Hugh Houston's Blog, page 12

I WANT TO FLY!

What did porn have to offer me?  Everything!  Those images were so enticing.  The women were so alluring, their smiles, so inviting.  The rush which overwhelmed me was extremely intoxicating in the moment, but at what an incalculable cost to me and those closest to me!  It is tragic that something which results in so much shame and regret is at the same time so irresistible. It was like being addicted to an electric fence.

The tremendous price I was paying for this momentary high is poignantly illustrated in the following story, The Skylark’s Bargain by G. H. Charnley:

“There once was a young skylark who was very fond of worms. He used to say he would give anything if he could only make sure of having all the worms he could eat. One day while he was flying high in the sky, he looked down and saw something unusual below. Feeling curious, the young skylark dropped lower and lower until at last he could see. And my! What a wonderful sight he beheld. There was a tiny coach, painted black with red blinds and yellow wheels, drawn by two magpies.

Walking in front of the coach was a little old man, wearing a black coat with red trousers and yellow shoes. He carried a bell and, as he walked, he kept swinging the bell and shouting —

‘ Who will buy? Who will buy?

I am selling in all weather,

Fine and fat and juicy worms,

In exchange for skylark’s feathers.’

The Skylark was attracted and flew down . ‘Good morning, my pretty bird,’ said the old man. ‘What can I do for you?’ ‘Please sir, how much are they?’ asked the skylark. ‘Two for a feather and the coach is full of them !’

‘Are they fresh?’ ‘Yes, indeed, they were all gathered fresh this morning’

The Skylark gave a painful little tug at his wing and dropped a feather into the old man’s hand. ‘Two, please.’ As the coach passed on, the skylark felt a little guilty, but he enjoyed the feast, and was pleased to discover that no one noticed the missing feather.

“The next day he flew with his father. ‘My son,’ said the old skylark, as they rose higher and higher, far above the tops of the tallest trees of the forest, ‘My son, I think we skylarks should be the happiest of birds. We have such wonderful wings. See how they lift us up, nearer and nearer to God?’

‘Yes,’ said the young skylark, ‘Yes…’ But all the time he was watching a tiny speck which crept along like a black beetle on the cart track far below and he thought, ‘I’ve missed the coach!’

So the next day he waited close to the road. When he heard the bell ringing, he plucked a feather. This one came out so easily, he plucked two more after it. Then he heard a hoarse voice shouting —

‘Who will buy? Who will buy?

Surely we can come to terms.

In exchange for skylark feathers

I am selling luscious worms.’

‘Three here’ said the young skylark. ‘Very good, very good indeed. That will be six worms. And here’s an extra one for luck,’said the old man with a chuckle. ‘My word,’ thought the skylark, ‘that’s a real bargain.’

So, the young Skylark became a regular customer. He found that he couldn’t fly so high, but he didn’t mind. There was less chance of the coach passing without being seen.

Time passed slowly by until one day when his wings were thin and worn and ragged, he suddenly realized he had made a terrible mistake. He tried to fly up into the warm sunshine he had once known but fell back to earth like a stone. Then he had an idea. ‘Of course’, he said to himself.   ‘Why didn’t I think of it before? I know what I’ll do. I’ll dig for worms and trade for feathers.’

So, day and night, he diligently searched and gathered and stored. When he had amassed a huge pile of worms, he hid himself in the tall grass so the coach could not pass without being seen.

When he heard it, he stepped in front of the coach and said, ‘Please sir, how many feathers will you trade me for all these worms?’

But the old man laughed and drove off, calling back over his shoulder, ‘Worms for feathers is my business. ”

So the young skylark died and was buried under the green grass. And now they say that every summer the older birds take the young birds and fly mournfully over the grave, calling to one another as they fly —

‘Here lies a foolish skylark,

Hush your note each bird that sings,

Here lies a poor lost skylark,

Who for earthworms sold his wings.'”

What a crazy fool I was!  I was selling my wings for a pittance.  Pornography is wrong—a sin against God.  This sin I chose to participate in takes human beings made in God’s image and treats them as mere objects to be used and discarded by lustful passions.  Furthermore, I was robbing myself of the freedom which God had given me.

I was like a prisoner locked up in solitary confinement. I never talked with anyone about what I was doing.  I was left alone to believe the lies I had come to accept as facts.  Thus I minimized, justified, and rationalized my totally irrational behavior.

