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I had to share this. It is from Lazaroo (www.lazaroo.com) a daily prayer devotional to which I subscribe. It is very relevant to the way I feel about my own struggle with porn addiction. Without it, I would not be the man I am today…

“Therefore I will make Samaria a heap of rubble, a place for planting vineyards. I will pour her stones into the valley and lay bare her foundations.”
(Micah 1:6)

I’ve been there before, Jesus.

reduced to rubble
all my stones poured into the valley

not one of them left stacked on another
my foundations laid absolutely bare.

It may have been the hardest time of my life.

I fought it
hated it

couldn’t escape it
couldn’t understand it

I thought You had utterly forsaken me.

People wrote me off.

I wrote myself off.

But after all the agony, desperation and fireworks

I survived.
I’m still here.

Looking back…

it was one of the best things that ever happened to me.

Now I know I have nothing to fear when they lay bare my foundations

so long as my Foundation

is You.

This short devotional from Lazaroo describes very well how we feel about confession and accountability. We shrink back in so many areas in our lives and put on masks. We hide from others and from God. We even hide from ourselves. The irony is that God sees us exactly as we are. Even when we are hiding from ourselves, we cannot hide from him.

Be Real

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Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.
- Galations 6:2

Helping others. It is a very rewarding experience. When we enter a healing journey from habitual sin such as sex addiction, it feels good to lend a helping hand to another in need of support. When we have been struggling, it sometimes feels very natural to help others who are struggling too. It is a welcome distraction to the difficulty of resisting temptation. Scripture even directs us that “Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.” (Philippians 2:4) As virtuous as it may seem to reach out to help fellow strugglers, we must hold to the whole counsel of scripture.

Jesus included this very topic, showing loving support to others, in what He described as the second greatest commandment in the entire Bible: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:37-40)

Amazingly, Jesus said that we have to love ourselves. Loving others and loving ourselves are inextricably linked. Paul confirms this in Gal. 6:2 and Php. 2:4 when he wrote that we should “carry each other’s burdens” and “look…to your own interests”. For some reason, the thought of helping another person can be a lot easier than reaching out for help ourselves. In order to “carry each other’s burdens” we have to be willing to let others carry our burdens as well. There is a mutual give-and-take implied in these scriptures. If we try to help others, yet do not seek help for ourselves, we are not fulfilling the law of Christ. We are in fact in violation of it.

It is incredibly important to continually share our burdens with our fellow Christians. In fact, if we are not willing to share our struggles with others, we actually disqualify ourselves from helping anyone with theirs. In order to experience the blessing of fulfilling the law of Christ and looking to the interests of others, we must first ensure that we have opened ourselves up. This keeps our hearts humble. Then as others look to us for support we can reach out to them from a position of meekness rather than one of superiority.

When we take the care to unburden our hearts, we are reminded that we struggle too. Not only so, but those that look to us for help realize that they are not alone. They can share their heart openly knowing that we truly understand their plight.

The next time you feel inspired to reach out and help others who are struggling, take a step back. First check your own heart to be sure that you have been open before the Lord and the people that He has placed in your life. Doing so allows these scriptures to be realized in our lives. There is nothing more exciting than when the word of God is made alive through the experience of it!

Lord, give us the courage to open our hearts. Let us be inspired by Your word that instructs us that while we are to help others, that we cannot neglect ourselves in the process. Give us the wisdom to allow others to carry our burdens and in so doing experience the blessing of the laws of grace being fulfilled in our lives.

Last weekend I discovered we had a free-view of some premium movie channels from our satellite provider. One of the channels has a lot of adult content late at night (read soft-core porn). Needless to say, I was very displeased to discover these channels were active.

I emailed my satellite provider and asked that the channels be disabled. After a few days I received no response. When I confirmed the channels were still active, I called customer service to request they disable them. They informed me that because it was a “free-view” and the channels were not a part of my programming package they could not turn them off and I would have to block them myself.

Once again, I was incredibly disappointed. I sent another email to them voicing my disappointment and suggested they offer a way to opt out of these free-view promotions, particularly when adult content is being made available in my home without my permission.

So, what is the moral of the story? I can’t think of a good one. But, I want to warn our readers. Beware of the free-view. It is one thing when you proactively shut off access to porn in your home. It is another when a vendor pushes it into your television and refuses to turn it off. It would be an easy excuse to indulge your flesh and give your sobriety an unwanted setback.

This weekend, we remember the most remarkable event in human history. The birth of Christ began the chain of events. But, it was his resurrection from the dead that was the culmination. In that single event, he became the first man born into this world to take on a heavenly, resurrected body. This is so incredibly important for us as Christians. Our physical bodies, corrupted by sin and the fall, will one day be transformed into spiritual bodies just like the one that Jesus Christ now has!

The implications of the resurrection of Christ extend far beyond that. But for those of us who have experienced the pain of being trapped by sin that is in this cursed flesh, it is an amazing hope to be clung to. The following passage from Romans is my meditation this Easter.

Happy Easter everyone!

What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin – because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.

Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.

In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness. For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace.

Romans 6:1-14