the confines of God’s design was always meant to reveal to us the beauty of honest, faithful, transformative intimacy. And honest, faithful, transformative intimacy is the ultimate invitation of the Gospel — the invitation for two to become one.
Just as the man prophesies Christ and the woman prophesies the Church (Ephesians 5:31-32), Christ left His father’s house to come and retrieve His Bride, the Body of Christ. And when we receive Him by faith, the work of the Gospel is to reconcile us again with God and to transform us into the very likeness of our Bridegroom, through intimacy with the Holy Spirit. We are invited to draw near to Him, that He might draw near to us. To know Him and be known, fully. To bear spiritual fruit as evidence of the love and power of God at work in our lives.
No wonder when we have a defiled perspective and carnal mindset, we’re confused about healthy intimacy. No wonder we often equate intimacy with that which is objectifying, and love with that which is self-seeking and self-serving. If the adversary can distort our understanding of healthy intimacy, he can manipulate us out of the loving presence of God. Or, worse, cause us to treat God as Gomer treated Hosea. As Israel often treated YHWH. He can pervert the proper relationship between Christ and the Church in whatever ways he sees fit, ultimately putting our very souls at risk.
In the natural, watching porn, viewing explicit images, fantasizing and bringing porn into the bedroom is a counterfeit copy of intimacy that is staged, defiling, often physically and verbally violent, and a cheap, lustful imitation of love. As I write in my book, Fully Known:
And just as viewing porn often keeps a spouse out of the arms of the one they shared vows with, if we avoid the nearness and touch of God’s presence in our own life, spiritually, our walk with the Lord can become a seated observation of other’s lives rather than a life-laid-down, cross-carrying, Spirit-filled reality.
Porn is a spectator sport that gives us a false rush and does not conceive life within us.
A faith void of true intimacy with the Lord is also a spectator sport that gives us a counterfeit rush and does not conceive spiritual fruit within us.
Claim our portion
You know you are worthy of receiving and engaging in genuine intimacy, right?
Counterfeit intimacy is not your portion as a child of God. Jesus has made a way for us to know personal, safe, authentic love. He wants you to experience true intimacy with Him — not just observe relayed intimacy from other’s time in His presence. He desires you experience the fullness of relationship — not just the second-hand reflection of relationship through other’s lives. If porn is training our minds to believe intimacy is exploitative and ultimately still leaves us empty, then how are we being formed as disciples who can be vulnerable and humble in the presence of the Lord?
Remember, God wants you to be made well. He desires we make no provision for the flesh in regard to its lusts (Romans 13:14), but instead love Him with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. It is, after all, His loving kindness and mercy that leads us to repentance (Romans 2:4), and when we fully turn our hearts back to Him we can know true life (Ezekiel 18:30-32). He wants you to know healing in the natural and healing in the spiritual realm.
Do you want the same? Do you want to be made well? (John 5:6)
Remember the Samaritan woman at the well? Yoked by shame, her encounter with Jesus changed everything. When the very things that held her captive were brought into the light, the mercy and love of God spoke a better word over her story. She ran back to town to evangelize concerning the One who carried the anointing capable of breaking the yoke, and as a result, many came to believe. I hope you know Jesus is excellent at delivering His people. While you may feel the weight of shame at this present moment, He is eager to call you redeemed.
A decade of my life was spent in the clutches of pornography. But at 19 years old, when I received revelation of the pure and undefiled love of God, I humbled myself before Him, cried out for His forgiveness, and accepted the invitation to right-natured intimacy. By His grace I was delivered from the yoke of sexual perversion and completely set free.
The moment you were exposed to pornography does not hold the right to write the rest of your story. The cross of Christ declares you redeemed!
The post Women Addicted to Porn: God Wants to Set You Free appeared first on Focus on the Family.
Continue reading...