Posts Tagged ‘addiction’

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.

By Jonathan Daugherty

I’m going to do something an author really isn’t supposed to do when titling an article with a question. I’m going to give you the answer right up front (and keep my fingers crossed that you will still read the rest of the article).

Is purity for everyone?

No.

I have been working in full-time sexual purity ministry since 2003. In that amount of time I have heard the stories of thousands of individuals struggling with sexually addictive thoughts and behaviors. There are an unbelievable number of people carrying terrible shame and secrets of trauma and abuse that is truly unfathomable. Many shed tears. Some have memory loss and debilitating emotional problems. All have felt afraid, angry, lost, alone, weary, frustrated, hopeless and myriad other emotions. We offer help to all these people, yet only a few ever embrace a new life of purity.

There are many reasons (mostly excuses) why so many people carrying so much pain never find lasting freedom and peace from their addictive lifestyle. The most common reason is because they remain fixated on their circumstance, convincing themselves that in order for them to live a life of purity, their situation must change. Maybe their spouse is threatening a divorce or a boss is dangling a pink slip in front of their nose. Whatever the case, those who don’t ultimately experience long-lasting freedom have found a reason (however fickle and false) to return to the dungeon of lust and self-centeredness. (keep in mind, this is a generality based on thousands of cases; there are always exceptions…)

But are these the reasons why I say “no” to the question, “Is purity for everyone?” Not really. The reasons above (namely, believing circumstantial change, rather than personal change, will bring about a life of purity) are only one side of the coin of why purity isn’t for everyone. The other side, I believe, is a much more basic, spiritual reason of why purity isn’t for everyone. Purity is only possible for those in right relationship with God.

Recovery programs that only focus on correcting and managing behaviors are not understanding the true essence of purity. True purity is a condition of the heart, the inside of a person, not merely how a person chooses to use their body. To deny the reality of a spiritual need in sexual addiction recovery is to miss the point entirely. A person is pure when they are pure all the way through. How then does one achieve this sort of purity? Only from God.

God uses a particular word to describe his own attribute of purity: holiness. God is holy, perfect and pure in every aspect of his being. God created mankind in his image, breathing into Adam something of the essence of himself. Therefore, Adam and Eve were holy; pure and perfect in their original design. Then (you know the story) sin entered the world through their disobedience, and spiritually Adam and Eve (and the rest of humanity to follow) were stained, broken, impure. Man’s pride marred God’s holy creation.

Thankfully, God didn’t abandon his creation. He made a way for humanity to be restored, to be made new in spirit. He sent Jesus Christ to pay the penalty we deserved for our pride and sinfulness, thus erasing our debt and exchanging it for his life in us. And the only requirement of us to receive this indescribable gift is faith, simply trusting in Jesus. In that moment of faith, God restores our spirit to his original design for us. He breathes life anew into our darkened spirit and the holiness of God pours in. In this new state, we are now able to understand and even partake in a whole new life of purity, true purity that is based on God’s character and holiness, not our own.

So, do behavior modification techniques have any value in sexual addiction recovery? Of course they do. We each have a will, even if we have no relationship with God. But no person can experience the fullness of true purity apart from a relationship with God through Jesus Christ. And, ironically, even those of us who do have a relationship with God still have a choice: fully trust God and embrace his life-transforming grace or trust in our own intellect and effort to attempt to do what only God can do through us.

Purity, therefore, is only for those who 1) Know God through faith in Jesus and 2) Lay down their pride and let God have his way in revealing His holiness (i.e. purity) through them.

Final question: Is a life of purity for you?

Reproduced with permission from Be Broken Ministries. © 2006-2009 Be Broken Ministries and its licensors. All rights reserved.

The folks at XXXChurch.com have a good post about confession on their couples blog today. I am reposting it here.

After being in recovery for a while, you realize that addiction of any sort, porn/sexual addiction included, is an attempt to meet legitimate needs through illegitimate means. The way we define sexual addiction on the Higher-Calling.com FAQ further explains this perspective.

With that in mind, I have come to believe that temptation to engage in acting out behavior is like the check engine light on the dashboard of my car. The pull toward pornography is an indicator that I need to check under the hood.

In recovery terms, this is known as identifying your triggers. The acronym HALT is a well-known list of common triggers (Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired). This article further explains HALT.

It is very helpful to identify triggers in two categories: visual/physical or emotional. HALT identifies two physical triggers (hungry or tired) and two emotional triggers (angry or lonely). Seeing a person or picture with certain physical attributes or wearing specific clothing can visually trigger arousal.

