Stephen Kuhn's Blog, page 28

DONE: You Have Been Set Free from Fear

For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline

(2 Timothy 1:7).

What’s your biggest fear? Snakes? Planes? Snakes on a plane? Regardless of what it is, every one of us is afraid of something.

According to a quick Google search, the top ten fears of people are:

Speaking before a group
Heights
Insects and bugs
Financial problems
Deep water
Sickness
Death
Flying
Loneliness
Dogs

Chances are, you can relate to at least one of these.

But, remember, God has not given me a spirit of fear, which means I no longer had anything to truly be fearful about. Nonetheless, this fear of singleness remained a part of my life. So what gives?

In order to understand this dichotomy, we need to recognize that there are two types of fear:

Legitimate fear (fear of a very real and present danger).
Illegitimate fear (fear of an imagined or assumed danger).

When fear sneaks back into our lives as believers, it’s always illegitimate fear. It’s fear that is not based on the truth. Ultimately, it’s a sign that we don’t believe God will keep His word.

Let’s look at that top-10 list again. How many of those fears are still legitimate once we hold them up to the truth of Scripture?

Do we still need to fear financial ruin if we recognize that God has promised to meet all our needs? (see Matthew 6:26)

Do we need to be afraid of death (which is ultimately what the fear of heights, deep water, and many other fears are about), if we understand that death doesn’t separate us from God but releases you into glorious eternity with Him? (see John 11:23-26)

Once we recognize how Jesus has set us free from any legitimate reason to be afraid, our fears are all exposed as illegitimate.

As I placed my focus back on the truth of God’s love for me, I recognized that I wasn’t actually lonely, even in my singleness. The love I receive from my friends, my family, and from God Himself was more than enough to satisfy my heart’s desire for companionship. And the same can be true for you as well.

So the next time you’re afraid, look to the Scriptures and see what God says about whatever is frightening you. Perhaps you will discover that, thanks to the Spirit of Christ within you, you no longer have anything to truly be afraid of.

This post was an excerpt from my book, DONE. 52 Amazing Things that Became True of You the Moment You Trusted Christ.

The entire book is available as individual posts here, but if you prefer a good old-fashion paperback, you can purchase a copy from Amazon.

The post DONE: You Have Been Set Free from Fear appeared first on Belt of Truth Ministries.

My One Thing: Gerry Breshears

“What’s the one piece of advice you would give

to someone struggling with porn addiction?”

Gerry Breshears is a professor of theology at Western Seminary in Portland. He is a pastor to pastors with a heart for troubled people as well of co-author of four books.

Connect with Gerry

Website: www.breshears.net

Website: www.WesternSeminary.edu

Facebook: www.facebook.com/gbreshears

Twitter: @gbreshears

Check out all the “One Thing” video interviews here.

Transcript

Stephen: Hi guys. Steve here with Belt of Truth Ministries. I’m on the line with Gerry Breshears. Gerry is a professor of theology at Western Seminary in Portland, Oregon. He’s a pastor to pastors with a heart for troubled people, as well as a co-author of four books. So, Gerry, thanks for joining us today. What’s the one piece of advice that you would give to somebody struggling with porn addiction?

Gerry: Well, it’s a very real struggle. There are a couple of things that make me think here. One is the understanding that Jesus is completely committed to the idea of helping us move toward faithfulness. So there’s basically pistus, which is faith or pure, and porneo, which is defiled sexual activity of all different kinds. His goal is to move us toward pistus, toward faithfulness, toward wholeness, toward purity. And frankly, it feels really good.

When I’m working with guys – and not just guys, women too – who are struggling with pornography and just the compulsiveness that that ties into, one of the things I try to remember is if you had a powerful regenerating work of the Holy Spirit, if you’ve gotten that new heart that comes through the work of the Holy Spirit, your deepest desires are for cleanliness. And as much as the desire is to get back into the porn because it provides a short-term thrill… It takes away the tension briefly. It really does give you a relief to do porn stuff. But then it’s like diving in a cesspool. You get dirty. So one of the things I try to think through is remembering that Jesus wants to help us move toward purity, toward cleanliness. And if you’ve got that new heart cleanliness feels good. And [inaudible – 02:07] easy to get there. But here’s what I try to think through: I am going to be most happy when I am pure because my desires are to be like Jesus, to be pure, to be pistus. So what I ask people when the wave comes and it feels like, “Man, I’ve just got to do it. I can’t live without it,” almost, is to stop and think. And that actually takes a bit to stop and think, prayer, got to Jesus, remembering that he wants to help, if possible, community, text a friend. Don’t do it by yourself. Satan’s agenda is to disconnect you from God [inaudible – 02:51], disconnect you from friends. They’ll laugh at you. And then when you’re connecting with Jesus, is then stop and think what will make me most happy, because my belief is that because Jesus helps us because you have that new heart, because you have the power of the Holy Spirit, that if we stop and think [inaudible – 03:14], in community and do what will make me most deeply happy, I’ll almost always do the right thing. But the porn thing is I’ve got to have it, have it right now. And you don’t connect with Jesus. You don’t connect with the community. You think what will get me through the next few minutes. And you dive in a cesspool. And I don’t want people to have to deal with a dirty cesspool. Jesus wants you to be clean. He wants you to be pistus. He wants you to be pure. And he will help. And with the power of Jesus, [inaudible – 03:45] desires of my new heart. There’s a lot of freedom [inaudible]. That’s my primary advice.

