Hi all, new here and Accountability log

Hey Will, just checking in with you. How are you doing? It's been awhile since you have posted.

Hey Will! Been wondering how you were doing. So thankful to hear you are still battling and, with the Lord's help, winning! It might be a good idea for you to avoid YouTube for awhile until you have built up more strength. I had to avoid the internet altogether for several months. Just something to consider. You have come along way since you first joined. Keep battling! Don't let your guard down!

Hi Will, and thanks for your update! I like the way that you are looking at root issues.... things that could lead you to take Satan's fake way of numbing the pain.... and seeking to deal with them directly with God's help!

You are a feverish junkie going through withdrawals. Isn't it wonderful? If you want to not completely mess up your relationships, you need to come clean about what is going on and apologise for being a jerk. Basically you aren't done learning to be humble. The upside of this is that your true friends will be supportive and lift you up in prayer and smack you down when you get too full of yourself.

You have had a major breakthrough being able to remain sober for this long. Unfortunately it's gonna get tougher. It takes at least 90 days for the chemical your body makes while viewing porn to leave your body and lots longer for the need for that chemical to lessen. So stay vigilant and run to God when the urges start hammering at you.

Thanks guys, really appreciate the support. Wow Amy, that is great advice! And 90 days, didn't know that, that's very helpful! Yes I have to be vigilant, and will try to run to God at the first sign of trouble : )

Hi guys!

Thought would post some words about the kinds of things that have helped me get to the blessed sobriety I’m enjoying now - more than have ever had before. It turned into a bit of a long-winded ramble so sorry about that!

Well am stoked to report things are still going great. About 7 1/2 weeks since porn, and 16 days since indulging lust. This last week was the toughest yet, one of the toughest of my life.

The enemy has been really attacking me with sleep deprivation. This has been huge. Throughout the last 6 weeks, I’m pretty sure have not slept more than 7 hours a night, certainly not during weekdays, and often a lot less than that. Over the weeks this has built up until Thursday when I was seriously having physical health issues and felt like was on the brink of major physical collapse into illness. Praise God Almighty, on Thursday night He blessed me with a breakthrough and I was able to sleep for 13 hours straight just about, and another 8 hours last night. The sleep deprivation is caused by massive fear of losing control to sleep - a lack of Faith frankly in Christ’s ability and wish to protect me. This fear was something I had been using the porn to numb against.

One thing I've been blessed to learn through this process is the tremendously important fact of 'unknown, deep-seated attitudes, assumptions and bondages'.

This is getting into some serious spiritual stuff, but it has been key to my recovery.

Basically, God is perfect and just. If things aren't going well for us, there is generally something we are doing or thinking or keeping within ourselves/ holding onto that is perpetuating the problem.

Its not quite as simple as saying everything is our own fault, but the Lord knows how to give gifts to His children. Guess it comes down to understanding that a lot of this can be us looking in the wrong place for the solution.

This has required me, in seeing past the porn, to what I had been numbing myself from. A huge amount of fear, sorrow and anger. I have had to look deep into my childhood and not only face some terrifying fears, but also take ownership of and acknowledge the responsibility I had in making wrong choices, choosing to be a coward and selfish when I should have been stronger. Acknowledging the part I had to play in creating so many of the major problems in my life. And this is way back when I was a young child.

For me, I can definitely say that for all the years I was crying out to God and praying to Him to deliver me from this problem, God was waiting for me to do the things and repent of the attitudes that were causing the problem in the first place. He has given us FREE WILL. That means that we are alive and there are consequences to our choices.

The world is not fallen and in a terrible state because of God, but because with man's free will he has made choices that have caused this degeneration.

One of the best prayers that has helped me has been "Lord God, please reveal to me clearly the things I am doing that are not of you, and what within me are the things that are unrighteous and against you that you want me to change."

Here's a couple of revelations that were major life-changing changes in my way of thinking:

- My problems are NOT God's fault (they are NOT, at ALL. My problems are caused by sin. Either mine, or previous generations of my family's, or of people connected to me - right back to Adam. God, however, is completely perfect, and there is no darkness in Him at all.) One of the things I have really had to repent of and am still working on changing, is not BLAMING God for my problems! Sounds so simple but its huge. I constantly was finding myself thinking, especially in moments of anger when something had gone wrong, 'God, why did you do this to me!' I hate even typing that, because it is a wicked lie! Can you imagine how it must grieve the Father to hear this stuff. It's not true! At all! He wants us to succeed and be well. And for me to be well I had to torpedo this false assumption. For example, before you ask God to deliver you from some evil, REPENT of your having had any dealings with it in the first place! Honestly, this helps.

