As a single guy it’s been 1 year since I looked at porn, and I have articles written all over my website about how I have struggled with this addiction and how God has helped me overcome it. My intention was to write an article condensing all those thoughts into one place but then God showed me what my year has been about.
In this year God has showed me no mercy whatsoever but 100% grace. Maybe that statement is odd to you but let me explain the difference between mercy and grace.
Mercy is when you do not get something you deserve. Often mercy is about avoiding consequences.
Grace is you doing something wrong but you get something you don’t deserve. You deserve some sort of punishment but instead you get a blessing.
I was finishing up writing this article and I realized year after year I struggled with porn addiction and I all asked for was mercy. I begged God to take away this addiction. I asked God to take away the consequences of looking at porn, but he wouldn’t. God showing mercy to my porn addiction would go against His character.
But God, year after year, offered grace. Year after year, God offered me many things I did not deserve, but I would not accept his gifts. I wanted mercy not grace.
The Bible says “Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you” (I Peter 5:7). I was all about giving God my porn addiction, but in giving God my porn addiction, God wanted to give me some things in return, and I would not take them. Until I was obedient and received what God wanted to give me I could not overcome porn.
This article is really a list of God’s grace. I gave God my terrible, depressing sin, and he gave me some wonderful gifts. Until I took his gifts he did not take my sin.
Traded porn for intimacy
Intimacy is so much more than just sex. There is intellectual, emotional, spiritual and physical intimacy.
I did not give up porn, I traded porn for intellectual, emotional, and spiritual intimacy. It was always God’s plan for me to have intellectual, emotional, and spiritual intimacy. These are three things that God wants to give every Christian. But in a very real way every time I was asking for mercy I was rejecting these gifts.
God’s Word tells us to bear one another’s burdens. How could anyone bear my burden if I didn’t tell them about it? God’s Word tells us to confess our faults one to another. I only wanted to confess my faults to God. Because of pride I rejected the grace of intimacy. God tells us that those who are spiritual in the church are to restore those who have fault in the church. I wanted to be restored in a different way than what God taught.
I remember when I confessed my fault to my pastor, extremely well. That was the day I finally accepted the grace God’s Word had been offering me for years. I remember telling him what I had been doing and it was as if a light had been shined in a dark room and my addiction lost 90% of its power.
When I confessed my addiction to him I created the most intimate bond in my life, by far. It was emotionally intimate because I told him what my burden was, it was intellectually intimate because I told him the steps I took to get into this burden and the steps I took as I practiced this addiction. But it was also spiritually intimate because he bore my burden with me and he took steps to restore me.
As a single guy overcoming this addiction I was worried about the withdrawal symptoms. I don’t have a wife to help me with the physical urges and I believe sex should be saved for marriage. For singles there is a fasting aspect when we overcome sexual addiction and temptation. But I found that as I faced incredible physical urges, and incredible attacks on my thought life that continuing to talk about what I was going through with my pastor, week after week, month after month, that every time it weakened the physical urges and the mental attacks to a very manageable degree. Every time it was as if a light was turned on in a dark room.
Ironically the fasting aspect that I thought would be so impossible actually stimulated the intimacy I had with my pastor, and the more intimacy I had with him the weaker my addiction got.
This relationship I have with my pastor greatly affected the way I deal with everyone in my life. The only person that is aware of my struggle is my pastor, but because I learned how to practice intellectual, emotional, and spiritual intimacy with him it allows me to practice that with other people in other areas and thus over all I am a better person and better Christian. If God had shown me mercy I would never have found this amazing gift of Grace.
My pastor is God’s grace to me. I do not deserve this relationship, but God commanded me throughout his word to have this relationship to get out of my addiction. Maybe its not your pastor, but a Sunday school teacher, or boss, or some other spiritual authority who God wants to be grace in your life. If you are sick of this sin of porn find God’s grace!