Praise the Lord, he set me free from these lies and gave me my life back.  I don’t want to eat worms ever again. I want to be free.  I want to fly!

HOPE – I can’t go on without hope!

Pornography was my Achilles heel.  I had tried so many times to change and failed every time.  When I told myself that this time was going to be different, another part of me replied in an instant, “Don’t kid yourself. You will be right back at it again before you know it.”  Deep down in my soul, I felt I was doomed to repeat yesterday’s mistakes today, and then do the same thing again tomorrow.  No matter how sorry I was for what I had done wrong, or how convinced I was that I needed to do what was right, nothing ever seemed to change.

Maybe you have experienced the same sense of despair.  People caught up in pornography have often gotten to the point where the whole idea of hope seems remote, far removed; unbelievable and unattainable.  Things are really bad and there is often not much light at the end of the tunnel.  I had certainly felt that way many times.

Every now and then my wife and I carry on a friendly banter where I tell her I am an optimist and that she is a pessimist.  She always replies that she is not pessimistic, just realistic.  I know firsthand that transformation does not come easily, and I have witnessed countless guys who have claimed that they were going to make an about-face, but their desire to do so fizzled out.  Who am I to look down on them?  How many years did I waste, trapped in this cycle of hopeless despair?  The reality is that change is an enormous challenge and requires hard work, plenty of dedication and help from others. Nonetheless, change is possible!  There is hope!

I can live without many things, but I cannot live without hope.  If there is no light at the end of the tunnel, I’ll just give up in despair, and then curl up in a ball and die.  Hope is what keeps me going.  Hope is what helps me believe in a better tomorrow, that it really is possible to live a life with no regrets.  I’m so sorry for the hundreds of hours I wasted looking at women made in the image of God in order to lust after them.  I regret more than words can express, the heartbreak and agony I have inflicted on my wife because of my selfish actions.  But I believe that with God’s help those days are behind me.  Today the sun is shining and the skies are blue.  Tomorrow’s forecast looks good too!  I am no longer without hope.  I am full of hope.

Of course, my hope does not rest in my own strength or abilities or knowledge or determination.  Thirty plus years of failures certainly disqualify me as the superhero who is going to swoop in and put everything right.  My hope rests on the firm foundation of the One who created all things and on his Son who died to pay my debt and rose from the grave to soundly defeat the father of lies and to set the captives free.

I believe we often feel like we are “not enough”.  We think, “If people knew the real me, they could not possibly like me”. I was certain of this when it came to pornography.  That’s why I never worked up the courage to tell anyone about my struggles.  Well, Jesus knows me through and through.  He knows all of my dirty secrets, yet Jesus loves me anyway.  He loved me so much that he gave his life to rescue me.  In spite of my weaknesses, failings and rebellious nature, Jesus thinks there is still hope for me.  He believes in the new me.  Jesus makes me hopeful!

You can find my book here:  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07DMF6ZQS

Southern Baptist Convention: More than 200 ministers, deacons and others have been found guilty of sex abuse.

Sadly, news reports like this do not surprise many of us anymore.  When I hear this I think: “There but for the grace of God go I.”

While I was addicted to porn I told far too many lies.  I snuck around to take a look at magazines before the internet came along.  I would get out of bed in the middle of the night in hopes of finding something R rated on TV.  Then when the World Wide Web came along I became an expert at covering my tracks and hiding what I had been up to.

I thank God I never made advances towards another human being.  But the way my head was caught up in lust and filled with those sexual desires, I could easily have crossed that line.

One of the hardest things for me as a full-time minister was that I did not believe I could share my struggles with anyone.  I would always say to myself: “But who could I talk with?  What will they think of me?  I’m supposed to be the guy who is pure and helping other people avoid sin.”  I felt like I had no way out.  There was nobody I could open up with and since I kept my sin a secret, my problem never went away.

I pray that soon we (the church, the body of Christ, Jesus’ followers) will allow our brothers and sisters to be honest and confess their sins without condemning them.  Sin flourishes in the dark.  Only the light can kill it.  Pastors and preachers and ministers and missionaries need outlets where they can go and find help and not be crucified.  We need to recognize that we are all “wounded healers”.  None of us is perfect.  We all need to grow and work to overcome our sins and worldly desires of various types.

I weep for those who were abused.  Abusers are wrong.  But if we could help one another, perhaps we could stop these kinds of problems before they happen.