Stephen: Yeah, that’s awesome. I couldn’t have said it better myself. Thank you for sharing that.

Gerry: [crosstalk – 03:58] better if you to go Titus, chapter 3, verses 3 through 8. You’ll find a lot of those [inaudible] talking about.

Stephen: Awesome, yeah, I would encourage anyone watching to check that out, Titus, chapter 3. Gerry, where can people find out more about you and your ministry?

Gerry: Well, I’m pretty active on Facebook. I started a couple of brewhahas here lately with some theological questions. And we have some pretty active dialogs going on there. I work on Western Seminary. We’ve got on active website here at Western. And a long email, gbreshears@westernseminary.edu. And I love to help people find purity.

Stephen: Awesome. We’ll put all that information in the show notes. Thank you again for your time. I love what you’re doing. Any chance I get to hear you talk, I’m always there because I just love your heart and the way you communicate what sometimes can be hard truths for people to get. I just think you’ve got a real gift of communicating them in caring and easy to understand ways, which is getting more and more rare these days, unfortunately.

Gerry: Yeah, I’ve given your book to a lot of different people, Steve, thanks.

Stephen: Oh, thank you. I appreciate your time. And thanks again, Gerry.

Gerry: God bless.

The post My One Thing: Gerry Breshears appeared first on Belt of Truth Ministries.

Smart Quote: Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Thoughts on this quote? Feel free to discuss them in the comments below.

The post Smart Quote: Dietrich Bonhoeffer appeared first on Belt of Truth Ministries.

Why Porn Addiction is Not About Fulfilling Sexual Desire—Part Five: A Word to the Married Men

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Note: This post is part five of a six-part series on desire. It has been adapted from my book, 10 Lies Men Believe about Porn, available now wherever books are sold.

You can find beginning of the series here.

Even if you aren’t married yet, please read this because it may save you from massive heartache in the future. Fair warning, though: You are fully accountable for what you know. You won’t be able to unlearn what you’re about to read. It may haunt you until you deal with it, but it’s all part of God’s plan to make you the man—and the husband—that He wants you to be.

Still here? Good.

If you are hiding your pornography addiction from your wife, it is more than likely causing her to feel distant from you. She probably senses that there is something wrong with your relationship but has no idea what it is. There will likely come a point where she will ask you why the two of you aren’t close (if she hasn’t already). In order to keep the truth hidden, you will need to lie.

If you claim to have no answer, she will assume the issue must be with her. This was the path I chose in my marriage, and it’s one of the greatest regrets of my life. I watched my wife’s happiness deteriorate before me as she frantically tried to figure out whatever it was she was doing wrong in our marriage. Continuing to lie and withholding my true self from her was perhaps the most selfish thing I’ve ever done. How could I approach my wife, who was hurting so deeply, and ask her to love me when I knew my sin was the true reason she was hurting? I couldn’t. So I tightened my mask and went back to porn.

But here’s the deal. You will never experience intimacy with your spouse if anything remains hidden. Anything. True intimacy requires being fully known, and you cannot be fully known if you are withholding any information about who you are. Any lie or hiding, no matter how insignificant it may seem, will destroy the intimacy in your marriage. By attempting to protect yourself and appear worthy of acceptance, you are actually creating an environment where intimacy cannot exist. The world will tell you there are secrets you take to the grave, but we are not of the world. You must confess your lies and hiding to your spouse or your marriage will never thrive.

I would encourage you to prayerfully ask God to reveal to you anything you are hiding that is standing in the way of your intimacy as a couple. There may be some extremely difficult things you will need to confess to your wife, but please trust God as He brings these things to your mind. I’d encourage you to talk over your list with your pastor or a counselor first. They can help you develop a plan, offer suggestions on how to proceed, and provide accountability so you are less likely to back out. Above all else, pray about how God wants you to handle this in order to minimize the damage as much as possible.