Traded Sex Fantasy for Intimacy Fantasy
I grew up in a Christian home and I was taught from a young age that sex is reserved for marriage, so it was not hard for me to rationalize my sin by saying it’s okay to think about my wedding night. I fantasized about sex long before I looked at porn. I was trying to make it okay by saying I was fantasizing about sex with a wife. This thinking allowed me to take baby steps to porn.
I can remember confessing my sin to my pastor and early on in counseling he said I ought to think of my wedding night. I told him that’s one of the things that led me to porn and that I could no longer focus on that. He was somewhat surprised but he helped me in that decision.
What I have found is that just not thinking about sex isn’t possible. Asking God for mercy to take these thoughts away isn’t going to help because God has something better for me. God’s Word tells me to capture my thoughts.
Where does a single guy capture sexual thoughts? I believe that one of these days God has marriage for me, but before marriage comes engagement, before engagement comes dating. There is a verse in the Song of Solomon that tells the couple in that book to capture the foxes in their relationship before they hurt it. Dating isn’t an appropriate time for the fox catching because you are not far enough in the relationship. Dating is about getting to know each other enough to find out if you should spend a life time together. Engagement is preparing to spend a life time together. So during engagement a couple should begin fox catching.
What I have done is that whenever possible when sexual fantasy comes to my mind I fight back by fantasizing about the day in my engagement where I confess my struggle with porn to whomever I get engaged to. So as a single guy instead of fantasizing about sexual intimacy, I am fantasizing about intellectual, emotional, and spiritual intimacy.
This will be the most intimate moment in my life when I confess this addiction to my fiancé. This will also be the most vulnerable moment. You would be amazed how profound it is to imagine this conversation. It will be the moment I trust everything that is in my heart to her.
There is so much grace wrapped up in this fantasy it is startling. First of all I cannot have this fantasy without first finding a counselor for my addiction. He gave me the first real example of what this conversation will look like. Second, instead of my focus being on how to get married and have sex, my focus is ,now, how to develop a relationship with a young lady where I can be intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually intimate to the place where I can share this incredible fault with her. This fantasy has greatly affected the way I approach all single women. And I am grateful for it. I would not be here if I had gotten mercy.
Finally it has often allowed me to just not fantasize about things I ought not fantasize about. At times it is a struggle to capture my fantasies with this fantasy but it a far easier battle than the one I used to fight. The battle I used to fight was whether to look at porn or not. Now my battle is how to fantasize about intimacy instead of sex. I would rather have this battle any day of the week. I wanted mercy to take away all battles, but God wanted grace to show me how to pick battles.
Traded Envy and Covetousness for Liberty
364 days since I looked at porn and I came to a startling realization. A lot of the reason why I started looking at porn and a lot of the reason why I stayed looking at porn was because I was envious and covetous of those who could have legal sex.
Although it took me 364 days to come to this realization God in his grace allowed me to deal with envy and covetousness without realizing it. Not sure when I made this decision but I know I made it no later than day 110. I decided that everything anyone had ever told me about sex was a lie.
Whether it is a well-meaning parent, teacher, or pastor or a less than well-meaning movie magazine or website they are telling a lie. Regardless of who was telling me about sex it was putting a fantasy in my head that was a lie. The reason why the fantasy was a lie was because no matter the fantasy it never had the input of whomever my wife will be. Sex has two voters. The man and woman. Until you are there you have no concept of how the vote will go so at the end of the day whatever is said is a lie.
What had happened over the years is that in my life a well-meaning parent, teachers, and pastors, and less than well-meaning movies, magazines, and websites had all been putting a spirit of envy and covetous into my heart and life. But once I came to the conclusion that everything everyone said was a lie I found it impossible to envy or covet a lie.
What happened then was amazing, when I could no longer covet or envy I found liberty. I stopped looking at what I could not do and could focus on all the liberties I had as a single person. Many of the liberties I enjoy as a single person are liberties married people do not have. I have many liberties with free time that they do not have. I have some liberties in intimacy they do not have (Check out the website for a couple of long articles on that). I have liberties in flexibility they do not have.
