Pornography is a giant, a monster of mythic proportions. And what’s worse is it’s widely supported in our current cultural climate, even though everyone knows how incredibly damaging it is to the human psyche. It’s a monster I’ve personally wrestled with and it’s one of the most embarrassing things I’ve had to deal with in my life. And I know that I’m not alone. The statistics say the average age for a child to be exposed to pornography is between 8 and 11 years old (which is around the same time I was exposed). The statistics also say that nowadays, nobody really leaves their teenage years without having been exposed to pornography in some sense. So in a room full of people, it’s pretty much guaranteed that just about everyone in that room has interacted with some sort of pornography at some point in their life (so go ahead, and check your judgment at the door). It’s one of the biggest issues we deal with as a society and as a community of believers and yet, it’s the thing we talk about the least and judge others for the most. But it’s not the end of the world and no matter how deep or dark this thing gets (and it can get real deep and real dark real fast), it’s not who you are. That urge that you’re feeding, that lust that you’re satiating, that’s not you and don’t let the enemy convince you that it is. You are not your sin. You are not your shame. You are not what the enemy has labeled you, you’re not even what the world would label you. So please, know that.
The reason I decided to tackle this subject head-on is because, to be completely honest, I’m feeling a little vengeful. The other day I was just chilling, minding my own business, thinking about my blog when the enemy decided to stop by for a little visit and remind me how absolutely inadequate and unworthy and unqualified I am to have any sort of platform. There I was trying to focus on my father’s business and these thoughts and fears started bombarding my mind and I just got sick of it. Fear is the only weapon the enemy has and it’s the one he really loves the most but when you face that fear and take away his ammunition, it becomes a rather chilly day in hell for him. So while he was feeling pretty self-satisfied about knocking me down a few pegs I decided to take out my frustration by knocking down all his pegs and writing about the very thing he thinks disqualifies me the most. Turning his own weapon against him with my truth and transparency and allowing God to use it to set some other people free.
So here we are, talking about porn. (Awkward but necessary)
Fair warning: This isn’t some 12 step road to recovery or a class on what to do and what not to do, it’s just a little bit of information that was life-changing for me and I pray, will be life-changing for you.
Let’s be real, we all struggle with things that we think disqualify us, hidden things we don’t tell people about, things we’re embarrassed by or even afraid of. Often, we hear stories of broken chains and people who are free from what still holds us captive and it can be encouraging to hear about their victory but sometimes, it’s discouraging because we’re still stuck. And it’s hard to believe that there’s grace enough to cover our mess of mistakes, especially when our mess continues on while other people are have seemed to clean up. Especially, when our mess is something like pornography. If you’ve read any of my other posts, you know I am someone who struggles with perfectionism, I struggle with the idea of perfect faith and being a perfect person who doesn’t fail so, when I do fail it’s a hundred times more disappointing. And having to struggle and fight with this particular sin and at times, losing the fight has been incredibly hard for me to come to terms with.
In the first part of this series, I want to talk to you about freedom or more specifically what I’ve termed “true freedom” because anyone who struggles with bondage or an addiction of any kind knows there’s a bit of a difference between those two things. There’s the kind of “freedom” where you feel free but you’re also waiting for the other shoe to drop, anticipating failure, knowing that it’s only a matter of time before you mess up again. That kind of “freedom” is the kind we manufacture for ourselves, it’s not real and it’s exhausting because it depends on our effort and our awareness and our abilities alone to keep it up. BUT there is another kind of freedom, a true freedom, that God offers us. It’s the kind of freedom that is irreversible, where what was appealing becomes suddenly unappealing, where the mind and heart are changed in such a profound way that the individual is enabled to live differently. And that’s what I want to share with you today, the essence of true freedom.
When it came to my struggles with pornography I always felt like my failure was inevitable. I just knew that even with God’s grace and His mercy and love, it was just a fact of my existence that I would eventually fall back into the old patterns and sinful habits that held me captive. I liked to believe that I was free at times and talk about my situation as if it was so far away in the past but truthfully, I felt like an imposter, like I was pretending I was free to make myself feel better. For a long time I didn’t understand what true freedom was and I was constantly praying to God asking for Him to deliver me. I had done all the “right” things that I was supposed to do. I read all the devotionals, I literally smashed my computer with a sledgehammer (very cathartic, by the way. Highly recommend). I put filters on all my other devices, I prayed for my way of escape when temptation would rise up, I confessed my sins out loud to someone I trusted. I did ALL the things and yet, I still didn’t feel free. I still felt like the enemy had the upper-hand. Especially when, after going through all that effort, someone bought me a new computer a few weeks later and I heard God say “You can’t run from this”. I mean I would go months, years even, without falling back into this specific sin, thinking I was free and then one day, something (insecurity, rejection, stress, fear, needing escape) would bring me right back to those temptations and I would fall for it every time. I remember feeling so discouraged because I was convinced that I would never be free of this problem with pornography no matter how much distance I put between it and me. I just wasn’t strong enough.