There will never be a “good” time to confess these things to your spouse. No matter when you do it, it will be hard. But the longer you put it off, the worse the damage will be. I would suggest mentioning to your wife that you have some difficult things you need to discuss and asking her when she would be ready to sit down and discuss them. Be prepared to do it right then if that is her preference. This will hopefully eliminate at least some of her feelings of being blindsided.

There are no guarantees of how this will go—other than it being extremely hard and painful. Make no mistake—this will be a bomb going off in your marriage. You will need the help and support of others to survive this. But the reality is, if your marriage has been built on deception, the foundation is nothing more than a Jenga tower. You can live the rest of your life taking a block from the bottom and moving it to the top, but the wall will only be getting weaker. The only way to truly fix the foundation of your marriage is to rebuild it on a firm foundation of openness and honesty. However, understand that this confession isn’t about magically fixing your marriage overnight. It will be like ripping a scab off an infected wound to let it drain and heal properly. It’s a disgusting image, but it’s unfortunately accurate.

Once the wound has been cleansed and you both begin the long and tender process of healing in a new environment of transparency, you will hopefully begin to experience the seeds of intimacy in your marriage for the first time. You will realize that any love you are receiving from your spouse is being offered to the real you. She now knows everything about you—warts and all—and is still choosing to love you. The energy you previously spent keeping your mask on is now freed up to protect, serve, and lead her—all of which will encourage you in your true masculinity. You will constantly be thankful and grateful for her forgiveness, which will pour out of you as love. To paraphrase Jesus, the more you’ve been forgiven, the more you love (Luke 7:47). These are just a few of the many reasons why marriages that survive trials such as these have the potential to become the strongest marriages.

We cannot ignore the very real possibility that your marriage may not heal from this. But the truth is, the pain that your confession will bring up is already present in your marriage—it just hasn’t been labeled yet. The damage was done when the sin was committed. Confession is what will allow you to finally accept responsibility for that pain. It will allow your wife to understand what she—and your marriage—will need to heal from. It will allow her to stop blaming herself. If, however, you choose to continue hiding things from her, you will only be causing her more pain. You will be choosing your own desire for control and safety over her happiness and emotional stability. Your marriage may remain intact, but it will never be healthy.

I wish I could say I took my mask off, confessed everything to my wife, and we lived happily ever after. However, as you know from “My Story” at the beginning of this book, it took me a long time to gain the courage to be completely honest with her about all of my lies and selfishness. Ironically, my continual lying and deception—the very things I was doing to protect myself—were ultimately major factors in what pushed her away. In the end, I don’t believe she left because of my pornography addiction or even because of my adultery. I believe she left because she couldn’t trust me. I had lied to her about who I was for far too long.

By waiting until after we were already separated to come clean about everything, I never gave her the chance to see God working in me. By the time I finally faced the full reality of the pain I’d caused her, it was too late. In her mind, our whole marriage had been a lie. The man she thought she’d married didn’t even exist. The only “truth” she knew about me was that I had been willing to sacrifice her well-being for my own protection.

I truly believe that if I had told her everything when I first felt God leading me to come clean, things would have been different. We still would have been living together in the same house at the time, and I believe she would have been more likely to witness the changes that God was working in my heart. She might not have been able to trust me, but perhaps she would have been able to trust the signs of God working within me.

But even if I knew back then what the end results of my confession would be, I still would have gone through with it. In fact, I would have done it much sooner, because confessing everything to her ended up being the single biggest turning point of my life. It was the moment that I finally trusted God and began to experience the true intimacy I had been looking for.

Don’t get me wrong here. I hate how much pain my addiction caused my wife over the years. I pray daily that God would heal the pain that I have caused in her heart and remain hopeful that someday, she may even be healed to the point where she becomes open to reconciliation. But even if she doesn’t, I know that God will provide me—and her—with all the love and intimacy our souls will ever need.

Continue on to Part Six: How Does This Help Me with Porn? (coming next Monday)

The post Why Porn Addiction is Not About Fulfilling Sexual Desire—Part Five: A Word to the Married Men appeared first on Belt of Truth Ministries.

Weekly Web (W)roundup

Each week, I round up the best resources, articles, and videos I find that are relevant to finding freedom from porn addiction. Please note that by posting a link here it does not mean I agree with everything in the linked article. It just means I found it interesting enough to share.

xxxChurch: 3 Ways To Beat The Shame

“Shame is an enemy that we all deal with and something that the porn addict is only all too familiar with.  One of the reasons that pornography maintains such a strong hold on men is the incredible shame that comes along with viewing it.”

