Pornography, lust, adultery, homosexuality, and all other immoral sexual practices are now being accepted as the norm. This is a sad truth that is happening in our world today. It is also wrong. I sincerely believe that the wrong kind of sexual appetites start within your room. It starts with watching pornography.
The First Glimpse
Remember the first time you’ve ever watched porn? The tingles? The excitement? The shame? The fear? The curiosity? It is a feeling we all have felt. It is also a feeling that dies down with watching porn after porn. Much like how an area of skin becomes calloused when it is repeatedly battered. In order to ‘feel’ again, you will need more.
Pornography grows to a habit and fights like an addiction. Late night alone-ness, whole day idleness, and other ways for the temptation to find you. These are all fertile soil where the seeds of pornography are sown. It will grow to many destructive things – premarital sex, abortion, unwanted pregnancy, shame, poverty, rape, pedophilia, etc.
Perhaps the one common thing that all porn addicts have is that we develop an inability to be turned on by real partners.
It kills your sex life when you’re married. It can be a source of conflict and frustration between you and your spouse.
So here’s the 6 steps to help you overcome your addiction to pornography:
Step 1: Get rid of all files, magazines, CD’s, DVD’s, or other source of temptation
Don’t let it linger. Throw it away. Delete it. Purge each and every source of temptation for you to lust and to resort to pornography for sexual self-fulfillment. This is the first step. It’s also the easiest step.
Step 2: Pray and ask God for help
I cannot stop emphasizing how important your relationship with God is in all this. I want you to know one very important thing: You cannot overcome the addiction to pornography alone. You need God’s help. Read His Word and depend on Him through prayer. It is not a tug of war between your sexual urge and common sense. It is a spiritual battle. You need a source of spiritual strength and help to win it.
Step 3: Be accountable to a man you respect and who has an intimate relationship with the Lord
No man is an island – especially when it comes to dealing with pornography. The addiction to pornography can only grow in an atmosphere of alone-ness and idleness. When no one is looking out for you spiritually, you are exceptionally prone to indulging in porn. You need someone to check on you – and set rules with your accountability partner. The basic rules are: be honest, trustworthy, humble and accountable.
Step 4: Fill up the newly emptied glass. Keep busy.
Weeding out all the stuff that keeps you entangled with porn, including watching porn itself will bore a hole in your time. When you empty your glass of this destructive sexually self-serving addiction, you need to fill it up with something else. Read. Write. Join your local church in ministry. Replace it with whatever productive thing that you are passionate about.
If you are into reading, may I suggest 2 books for you to start with: Joshua Harris’ “Not even a hint” and Stephen Arterburn and Fred Stoeker’s “Every Man’s Battle: Winning the War on Sexual Temptation One Victory at a Time”
Step 5: Never give up – Always have hope
If your addiction to porn has already grown to destructive mistakes such as unwanted pregnancy, adultery, imprisonment, molestation, etc., then please know that it’s not too late. It is a winnable war.
“No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.” – 1 Corinthians 10:13
You can overcome the addiction to pornography. There is still good in you that God can use for His glory. Do not give up the hope that you can change and you can tell the world a story of Christ’s victory in you.
Step 6: Hold fast to a vision – of your future.
My vision of building my business means that I have a list of do’s and dont’s.
Some of my do’s are: work hard, read 5 blogs a day about SEO, blogging, content marketing, etc.
Some of my don’ts are: Playing computer games, forgetting to encourage my team, missing a target deadline, etc.
If you have a vision of having a great sex life in marriage, having no problems with faithfulness to your spouse, having your family respect you, then list down your do’s and don’ts. Pornography is definitely something you should stop doing.
If you really want to get well from your porn addiction, get up from where you are and throw away everything that tempts you right now. Don’t wait. Do it now.
I promise you, you will NOT regret it.