I mean if “manufactured freedom” was a city, they’d name a block and a roundabout after me.
But one day, after falling so incredibly short, as I was praying and crying and praying and crying, I felt this click, this release, (which we’ll talk about more in part 2 of this series) and I noticed that the things that had appealed to me before, suddenly didn’t appeal to me anymore. The powerful grip and urgency that had been suffocating me seemed to be slowly disappearing and my perspective had completely shifted. I finally felt like the chains had been broken. I had said the magic words. This was the moment everyone talks about, this is the moment where everything changes for me, except... it didn’t change like I thought it would.
My perspective had changed a great deal, the monster didn’t seem so monstrous or so powerful anymore, God had given me this new insight into my issues and into His love and yet, I still gave into temptation. I fell short. I failed again and again and again and I was so confused by that. I thought true freedom would come as this supernatural instantaneous change that created miraculous results in 2.5 seconds. I thought true freedom was the same thing as immunity. So, I’m sure you can understand my confusion and disappointment when I wasn’t immune and I ended up in the same place I’d been before that “click”. (Now before, you get all judgy, I wasn’t disappointed in God. Okay, maybe I was a little. After all, He has a reputation when it comes to the miraculous. I was expecting “You’re healed” but in relation to my situation. However, it actually ended up being more like “Go and sin no more” which actually requires work and choice and grace.) Naturally, I begged God for wisdom and I asked Him over and over again (because I’m annoying like that) “Am I really free? How can I be truly free if I keep failing? Is this just who I am? Is there grace enough for me because I don’t think there’s grace enough for me anymore? Is this you giving up on me? Was that release I felt just the snap of your last nerve?” and while I was spiraling, God showed me this image of myself that I want to share with you today.
In this image/vision/scene playing out in my mind, I saw myself completely alone and abandoned in the middle of this dry-arid desert. (You know, the kind of desert where the earth is cracked and flat for miles in any direction) I was chained to a metal stake in the ground with shackles around both of my feet. The chains were heavy dark metal that you’d shackle some mythical beast with, not a woman, and the shackles had created these sores and welts around my ankles where they had repeatedly rubbed against my skin. In this vision/image of myself that God was showing me I had these beautiful white wings and every day I would attempt to fly away and escape my captivity. The chains were so long they could stretch for miles before I even noticed I was still bound. So when I would fly, It was the worst sort of trickery because I was able to fly so far and so high, to the point where I could almost taste freedom but every time I thought I was free, those chains would yank me back down to reality and I would plummet to the earth like a rock. And everyday I would get up and reach and fly and fight to get higher and higher but I would always fall back down because I was still held captive. Then the vision changed and God said to me,
“When I break chains they are broken for good and no one can unbreak what I have broken”
Again, I saw myself sitting on the dry cracked ground, bruised and busted from all of my previous attempts at flying, staring down at the broken shackles around my feet. They had been broken in half by some mighty invisible hand and they were now lifeless at my feet. I stood up and I could see the swollen wounds and abrasions that the chains had left on my ankles, the marking of where they had been attached to me for years and I realized I was finally free, I could fly away to wherever my heart desired. So I lept into the air and took flight but something happened when I got to about the same place where my chains usually yanked me back down... I fell. I plummeted right back to the earth even though nothing was holding me back. And for a while, that kept happening. I would fly up in the air and go a little higher than I had before, testing the waters, but I would always end up falling back to the earth, right next to my broken chains. And then God said something to me, while I was watching myself fall back to the earth over and over again, free but not really free. He said,
“When I break chains they can’t be unbroken but some people have been chained for so long they don’t know how to be free”
A lot of us who struggle with things like addiction and habitual sin, we have a hard time understanding God’s grace and accepting it. We have an even harder time finding true freedom and an even worse time believing that we’ve found it. We are always anticipating our next plummet to the earth, scared of our chains but also scared of failing in our new found freedom. But I want you to know that when God breaks the chain of addiction, of your habitual sin, of pornography in your life, it’s broken for good. The freedom that God is offering you is real and it’s complete and it’s irreversible. “Whom the son sets free is free indeed” (John 8:36). You can sit back down on the ground and wrap those same chains around your ankles but if God has broken them, then they won’t click into place anymore because they’ve been broken beyond repair and their power has been diminished.
Now, don’t get me wrong, they still hold power, those chains are still heavy, they can still injure and scar if you wrap them back around yourself but they can’t hold you down anymore unless you let them.