Gary Thomas: 6 Marks of Healthy Sexuality

“I write this post with a bit of pastoral concern: Lisa and I have met some wives (and the occasional husband) who felt tempted to compromise their faith and even their own sense of sanity because they realized after getting married that their spouse has some sexual hang-ups.”

And Sons: Beauty Heals

“Relief is momentary; it is checking out, numbing, sedating yourself. Television is relief. Eating a bag of cookies is relief. Tequila is relief. And let’s be honest—relief is what we reach for because it is immediate and it is usually within our grasp. Most of us turn there, when what we really need is restoration.”

CovenantEyes: Are You Pursuing Sexual Purity for the Wrong Reasons?

“As long as it is about us, then we will snatch the glory for ourself when the battle is over. “Look what I did! Look at all that my hard work accomplished! I deserve this victory!” That is precisely what God wants us to avoid.”

Desiring God: Law-Keeping Cannot Save You

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My One Thing: David Martin

“What’s the one piece of advice you would give

to someone struggling with porn addiction?”

David Martin is the co-founder and writer for My Chains are Gone.

Connect with David

Website: http://mychainsaregone.org

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/My-Chains-Are-Gone

Twitter: @MyChainsAreGon

Article: The Chain

Sermon: The Incarnation, Scene One

Article: A Dangerous Male Myth

Check out all the “One Thing” video interviews here.

Transcript

Steve: Hey, guys! Steve here with Belt of Truth Ministries. I’ve got David Martin on the line. David is the co-founder and writer for Mychainsaregone.org. David, thanks for joining us today!

David: It’s good to be with you, Steve. Thanks.

Steve: So what’s the one piece of advice that you would give to somebody struggling with porn?

David: Wow, trying to keep me down to one piece. I’m not sure I can keep it there. I’ve got a concept but it’s got multiple facets to it so you might think that when I get done, I’m giving you more than one thing. But, oh well, hopefully, that’ll be hopeful. The one thing, the overarching thing that people need to know is that their struggle against porn is not a strategy problem, it’s a truth problem. When God set me free from my struggle with porn, I wasn’t even fighting it very hard at that time. Even though I was in pastoral ministry, I decided that the best I could really hope for was not too much, not too often. But then I began studying the bible to discern God’s view of the human form, the human body. And I came to some very different beliefs than I’ve had before. When I began to live in harmony with those biblically accurate beliefs, even the desire for porn melted out of my life and I was pretty surprised. And I had to find out what had happened to me and why because that sort of instantaneous freedom, delivery from porn is something that no strategy for porn you hear about today offers really any hope for. My search led me to John 8:32 where Jesus said, “You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” Now these were Jesus’ words and we see from the context that the freedom He’s talking about is freedom from sin, the slavery to sin. But notice what Jesus does not say. He doesn’t say the truth will point you towards freedom or the truth will give you the desire to be free or the truth will motivate you to be free, or the truth will give you the willpower to be free, or what often happens on porn support boards and what-not is you’ll see that He didn’t say the truth will redefine freedom to match your experience. He said it would make you free. The inescapable conclusion is that we are not free. We don’t yet know the truth. So that’s why I say that the bondage to porn is not a strategy problem but rather a truth problem. So therefore, the correct, the only correct strategy against porn addiction is one thing and one thing only. You identify the lies that you believe, replace the lies with the truth, and then most importantly, you live as if the truth is true instead of living as if the lie is true. Jesus said in Matthew 7:24, He said, “Everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them may be compared to a wise man who built his house on a rock.” Jesus’ words are truth but to benefit from them, we must act on them. We must live as if His words really are true. We must allow the truth to impact how we live, the decisions we make moment by moment, day by day, how we think moment by moment, day by day. Then when we put His truth into action, then we’ll be set free as John 8:32 promises. And this is why I really appreciate the approach of your book which I just dropped. Here it is so you can see it, 10 Lies Men Believe About Porn, because that’s really what it’s all about. We have to recognize the lies, we have to replace them with the truth, and then live as if the truth is true. Think as if the truth is true, make decisions in our life as if the truth is true. Determine our strategies for life, our patterns for life based upon the truth, not on the lie. And that’s when we’ll experience the freedom Jesus promises. But let me share with your viewers what I believe is the biggest lie that both men and women believe not about porn but about men. There’s a huge lie that men believe about themselves that I believe unless they reject it and live actively contrary to it, they won’t ever really realize the kind of freedom that God really desires for them and it is this. This might be a shocker for some of you. The lie is that God made men to be automatically sexually aroused at the simple sight of an unclothed female body or male body. Let me say that again. It’s a lie that God made men to automatically be sexually aroused at the simple sight of the unclothed human form. The truth is that God made men and women to be aroused sexually by relationship. He made us all relational. That is His intent. The visual arousal notion is a lie. It’s not God’s will for men and it’s not how God made us. It’s not normal, it’s not good. God is relational and He is motivated to love and unite with us because He has a relationship with us. Not because of how we look, we’re called to love as God loves. And the truth behind that is that God made both men and women’s bodies to be self portraits of Himself. We’re made in God’s image therefore the appropriate and most important response to seeing the human form is praise and awe for the One who so artistically stamped His own likeness there. Instead, our culture and sadly, the church consider the sight of the human form to be a sexual experience. Rather than acknowledging the glory of God, we assess the sight by its impact on the human libido. And to be sure, generations of men have been conditioned into visual arousal response. Well quite frankly, the pornography industry right now is trying desperately so that women will be aroused by visual response as well. But make no mistakes. It’s only conditioning. And that which can be conditioned can be unconditioned. This is why the bible never tells a man what he may and may not see of a woman’s body. Ain’t that a strange omission if that’s what God intended for us? You see what we see is not the problem, it’s how we see it. I like to put it this way. We sinfully view the human form because we have a sinful view of the human form. And the tragic reality is that most if not all of the strategies that are promoted in the church to combat porn addiction are based upon the assumption that the visual lie is actually true. And no strategy that affirms that lie will ever deliver anyone from the bondage empowered by that lie. And that, I believe, is why the success rates of all those strategies are so abysmally low. I know I’ve said some very strong and perhaps surprising things in this interview but given the epidemic of porn addiction even within the church, isn’t it time we reexamine some of the things we’ve been believing so unquestionably for so long? Let me summarize my one thing with a two-part declaration. First of all, bondage to sin, any sin quite frankly is not a strategy problem. It’s a truth problem. And God intend for men, all of us, men and women, to find sexual arousal relationally, not visually. If what I’ve declared in that second part sounds so unrealistic as to be laughable, let me remind you of a quote by Dresden James that I think is worth pondering. He said this, “When a well-packaged web of lies have been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker and raving lunatic.” Well guess what? I am not lunatic but what I proclaim is truth and it’s the truth that set me free. And I really hope and pray that all your viewers will experience that same freedom.