I am not saying this to say I have it better than them, or they have it better than me. I am saying this because we must get to the place in life where we are going to enjoy the green grass on our side of the fence. I had no idea that I had made envy and covetousness such a huge part of my life, but God in his grace showed me. I have learned wonderful lessons in liberty and contentment because of this. I am very grateful God did not give me mercy in this area of my life.
I am grateful for God’s grace. Look what he has given me.
Replaced wrong mystery with complete mystery
There are a lot of articles in the Christian community about the relationship between porn and lust. They are not wrong, but they are somewhat incomplete. I have had a year to reflect on my porn addiction and a surprising amount of it was not fueled by lust, but by other things like envy covetousness, and curiosity. Lust, envy and covetousness are certainly sins that should not be practiced, but curiosity is in no way shape or form a sin. But unfortunately it can be influenced by sin.
The reality is that we live in a culture that is extremely sexualized. The bible teaches to save sex for marriage, and yet we also live in a culture that pushes marriage further and further back. In the 1930s and 40s it was very common for people to get married before they turned 18, now it is very common to get married after you turn 30. Sex is an awful tempting carrot to have dangled in front of you for so long.
With this sexualized message constantly hitting you it is very easy to question what is sex? And then seek out an answer. Of course porn has an answer. The problem is that there will always be more questions. This is why a lot of guys get involved in stranger and stranger porn, it’s a mix of lust and curiosity.
There were two distinct times in my first year away from porn where I was tempted with pure curiosity. Let me tell you something that is a different attack. The first time I was attacked with it I was completely shocked and flabbergasted but the second time I had the presence of mind to see what the word of God had to say on the issue.
Over in Ephesians chapter 5 it tells us about how husbands and wives are to treat each other and one of the last things that it says is that this relationship between men and women is a great mystery. God designed men to be different than women and women to be different to men but this difference in design is a mystery to men and women, and we are to seek out and explore that mystery.
The problem was that I was taking what God had put in me, a legitimate curiosity of the opposite sex and focusing only on the sexual aspects. I will not have liberty to explore that part of the mystery of woman until after I am married. But just because I do not have liberty to explore that part of the mystery now does not mean I cannot explore any of the mystery. God designed men and women to explore the mystery of the opposite sex.
I am to explore a woman in how she thinks and does things differently than a man does. A woman’s mind is wired totally differently than a man’s mind and thus she has very different processes of thinking than a man. Thus she has different insights in any given subject than a man does. Women are weaker, but far more dexterous then men so they explore the world differently than men do. Women are far more emotional than men so they interact with the world differently than men do.
There are a lot of books within and without the Christian community detailing the differences between men and women in how they think. I have found that as curiosity hits me I have traded looking up porn to try to satisfy my curiosity to reading these books on the difference between how men and women think. Like porn this has not satisfied my curiosity but unlike porn this has awed me in how good God is to provide men and women each other for a life of discovery.
If God would have shown me mercy I would not be awed by the differences between men and women. God in his grace has provided this great mystery in women and I can prepare to explore that mystery one day. I find this period of preparation a great gift.
I used to wonder what sex was but now I wonder who woman is, in exploring that topic today, one day I will better know my wife but today that thought allows me to overcome my porn addiction in the area of curiosity. This is grace.
Traded a haram for a lily among thorns
I grew up in a Christian household and from a very young age I figured I would get married someday and love and live with my wife for the rest of my life. Even in the midst of my porn addiction I figured I would get married and sex would be so much better than masturbation that I would never go back to porn. I really believed that all I wanted was one woman. But then 140 days from looking at porn I started coming to a realization that all the fantasies that were attacking my mind involved a haram.
My upbringing and all the teaching I had heard all my life had led me to think that my personal belief was one woman and that’s it. But porn had taught me to go from one image or video to the next. One woman to the next. In an hour I could see hundreds of women in hundreds of videos, so where I thought I was a one woman guy I found out porn had turned my heart and mind into a haram seeking guy.