In John chapter 5:1-15 there’s a story about an encounter Jesus has with a man who had been sick for 38 years. What’s interesting about this encounter though is that before the miracle, before the healing, Jesus asks this man (which He has never done anywhere else in scripture, as far as I know) “Do you want to be healed?”. I mean what a strange question to ask someone who’s literally laying by a pool of reputed miracles and waiting for his turn to be healed. But 38 years is a long time to get comfortable with something, as wrong and as painful as it may be and I think, those of us who have struggled with issues like pornography for a long time need to ask ourselves that same question. Because when it comes to sin, there’s a big difference between wanting deliverance and transformation in your life and wanting peace between you and God. Some people ask for forgiveness and deliverance, not because they want to change, not because they want God to transform their heart and desires but because they want to be guilt-free and be at peace knowing their salvation is secure. Jesus knew how important it is for us to want healing and transformation and how important it is for us to not only be willing but also, obedient in our effort to obtain it. There’s so much to glean from this story but the main reason I brought it up is because I want you to imagine this man’s life after his miracle and how it had to be so drastically different from the 38 years prior. For 38 years that sickness was his life, his routine revolves around it and then, in an instant, everything was different. The truth is, change can be traumatic especially if you’re not ready for it or ready to embrace it. So just imagine with me for a second (nobody panic, I’m not trying to add something to the Bible that isn’t there. It’s just an imaginary scenario) that this man had been going to this pool everyday for 38 years hoping for a miracle. And then imagine that, even after being healed, he came back to the pool like he had been doing for the past 38 years because it was comfortable, because he didn’t know how else to fill his day or occupy his time, because he never had the opportunity to look elsewhere or the desire to focus on anything else but that pool and that time of day when the angel came to stir it up. Imagine, that after Jesus heals him, this man keeps coming back and then I want you to think about what God shared with me in that vision, “...some people have been chained for so long, they don’t know how to be free.”
Some of us have been stuck in this muck for so long that we’ve adjusted to it and we’ve gotten comfortable. To the point where it doesn’t even bother us as much as the vulnerability and responsibility of true freedom does. We have been conditioned to expect the yank of those chains pulling us back down to earth whenever we try to escape, so the reality of freedom feels unnerving and scary. Not just because it’s new territory for us but also because it requires a greater faith. Because we know how to fall but it’s been a long time since we flew, we can walk now but we don’t know where to go, we know how to fail but we don’t know how to be free. Because our identity is no longer tied to our bondage and we have to figure out who we are without those chains and that pool and those patterns. Because we know the depth of our failures and it’s hard for us to learn to stop expecting failure from ourselves and accept that there’s a grace that can cover us, even if we do fall again. So we wrap ourselves in the familiar, even if the familiar is what’s killing us and creating separation between us and God. We entertain old patterns because they’re comfortable and because they’re usually patterns we’ve established that are triggered by pure desires. Like the desire for intimacy, the desire for physical touch, the desire to feel secure and attractive and wanted and seen. I mean, sin (for the most part) is really just trying to fulfill godly, pure and natural desires in ungodly ways and that is what’s at the core of these issues we have with pornography and addiction and all the other idols we entertain. A God-shaped vacuum in our souls we’re trying to fill with empty pursuits that nothing else on this earth can really satisfy or seal.
What I learned about true freedom through my own journey is that it’s something that happens in the spiritual realm before it manifests in the physical realm and it is not a passive thing that happens TO YOU, it’s something God has already done FOR YOU but it also requires action FROM YOU. The freedom you long to experience is a balance of God’s grace at work in you and your response to that grace. You won’t come across it just by happenstance, you also won’t find it trying to work it out through your own effort and you won’t keep it unless you make it a point to choose it. That’s why the Bible says “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” (Galatians 5:1) Purity is not avoidance, it’s pursuit! You have to choose to live your life differently, to live your life purely, to live your life (your thought-life, your physical life, your WHOLE life) in reverence and honor of a Holy God. You have to want your healing and want your transformation and recognize that you can’t stay the same and do the same things and expect everything to be different. That’s the very definition of insanity and trust me, you will go insane (Been there, got the straight-jacket, sent that thing back torn to shreds).
Now, we’ve talked about the difference between manufactured freedom and the true freedom Christ offers but now let’s take it a step further and talk about how you get it. In part 2 of this series we are going to talk about grace because it’s the grace of God that sets you free and the grace that changes your life. True freedom is built and cemented in grace and grace is also the power that enables you to choose to live righteously. Grace is what empowers you to live in pursuit instead of avoidance, to live armored up and prepared instead of vulnerable and desperately searching for a way of escape. The Bible says, “His divine power has given us everything required for life and godliness through the knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and goodness.” (2 Peter 1:3). The principle described in this verse is God affording us His righteousness through His love and His grace embodied in the work of Christ. It is the “knowledge” of that grace and what it cost Jesus that empowers us to live godly lives and it is only by understanding and embracing the more-than-sufficient grace and unconditional love of God that we find true freedom from pornography.
Stay tuned for “Pornography Series (Part 2): Grace enough for me”
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