Steve: When you were sharing that, your lie there, the first thing that I thought of was, I remember back to when I was in college. I was an art major and I had to take figure drawing. And I remember at that point I was very much addicted to pornography but I remember that even when we had attractive nude models in class, I was surprised that I was not aroused by them. And that was the first time that I remember questioning whether or not that is an automatic response. Over the years, I found with myself that a lot of, for me, my addiction to pornography, a lot of that wasn’t driven from a, I mean it wasn’t ultimately driven from a desire to see naked women. It was driven by a desire to see the women photographed in a way where it implied that they desired me. So my lust of them was not strictly over their body. A lot of it was over their desire, if that makes sense.

David: If you read Proverbs 7, you’ll see there it talks about the woman who’s the adulteress. She goes out into the street and everything about how she tries to seduce young men is all about relationship. And the pornography industry knows this too because they don’t just show you pictures. They show you pictures of women with this come-hither look. And they also list, a lot of them, they list this is what this gal likes. And the guy, he’s going to be reading that, what she likes and what she doesn’t like, and he’s going to think to himself, “She would like me.” And there’s that pornography is trying to capitalize on that relationship component even while it’s selling the lie that it’s all visual.

Steve: Right. And if you believe that lie that it’s all visual, the chances of you finding healing are so much less because you’re not actually dealing with the root cause of what you’re after there.

David: That’s right. You’re fighting the wrong battle. You’re trying to say, “Hey, I should not find this to be attractive.” Yes, you should. God made it attractive. It’s His image. And we start fighting the wrong battle because we say, “Oh, I shouldn’t want to look. I shouldn’t want to see that.” But then we give in and we look and we believe that looking will automatically result in lust, and therefore, we don’t even fight the lust response. We’re literally fighting the wrong battle. In fact, that’s one of the titles of my article, The Right Battle, on our website. And so that’s great to hear what you said about that because what you experienced in that art class was you experienced the truth. And it wasn’t trumped up and built up in the way our culture has conditioned so many people, so many men for many generations to think this is what your response is supposed to be. Imagine if a man does not have that response. What will he do if it’s only through relationship that he finds his arousal? What will he do when he starts sensing the need and the desire in his body to express himself sexually? Well, if the sight of some other woman doesn’t do it, where is he going to go? He’s going to go right back to his wife because she’s the only one with whom he has that sort of relationship. And doesn’t that sound like that would be in keeping with God’s design? I think so.

