Post by Deleted on Oct 11, 2013 7:05:05 GMT -7
The battle against porn addiction (or any addiction) is far more than a battle of the will. It is a struggle that can only be overcome through spiritual deliverance.
Prior to my conversion to Jesus Christ I was bound up by a host of sins : lying, cursing, drunkenness, and sexual uncleanness, to name a few. Pornography was one of my most troublesome addictions. It was a love/hate experience. I yearned for it but never found satisfaction through it -- the very nature of a sin addiction. What I came to learn through reading the Bible was the power of God's Word to overcome and render powerless, the dominion that sin held over me.
Even before I had fallen to my knees and confessed Jesus Christ as my Saviour and Lord, the reading of the Gospels became the means of my first deliverance. I had been in the habit of going to the local liquor store after work to purchase a six-pack of beer and sometimes a bottle of scotch. After supper I would drink to a degree of intoxication that would begin triggering sexual fantasies, leading to my indulgence with porn. A fellow worker who had just been converted to Christ started encouraging me to study the Bible and learn who Jesus Christ was. As a means to be able to reply to him that I had (and to get him off my back), I began to read the Gospel of Matthew when I came home from work. After two evenings of reading, I came to the sudden realization, I had no craving for booze. How did this happen?
It took some time to learn that the craving for spirits (spirits of alcohol) had been replaced by a craving for the Spirit of truth. I was completely delivered from alcohol dependency and gave up that habit for good even before actually becoming a Christian. Once the addiction for booze was removed, then the craving for porn became dramatically reduced as well. In retrospect I now know that the words of Jesus are true, " The words I speak unto you, they are spirit and life." The power of deliverance comes through the power of the Word of God. The man or woman in need of deliverance from any addiction needs to understand that the root of the addiction is a spiritual one i.e. being bound up by the forces of wickedness (cf. Eph. 6). Jesus Christ will set the captives free if they take heed to His Word and allow the Spirit of God to root out that addiction. I know from personal experience that this is possible even before a person comes to faith in Christ. Obviously, if God will graciously do that for some of the unconverted, how much more will He do for the one who receives Christ and is made clean through the precious blood?
My advice to those who battle addiction: let the Word of God speak to your heart and immerse yourself in its truth each and every day. Make Bible study and meditation your foremost discipline; for out of it will come the desire to pray to the Lord in deeper intimacy. Once the disciplines of hearing from God and prayerfully responding to God are entrenched, the Lord will make Himself known to that earnest seeker (see Jer. 29:13) in ways that will ultimately redirect the individual fully God-ward. Once we possess this craving for Him, we will have lost the craving for everything else worldly and wicked.
But a word to the wise: we cannot relax our diligence because the arch-enemy is always ready and able to "...sift us as wheat..." should we begin to believe we can take our eyes off Christ and coast. Fighting the good fight of faith (through discipline) only ends when we finally come into the nearer presence of the Lord. That's the very essence of being one of His disciples.
Prior to my conversion to Jesus Christ I was bound up by a host of sins : lying, cursing, drunkenness, and sexual uncleanness, to name a few. Pornography was one of my most troublesome addictions. It was a love/hate experience. I yearned for it but never found satisfaction through it -- the very nature of a sin addiction. What I came to learn through reading the Bible was the power of God's Word to overcome and render powerless, the dominion that sin held over me.
Even before I had fallen to my knees and confessed Jesus Christ as my Saviour and Lord, the reading of the Gospels became the means of my first deliverance. I had been in the habit of going to the local liquor store after work to purchase a six-pack of beer and sometimes a bottle of scotch. After supper I would drink to a degree of intoxication that would begin triggering sexual fantasies, leading to my indulgence with porn. A fellow worker who had just been converted to Christ started encouraging me to study the Bible and learn who Jesus Christ was. As a means to be able to reply to him that I had (and to get him off my back), I began to read the Gospel of Matthew when I came home from work. After two evenings of reading, I came to the sudden realization, I had no craving for booze. How did this happen?
It took some time to learn that the craving for spirits (spirits of alcohol) had been replaced by a craving for the Spirit of truth. I was completely delivered from alcohol dependency and gave up that habit for good even before actually becoming a Christian. Once the addiction for booze was removed, then the craving for porn became dramatically reduced as well. In retrospect I now know that the words of Jesus are true, " The words I speak unto you, they are spirit and life." The power of deliverance comes through the power of the Word of God. The man or woman in need of deliverance from any addiction needs to understand that the root of the addiction is a spiritual one i.e. being bound up by the forces of wickedness (cf. Eph. 6). Jesus Christ will set the captives free if they take heed to His Word and allow the Spirit of God to root out that addiction. I know from personal experience that this is possible even before a person comes to faith in Christ. Obviously, if God will graciously do that for some of the unconverted, how much more will He do for the one who receives Christ and is made clean through the precious blood?
My advice to those who battle addiction: let the Word of God speak to your heart and immerse yourself in its truth each and every day. Make Bible study and meditation your foremost discipline; for out of it will come the desire to pray to the Lord in deeper intimacy. Once the disciplines of hearing from God and prayerfully responding to God are entrenched, the Lord will make Himself known to that earnest seeker (see Jer. 29:13) in ways that will ultimately redirect the individual fully God-ward. Once we possess this craving for Him, we will have lost the craving for everything else worldly and wicked.
But a word to the wise: we cannot relax our diligence because the arch-enemy is always ready and able to "...sift us as wheat..." should we begin to believe we can take our eyes off Christ and coast. Fighting the good fight of faith (through discipline) only ends when we finally come into the nearer presence of the Lord. That's the very essence of being one of His disciples.