Emotional triggers are much more difficult to identify. In part this is because addicts are generally not connected to their emotional selves and therefore have a hard time identifying and expressing their emotions. Shame is probably the most powerful triggering emotion for addicts. Often confused with guilt, which is the negative feeling tied to wrong behavior, shame is a much deeper sense that we are fundamentally worthless and unacceptable. Anything that triggers our shame is sure to kick off a strong pull to act out.

Being aroused by certain physical/visual or even emotional stimulus is not abnormal. However, addicts take it a step further and engage in acting out behavior. Acting out repeatedly over time hard-wires our brains to associate arousal of any sort with our acting out behaviors. All arousal, regardless of the trigger, leads us to the same place.

Coming back to our metaphor, these triggers are glaring check engine lights on the dashboard of our consciousness. They indicate places where we may need to grow, establish accountability, forgive ourselves or others, or simply confess past sins in a safe place. The point is to not let the “service required” indicator go unnoticed.

Take a few minutes to reflect on what is going on under the hood the next time you are triggered to act out. It is an essential element of keeping the engine of our sobriety running smoothly.

Brian and Darcy on the Couple’s Blog at XXXChurch.com just posted a bit of their story. It is really worth the read; both as a wife or a man struggling with porn addiction.

Thank you Brian and Darcy for being so open about what God has brought you through. Your courage is inspiring and your transparency will help a lot of people begin opening up about their own struggles.

While reading the verse of the day as delivered to my Google Reader account,  a familiar verse showed up.

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9)

This verse is often quoted by folks struggling with sin, as it well should be. If we could not find any forgiveness, then we are in big, big trouble! Those of us who are or have been trapped by an addiction to porn know all-to-well the deep hole we have lived in and how much we need God’s help to climb out of it.

What struck me as I read the verse this time is the latter part, “…and purify us from all unrighteousness.” The focus when this verse is quoted is almost universally about forgiveness. But what about being purified from unrighteousness? Isn’t that what we really want? Forgiveness is an amazing thing, but being cleansed of the unrighteousness that brought about the state from which I need to be forgiven is more amazing still! So with this being one of the more familiar verses thrown around in church circles, why aren’t more people experiencing the purification that it promises?

I have worked in sexual integrity ministry for several years now. In both face-to-face and online venues I have been the recipient of many confessions of giving in to the lust of the flesh.

• “I slipped.”
• “I got online.”
• “I masturbated.”
• “I fill-in-the-blank.”

I’ve given confessions of this sort many times myself. I have usually let them leak out reluctantly from a place of shame. My preference would be to keep it silent, let it slide, sweep it under the rug or at the very least minimize it. And as such, these weak little confessions are what I divulge. This, I believe, is the crux of why the purification promised in this scripture is missing.

It seems to me that if anything meaningful is to happen in response to my confession that the confession itself must be meaningful. The easy way out for some is to be overly explicit in describing how they acted out. While this may sound deep to the listener, it can often be an avenue of exhibitionism. Worse still, it may assuage the conscience of the confessor, but not result in any lasting change either. I can describe the mechanics of porn, actions and behaviors without ever really opening my heart up for inspection. And that is what confession is all about.

A quick word-study of the word “confession”, homologeo in Greek, shows it is defined as, “to say the same thing as another.” None of the tiny utterances mentioned above come close to saying the same thing about sexual sin as God does in his word. Taking this view is painful, and extremely necessary if we are to experience the purification from the unrighteousness that got us in this mess in the first place. It is another case of short-term pain for long-term gain!

There is obviously much more to say on this topic, but I will stop here for now.

I was just shown a very good article about sexual addiction in the March 2008 edition of Christianity Today entitled, “Help for the Sexually Desperate“. The author does a very good job of describing the issue.

Here are some of the sub-sections from the article with my abstraction:

Beyond Lust
Answers the question, “What exactly is sexual addiction?”

Disease or Sin?
How should Christians look at the issue? Is it sin that must be repented of or a disease that must be treated?

Internet Accelerates Addiction
Classical definitions of sexual addiction involved backgrounds of abuse. The internet changes all that.

Confession Works
Getting the details of compulsive sexual behavior out in the open is critical for healing.

Stigma Lingers
The church needs to wake up to this problem sitting in the pews.

Integrity Daily
Frequent accountability and confession regarding lust is an essential component of healing.

Opportunity Awaits
The largest audiences for online pornography are teenagers and young adults. For this reason, some believe that the problem of sexual addiction will continue to mushroom.

I strongly recommend reading the article in its entirety.