Steve: Thanks for sharing all that. Tell people where they can find out more about your ministry and all that.

David: Well, several other pastors and I, a number of years ago, who we were set free similarly. And we’re like “What happened?” and God brought us together and we knew that we had similar understanding, similar experience, and similar perspective. And we said, “We got to get this message out” and so we developed a site called Mychainsaregone.org. And you might want to, the readers might want to, read this story called The Chain. It was the story I wrote, it’s an allegory, about how God set me free. And it was written out of gratitude for God that kind of became the metaphor for saying my chains are gone as a website. And there’s a whole series of articles. We encourage people to read them in order. We find a lot of times, they’re so radically different in a way people are thinking that they need to read them multiple times. But we find when people really get it and they really understand it, they are set free. And it’s not a strategy site. It’s not an accountability site. It’s a site about the truth and that’s enough, so I encourage people to read that. I’m going to give you a link to a message I gave called The Incarnation Scene 1 which I think gives a lot of theological background for the kind of things that I’ve talked about today. And then there is a pamphlet that one of the other authors, David Hatton, wrote called The Dangerous Meal Myth. And this is about that whole visual myth. He’s put it in a form, a downloadable PDF that’s printable. And you can distribute it to people and you can look it over and talk about it. So I’m going to give you that link as well. So I hope people come to the site and read through the articles and really prayerfully seek to say, “God, what are the truths that I’ve not been seeing and understanding? What are the lies that I have been believing? And help me make that switch.”

Steve: Awesome! Yeah, we will definitely add all those links in the show notes. Sounds like you got a lot of great resources for people to check out. Thank you for your generosity. And then just for your time for doing this.

David: Hey, it’s a real privilege and I’m just really thankful for the opportunity to do this. This is the calling of my life and to be able to share it like this, to reach more people, it’s God’s doing and I’m just so thankful.

Steve: Okay, well, all five of the people that read my blog will love it. Okay.

David: Well thanks so much, Steve!

Steve: Yeah. Thanks again, David!

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Smart Quote: Richard Rohr

Thoughts on this quote? Feel free to discuss them in the comments below

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Why Porn Addiction is Not About Fulfilling Sexual Desire—Part Four: Your Need to Experience Intimacy

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Note: This post is part four of a six-part series on desire. It has been adapted from my book, 10 Lies Men Believe about Porn, available now wherever books are sold.

You can find beginning of the series here.

When we hear the word “intimacy,” we often think of it confined within the box of sexuality. Yes, sexual intimacy is one of the greatest pictures of intimacy between two people, but it’s not the full definition. Intimacy is defined more completely as the result of being fully known and fully knowing another. It’s the driving force behind every friendship, relationship, marriage, and community. It’s also the very core of what we were created for:

Jesus replied, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments” (Matthew 22:37–40).

We were created to love God and love others fully. Or, to put it another way, our souls deeply desire intimacy with God as well as intimacy with others. However, if this need for intimacy isn’t being met in your life, nothing else will matter to you. To paraphrase what Jesus said in the previous verse, everything hinges on this.

This may sound like lovey-dovey hippie stuff—it’s all about the love man…puff, puff—but this is huge. If you are anything like most men, your need for intimacy is the driving force behind your struggle with porn­ography. Once you begin to understand the truth behind this need—and how you are using pornography to try to meet it—you will begin to experience what true intimacy feels like, possibly for the first time in your life. And once you experience true intimacy, you will begin to see how empty and damaging the lie of pornography really is.

I deeply desired to be loved during the years of my addiction, but I had believed the lie that I was unlovable. I came to the conclusion that my only option to ever receive love was to lie and pretend to be someone I wasn’t. So, as we saw in the previous chapter, I created a mask—a false self—that I could hide behind and pretend to be worthy of love.

There was one serious flaw with this logic, though. By only allowing people to see my mask, the real me could never receive their love. In fact, the people I desperately wanted to be loved by couldn’t love me, not because of their lack of ability or willingness, but because my mask was deflecting their attempts. I knew deep down that any love from others was being directed toward the fake me and not the real me. By keeping my mask on and not allowing anyone to see my struggles, I never gave anyone the chance to love me in spite of those struggles.

I had convinced myself I had to hide the truth about me from my wife in order to at least appear worthy of her love. This constant hiding and dishonesty caused me to feel as if I needed to walk on eggshells around her at all times. I blamed these feelings on her, though, and believed the reason I didn’t feel love or acceptance from her was because she wasn’t giving me what I needed. I blamed our lack of relational intimacy on her inability to love me correctly, not my inability to receive her love. Of course, I couldn’t see this at the time, so I kept trying to find ways to change her behavior toward me instead of looking at what I needed to change on my end.