- The Lord Jesus has ALREADY, FULLY PAID for ALL my sins (past, present and future) on the Cross of Calvary. I realised I was still trying to earn His Love and Salvation. But it's DONE! God really blessed me before Christmas to understand more fully this wonderful Truth. It's easy to say we understand it intellectually, but in my heart I was still trying to PERFORM for God to earn it. God showed me that all that was really required from me was to TRY my hardest and make the effort. That is enough and that is all we can ever do. His yoke is light. We rely on Jesus Christ.

- The deep-seated problems of our lives have to be FACED. This problem is CAUSED by something. When God has blessed me with sobriety, boy there is a lot hiding behind that self-numbing sin that needs to be confronted! And it is TERRIFYING. BUT, the Lord Jesus Christ:

- has Victory over ALL the enemies of God. So with Him as our strength and our King and our Champion, we have NOTHING TO FEAR from whatever lies behind our addictions. Often this stuff is hidden and hard for us to see, but the important thing is that WHATEVER it is, Christ is stronger. He is the only name given by Almighty God by whom men might be saved, and the name to whom EVERY KNEE SHALL BOW. That means that we can and must stand up to this stuff, face it and overcome it by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, the final and complete winner.

This has been very important to me: to ensure that Jesus Christ of Nazareth is on the throne of my life. This is not so easy as it sounds. It's not enough just to say it out loud (although this helps! Praise God for speaking the Psalms out loud, and the Lord's Prayer, it chases away unclean spirits!), in my walk with this issue, boy have I discovered some hidden idols I didn't know I had! These include:
a) idolatry of sex. So simple but have you actually thought about it? I hadn't! This value - so powerful in our post-1960s culture - that sex is the measure of people as human beings. How sexually attractive they are, how well they perform, for men at least how many partners they have had. This was right up there in my subconscious as being something I had to aspire to and get to. I don't!! That's just idolatry, nothing more. What God has said is good - that is what is worth living for. Everything else, frankly, is worshipping the creation, not the creator.
b) idolatry of social expectations. I'm not talking about basic peer pressure from friends, I mean society's pressure to get married, to have kids, to have a successful career, to 'be normal', et cetera. Honestly, Christians are not normal and are not ever going to be seen as normal in this world. That's just the reality! I still am having to lay down continually my fleshly desire to become a well-known or successful businessman, writer, film-maker, a wealthy man, that kind of stuff. Is that what God values? Tell you what brothers and sisters, that stuff ALL leads AWAY from God, and harbouring it in the heart was EXTREMELY destructive to my attempt to stay away from pornography. One reason for this was WHY did I want to get away from pornography? so I could become healthier? More successful? Get a wife and family? In other words get closer to the world! That's like an alcaholic trying to quit booze so he can save enough money to buy a bar!! Or, truly and eternally to serve the KINGDOM OF THE SPIRIT, THE KINGDOM OF THE ETERNAL, LIVING GOD FOREVER. Righteousness and Love and Truth. Not just as they are manifested in rewards on this earth, but Righteousness and Love and Truth in themselves! That is God.
c) Finally for me a big one (that's kind of the same as the previous one), Idolatry of having a wife and family. I had to lay this idol down at the feet of the Lord Jesus, (and still have to do this daily), that if He wants me to be single and never have sex again, that is fine with me, because I have fellowship with Him instead, and that is better. After all we are ultimately to be the Bride of Christ, that is the Truth, and the True Love. I need to remember that a lovely home on this earth, with a family and kids, would still not be my real home. My real and eternal Home, and the only one that fulfills and counts and will be truly happy and last forever, is in Heaven with the Lord Jesus Christ.

I would also really recommend deliverance and healing prayer. There is so much that affects us, whether it be our resentments, unforgiveness, pride, stubbornness, that is affecting our lives every day, that we're not even aware of! Bible-believing, Spirit-filled Christian Pastors and prayer teams can really help with this, to appeal to God supernaturally to heal the areas of our soul and spirit that need to change, and/or reveal them to us. I would recommend Baptist Churches personally, and shy away from Ministries that are very associated with 'dominionism' (Megachurch, CCM, Signs and Wonders, Prosperity Gospel, etc). But this deliverance is important for breaking the power of bondage and hidden captivity to unclean forces, for example generational things that we may have unwittingly inherited from our forefathers. This stuff has an effect, and can only be broken (and it ALL can be broken, completely broken!), by the blood of the Lamb of God. That is how we are legally redeemed out of the hand of the enemy. He, Jesus Christ of Nazareth the Lamb, has purchased our freedom from slavery with a price that cannot be resisted. We must rely on that Truth, and keep insisting upon it forever. Above all, the solution to this problem is Spiritual, it requires Spiritual healing, and that I have found is a really big deal that can take decades! And we can receive that Spiritual Healing only through the precious and unfailingly patient leading of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Praise God and His Messiah and the Holy Spirit!!!

God bless you all, and keep praying and striving for what is good, for the Kingdom of God. We only have to keep going and not give up!

Amen, my brother... God pulling you back into fellowship with Himself!