Without exception every man I have ever heard of that thought marriage would give them victory over their porn addiction was back into porn within a month. If I may be so bold to suggest that those men were like me. Their upbringing taught them to be one woman guys but their actions had taught them to be haram guys. Every one of these men who get married thinking that marriage and legal sex will cure their addiction are shocked when they are overwhelmed by their haram habit/addiction.
So here I am 140 days in not just struggling with sexual fantasy but fantasy dealing with me sleeping with a bunch of different women. Believe me when I say that this is something I never wanted. I have always wanted to get married and me and her be each other’s only. I think that would be really special. And despite this my flesh is crying out for something different.
So to fight my thought life I began to study the Bible on the issue. Do you realize every man in the Bible who had multiple wives regretted it. Sure he had legal sex with multiple women but it was miserable for him and the women. The man, the women, the children everyone ended up being hurt in the end.
Then I began studying what Solomon had to say about the subject. The man had over a 700 wives and 300 concubines, and the Bible makes it very clear that he regretted it. There is one instance in the Bible where Solomon, a man with over a 700 wives and 300 concubines, says a man with one wife has something a man with multiple wives doesn’t.
Then I began studying the book of Song of Solomon. I hadn’t studied that book for years because of a sermon I heard on it where the pastor made every sentence in the book about sex. But with this overwhelming need to deal with these fantasies about harams that frankly broke my heart I gritted my teeth and opened up Song of Solomon and I found a book that mostly deals with intellectual, emotional, and spiritual intimacy. Sure there is a lot of stuff dealing with physical intimacy but it isn’t every verse, it isn’t even every chapter.
What I discovered I can only describe as grace. In Song of Solomon chapter 2 the young lady in the story says that she is the rose of Sharon and the lily of the valleys. The rose of Sharon is a very common flower, and the lily is also a very common flower. She was saying that she was nothing special. This mindset of a woman being nothing special, that they are all pretty flowers, is the mindset of porn. And as long as I looked at porn no woman would be anything but another pretty flower.
But then in response to this girl calling herself nothing special the man says that she is a lily among thorns. He said that yes she is a lily but when compared to other women all other women are thorns compared to her. This is the mindset all men need to have. That no one can compare to their woman.
In all honesty this is a mindset I am still developing in my life, but I find it growing daily. It is God’s grace that I stopped going to porn which said all women are attractive sate your lust on as many as you can find, to God’s Word which flatly teaches me that there is one woman that makes all others look like thorns. Mercy would have left me in a place where I considered all women to be the same. Grace has brought me to a place where I look for a woman who will be a lily among thorns to me. What a gift!
Conclusion
I don’t think I gave up porn, I think I traded porn for a bunch of things that are so much better. This year I have traded in the heavy burdens that porn has put on me for the much lighter burdens God has for me. The Bible tells us in Matthew 11:28-30 Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
It’s been a year and my burden is so light at this point I can barely keep up with the days since I last looked at porn. For months now I have only been keeping track of what week I am on. You would be surprised how often I have a week where the hardest thing about the week is remembering how many days it’s been since I looked at porn. I am done counting days.
That isn’t to say I will not face any more battles, I will. I also think as the weeks and months go on, and I continue to heal, more parts of my addiction will become apparent. It took me 364 days to see that I had an envy and covetous problem. What other problems do I have that I cannot see yet that are linked to my addiction? I am not discouraged in this though, because I know that whatever sin becomes apparent, Jesus wants to trade in that sin for something good.
That’s all I have done this year, I have taken a nasty, terrible addiction, given it to Jesus, and took what he had in return. I wasted so many years trying to give my addiction to Jesus without taking the light burden Jesus had for me in return.
This year I finally accepted his gifts of grace.
Note this article was originally posted on my website
LINK – Year 1 no porn masturbation
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