This same pattern played out with my relationship with God as well. I hid my sin from God and somehow convinced myself it was making me more acceptable. I put on my “Perfect Steve Mask” and volunteered in church, trying to distract God from my sin through service and self-sacrifice. I completely missed the reality that He simply wanted me to be honest about who I was so He could love the real me.

So there I was, desperate for love and acceptance—desperate to experience true intimacy—but unable to receive what was being offered to me because of the mask I was wearing. Like many men, though, I believed the lie that my loneliness was the result of no one in my life offering love and acceptance to me, so I began to seek to fulfill these needs elsewhere.

Seeking to Meet Your Need for Intimacy through Pornography

The lure of porn is more about being desired than satisfying your own sexual desires. The rush you get from porn is the same rush you get during that first kiss. We can call it butterflies, infatuation, whatever—but it all comes down to the wonderful experience of knowing you are desired. If you don’t believe me, ask yourself what thoughts went through your head after a first kiss. Chances are, it was something more along the lines of I can’t believe she kissed me! rather than I can’t believe I finally got to kiss her! Maybe I’m different here, but I doubt it.

Porn gives you that same feeling of being desired, but instead of sensing that the desire is for your mask, you believe the desire is truly meant for you. These women on the screen are fully aware of your pornography addiction (after all, you’re looking at them, right?), and yet they still want to be with you. So, in a twisted way, it almost feels like they are the only ones who are loving the real you. The most sinister part of this is that you will begin to crave the affection of pornography more than the affection of real people because this deception appears to be meeting your need for intimacy better than any other relationship.

This is the lie Satan wants you to believe—that pornography will never judge you, condemn you, or push you to be a better person. It will never ask you to shave or shower before being accepted romantically. You can come in from a weeklong camping trip, covered in dirt and smelling like a moose, and the women of porn will still desire you just as you are. It doesn’t even matter what you are hiding—porn still wants you. It offers you all the benefits of a romantic relationship without the risk of being discovered as a fraud. Better yet, the women of porn couldn’t care less if you are a fraud. It doesn’t even matter to them. This apparent unconditional acceptance makes it incredibly tempting for men—especially broken, hidden, shame-filled men—to run to the arms of pornography rather than the arms of their spouse or their Creator.

But when you seek intimacy through pornography, it actually produces a very opposite effect in your life. More than likely, every time you turn to porn, you will experience shame, which will feed your feelings of insecurity, not measuring up, and wanting to hide the truth about you. This causes you to add one more memory to your list of reasons you believe no one will love you, which encourages you to tighten the strap on your mask a few more notches. The counterfeit intimacy of pornography becomes an industrial epoxy, gluing your mask—the very thing keeping you from experiencing true intimacy—to your soul even tighter. This is how porno­graphy addiction becomes a cycle that feeds itself.

So how do you stop the downward spiral of pornography addiction and the damage it causes in your life? The answer is simple, but it’s not easy. It may very well be the hardest thing you have ever done. The only thing that can stop this cycle is to overcome the shame that is driving it. And the only way to overcome shame is to allow yourself to be fully known, and then realize you are fully loved and accepted in spite of your imperfections.

But to experience this, you must take off your mask and let the real you be known. There is no other way. Don’t lose heart, though. This will be one of the most significant and meaningful journeys of your life.

The Path to True Intimacy

I shared in the previous chapter how I never experienced unconditional love or acceptance until I was honest about my struggles with a group of trusted men. It was the first time I felt loved for who I truly was. These men actually loved the real me. I slowly began to believe that God loved and accepted the real me in the same way as well. I started to recognize that I didn’t need to hide my sin from God. This understanding allowed me to finally believe that it might be possible to live my life without wearing a mask—to let the real me be known.

I love the way Nate Larkin explains how he came to see this reality in his own life:

I always felt bad that I wasn’t a better person. I even created this false self, this “Saint Nate” that I tried to make breathe on its own. I felt bad that “Saint Nate” could only live at church. Now I know that Jesus never loved “Saint Nate” because He didn’t make “Saint Nate.” He made me. Jesus loves me! He wants a relationship with me! And that’s the only real relationship there is.

Did you catch that? Jesus loves you! Not your mask. He loves the real you! If you haven’t been experiencing His love in your life, it’s not because He isn’t offering it to you. It’s probably because you’ve been pulling an Adam and trying to hide from Him in the bushes. You’ve let your mask become a wall that blocks the real you from receiving the love of Christ. Your mask can’t receive His love because your mask isn’t real. Jesus is waiting for you to be honest with Him about your true self. Cry out to Him. Tell Him who you really are. He already knows the truth anyway. Unload your heart before God—sin and all. Claim it. Confess it. Own it. You will find that He’s been there all along, waiting for you to let Him love you in spite of all of it.