Auto-pilot or Intentional Living?

Auto-pilot is a great thing when you are flying an airplane. It’s also a blessing when a person learns to ride a bike or to play the piano.  All of us do so many things automatically.  It’s not easy for a child to learn to ride a bicycle.  But with time and practice the child can learn to ride a bike without even thinking about keeping his balance.  It becomes second nature.

The problem arises when I have trained myself in ungodliness, when I have practiced over and over again doing what’s wrong and harmful.  This was certainly my case in regard to lust and porn.  I had sought out ways to feed my desire to “get a high” from lust.  I looked at women on the street.  I flipped through TV channels in order to find something racy.  And of course the internet offers a million opportunities to seek and find porn.

My “auto-pilot” took me to these places automatically.  I would tell myself that today was going to be different, but it wasn’t long until I was back to repeating yesterday’s mistakes, enslaved by my own bad habits.  This compulsive cycle of addiction seemingly offered no way out.

When I finally got serious about breaking these old habits in order to find a new life I began writing in a journal.  Every day I wrote about my mistakes and my victories.  I analyzed my actions and began to see where it all began and how I could work to make changes in my behaviors.  I learned the necessity of intentional living.

I discovered that I need to prepare for the unexpected; because the unexpected really can be expected. Triggers are everywhere.  We live in a sex saturated society.  I had to prepare for temptations to pop up in unusual places and always be ready to say a quick and decisive “NO!”

I learned how so many of my behaviors happened subconsciously without me really thinking about them.  You might say they were second nature.  Sadly, lusting had become like that for me.  I had developed the habit of looking for something to stimulate me.  With my mouth I might state I was opposed to this kind of behavior, but my actions showed I found acting out like this to be pleasurable.  In order to get rid of these bad habits I needed to replace them with good habits.  This can only come about through intentional living.  This is essential for anyone who desires a new and better life.  New behaviors don’t just happen automatically. I always have a choice.  So I have to remain focused and maintain my mind in “battle mode” in order to make good choices quickly and easily.  Recovery is basically the process of replacing old, unhealthy habits, with positive habits, so that the right thing becomes the “automatic” behavior.

Have you ever heard this?  “It’s not that he planned to fail, but that he failed to plan.”  While I could quote this saying, I was not putting it into practice in my own life in relation to pornography.  My excuse was that this just snuck up on me and overpowered me.  Now I see I simply allowed bad habits I had acquired over time to rule my life.  I had been “practicing” doing the wrong things for years.  I discovered that the key to changing these habits is intentional behavior.  If I just let things happen, I would certainly fall back into the rut of doing what I had always done.  To begin a new life I had to consciously relearn how to act.  I had to think first and then act, before allowing “auto-pilot” to take over.  I needed to make a decision to do the right thing and then follow through with this strategy — “to plan my work, and work my plan”.

The Disease of ME

“Feelings get hurt, emotions run amok and the ‘disease of me’ takes hold.”  These are the words sports reporter Ken Berger used to describe a problem that arose between Kevin Durant and Draymond Green of the Golden State Warriors.

When I read those words I immediately thought about my addiction to pornography.  Porn is all about me.  It’s me wanting me to feel good right now because that’s want I want.

Basically all sin is rooted in the sin of selfishness.  Anger, jealousy, gluttony, covetousness, etc.  When I was compulsively drawn to porn and masturbation I was basically saying to God and to everyone else:  “I have to look out for number one, because if I don’t, nobody else will.”

Porn is idolatry. Porn is putting me on the throne.  To lust is to worship the holy trinity of me, myself and I.  The only way to break free from the grip of this trap is to recognize and confess that I have been wrong.  That my way has not been working.  That I need help.  That if and when I decide to trust in God and let Him take care of me and provide for my needs, then and only then will I find the peace that passes understanding.

The disease of me is deadly.  It can destroy relationships.  It can tear apart a championship team.  And it can wreak havoc in my soul.

Today I thank the Lord for convicting me of my selfishness and for (at least in part) curing me of the disease of me.  I say in part because I still need to grow.  I need to be more forgiving and understanding.  Less judgmental.  Speak with kindness and compassion.  Think more of others and their interests than I do about myself.

Thank God for setting me free from the endless cycle of lust.  For helping me see that His plan for my life is so much greater and better than the cheap thrills this world has to offer.