The most incredible feeling of acceptance is realizing that the Creator of the universe loves you, even at your worst. God knew you would be right where you are in this moment—pornography and all—and He still chose to send His Son to die for you. Jesus knew you would be here as well, and He still went through with it. When you begin to understand this, any feeling you have of being unlovable or unacceptable will begin to melt away. Once you experience His love and acceptance, your heart will come alive. Your deep need for intimacy will finally be satisfied.

Continue on to Part Five: A Word to Married Men (coming next Monday)

The post Why Porn Addiction is Not About Fulfilling Sexual Desire—Part Four: Your Need to Experience Intimacy appeared first on Belt of Truth Ministries.

Weekly Web (W)roundup

Each week, I round up the best resources, articles, and videos I find that are relevant to finding freedom from porn addiction. Please note that by posting a link here it does not mean I agree with everything in the linked article. It just means I found it interesting enough to share.

Gospel Coalition: How Playboy Magazine Legitimized Pornography—and Destroyed Itself in the Process

“If you were to travel back in time to mid-1970s—when Playboy reached its pinnacle of circulation at 5.6 million—and told people the magazine was forgoing nudity, the assumption would be that that the anti-pornography faction must have finally won. But just the opposite has happened.”

Desiring God: Single You Will Be the Married You

“When I was single, I thought marriage might be the magic bullet. I believed that it would miraculously transform me. I assumed I would suddenly possess a new measure of love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control that I had not yet known or experienced as a single man.”

CovenantEyes: 5 Often Neglected Ways to Defeat Porn

“Here are what I believe to be five things you have likely not included in your efforts to stop. They are often neglected because they are hard. They are hard because they move beyond your own efforts…which have failed you how many times? But they work. They have and are working in my life and in the lives of many other men I know.”

Christward Collective: How Do I Know that God Loves Me?

“How do we know God loves us, and what does His love look like? How we answer these questions, and we all hold answers to those questions whether we are aware of them or not, is what determines our view of God and the health of our faith.”

Beautiful Eulogy: Live at Portland Underground Studio

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DONE: You Have Received the Promise of Life

This letter is from Paul, chosen by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus. I have been sent out to tell others about the life He has promised through faith in Christ Jesus (2 Timothy 1:1).

The apostle Paul knew his calling was to tell others about the life that is promised to those who trust Jesus. But what exactly is Paul talking about when he says “life.”

The way I look at it, there are two possible ways to interpret Paul’s use of the word “life” in this context. On one hand, we could read this as Paul saying “Here’s what your day-to-day life will look like for you if you choose to follow Jesus.” If this were the message God wanted to communicate to the world through a man though, don’t you think He would have chosen someone other than Paul?

Seriously, take a look at Paul’s life:

I have worked harder, been put in prison more often, been whipped times without number, and faced death again and again. Five different times the Jewish leaders gave me thirty-nine lashes. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked. Once I spent a whole night and a day adrift at sea. I have traveled on many long journeys. I have faced danger from rivers and from robbers. I have faced danger from my own people, the Jews, as well as from the Gentiles. I have faced danger in the cities, in the deserts, and on the seas. And I have faced danger from men who claim to be believers but are not. I have worked hard and long, enduring many sleepless nights. I have been hungry and thirsty and have often gone without food. I have shivered in the cold, without enough clothing to keep me warm (2 Corinthians 11:23-27).

Prison…beatings…shipwrecks…sleeplessness. I’m pretty sure nobody is going to voluntarily sign up for a life like Paul’s—not unless there’s something attached to it so amazing that it makes all these hardships pale in comparison.

Ah, but there is something attached to it: The life of Christ living within you. Eternal life.

This is the life that Paul is talking about.

You see, Paul’s calling wasn’t to tell others how Jesus wanted to change their day-to-day lives. His calling was to help them see their need for the eternal life of Christ to redeem their hearts (which would give them the power to thrive within their day-to-day lives).

Hopefully you won’t ever find yourself shipwrecked or starving, but if you do, rest in the fact that the same life of Christ that dwelled in Paul dwells in you as well.

Which means when your day-to-day life gets hard, you can do more than simply try to survive…you can thrive.

This post was an excerpt from my book, DONE. 52 Amazing Things that Became True of You the Moment You Trusted Christ.

The entire book is available as individual posts here, but if you prefer a good old-fashion paperback, you can purchase a copy from Amazon.

The post DONE: You Have Received the Promise of Life appeared first on Belt of Truth Ministries.