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March 20 - March 27, 2022
Godly sorrow demonstrates itself by a deep concern to restore the relationships that were broken. Godly sorrow is pained by the wedge of separation that pornography brings between you and God. It longs for restoration. Godly sorrow is broken over the distance your sin has created in relationships with others and longs to close the gap.
When your tears result in your running away from people instead of toward them, your tears are worldly tears. Worldly grief ignores God instead of leaning more fully on his forgiveness and grows comfortable with broken relationships.
Doing what is right and just doesn’t always make life more comfortable for you. An immediate and critical test for whether your sorrow is godly or worldly is whether you’re willing to accept the consequences of your sin. If so, there is a very good chance that your sorrow is the godly kind that saves. If you’re trying to wriggle out of consequences, there is a high probability that your sorrow is the worldly kind that is all about you.
Worldly sorrow happens when you feel the sting of sin but still cherish a selfish love of sin in your heart. Godly sorrow happens when you are gripped by your sinful separation from God and desire to be restored to him at any cost.
First, if you are caught in a sin, you need to be restored by someone who lives by the Spirit. We are not designed to pull our way out of our spiritual ruts in our own strength. We need the help of other Christians. You will never be free from pornography until you acknowledge that in order to change you need the help of God through brothers and sisters in Christ.
this passage speaks to you if you are in the position of providing accountability for someone else. Paul instructs spiritual mentors to restore struggling persons in a spirit of gentleness and love. When we think of accountability, we often think of someone foolish and weak who is in need of someone wise and strong.
Wise mentors need struggling persons in order to obey that command.
The Word of God tells us that we should help to carry the burdens of those who are weaker and struggling in the battles against sin. Never forget that everyone — even if they are not struggling with this particular sin — will need help at some point.
Too often, people who struggle with pornography use accountability as the only weapon in their arsenal against porn. While it is an important weapon, accountability is only one weapon among many.
Sadly, this well-intentioned conversation illustrates several defective approaches to accountability. One of those defective approaches is that these guys are only reporting on the sin they have already committed rather than asking for help to battle the temptations that precede sin. In other words, they are waiting until the end of the week to talk about all the pornography they looked at instead of calling out for help during the week — while they are tempted and before they actually sin.
Many accountability groups function as an opportunity for a delayed confession of sin. You must change this pattern if you want to be free from porn. You must begin to reach out to your accountability partners when you are tempted instead of waiting for a meeting to confess your sins after the fact. Here is a crucial truth for you to consider: You will not experience dramatic change in your struggle as long as you use accountability to describe your sins instead of declaring your need for help in the midst of temptation. You must ask Jesus for grace and agree with those holding you accountable
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these young men are all at the same level of maturity and entangled in the same sin. No one in the group has the spiritual stability to counterbalance their communal confusion. None of these guys have the proven wisdom to correct their collective waywardness. No one who has experienced lasting victory is there to guide the group out of long-standing defeat. You must have someone providing leadership in your accountability group who is more advanced in holiness than the others.
those caught in sins are restored by those who live by the Spirit. Living by the Spirit doesn’t imply “perfect.”
Seeking accountability from those who are in the same place in their struggle as you are may make you feel comfortable but is unlikely to lead to actual change. You must be accountable to someone who has a track record of victory in sexual purity.
Your accountability partner needs to know, in broad terms, how you access pornography (for example, they need to know if you seek it out on the Internet or buy it from a store). They need to know approximately how much time you spend viewing pornography, and if you’re looking at styles of pornography that are different from what they might expect. For example, you should make it clear if you are watching homosexual pornography, child pornography, or other types that indicate a specific kind of struggle beyond viewing acts of more typical sexual immorality. The wisest approach is to describe
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Accountability leads to freedom much more quickly when conversations grow into times of honest and free confession on the part of the struggler. Spiritual mentors can certainly begin with questions to start the conversation, but they should also keep in mind the goal — full and free confession without the prompting of questions or probing to uncover hidden secrets.
They must be willing to take time through the week to pray for you, call you, answer your calls, and check up on you. The calling to be a spiritual person who restores another caught in a sin is a high and holy calling that requires time.
Jesus provides a serious standard. If a person wants purity, it is not enough to avoid having a physical, sexual relationship with someone who is not his or her spouse. If they want purity, Jesus says, they must not want sex with someone who is not their spouse. Jesus raises the standard of purity from physical acts of fornication to lustful intentions of the heart and lustful looks of the eyes. He tells us we are adulterous people, not only when we have sex with someone who is not our spouse, but whenever we look at someone who is not our spouse and desire any sort of sexual relationship with
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Jesus won’t allow you to retain these sinning body parts in hopes of using them later.
God does not forbid sexual immorality because he wants you to be miserable; God forbids it because sexual immorality leads to brokenness, sadness, emptiness, death, and hell. Righteousness, on the other hand, leads to fullness, joy, peace, and life. According to Jesus, sin is not complicated. There are two simple choices and two guaranteed consequences — the easy path of sexual immorality, which will kill you, and the hard path of radical warfare against it, which will lead you to the fullness of life.
Amputation is not easy. It is extraordinarily painful and carries with it a sense of loss, but the reward is far better than the alternative.
You will need to employ radical measures in at least three areas. You look at porn when you have the desire to see it, when you have the time to look at it, and when it is available to you. Nobody looks at pornography without all three of these elements coming together. In your fight to be free from pornography, you must learn to take radical steps to eliminate each one.
Viewing pornography is typically the last stop on a long road of sexual sins.
If you only attack the outward behavior, the problem will keep returning. You must uproot pornographic lust in your thinking, dealing with what Jesus unveils as the lustful intentions of your heart (Matthew 5:28).
I can guarantee failure if you wait to begin the fight against porn until you are alone in the dark with your computer. This is a battle that must be waged the very moment you become aware of your desire to see pornography.
repent immediately. We talked about our need for repentance in the first chapter. Repentance isn’t something that only takes place in tranquil moments of calm reflection or intense times of powerful resolve. Repentance is an ongoing practice, and it happens most commonly in the fog of temptation. Repentance is something you will do repeatedly in your long-term struggle against porn.
you must remember Scripture. Scripture memory is not just a pious spiritual discipline for people who are more holy or mature than you are. Scripture memory is a powerful weapon that can give you victory in your battle against porn. The psalmist says to God, “I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you” (Psalm 119:11).
A diverse stockpile of biblical truth is needed to combat the lies of temptation when they come.
reach out for help. Repentance is crucial. Remembering the Bible is essential. But as important as it is to be armed with these powerful graces, you are not designed to fight the battles of sin and temptation alone.
often tell people that I want them to feel comfortable calling me at any time of the day or night. They might wake me up in the middle of the night, but it’s better to do that than to sin.
This means you must limit the time you spend alone — especially in the early phases of the struggle against pornography. Be honest with your accountability partner about the typical times when you are alone and find yourself tempted. Make plans to spend those times with others. You can study together, take a walk, play sports, read the Bible and pray, or watch a movie. You can even have an accountability partner scheduled to call you during those times (with the requirement that you must pick up the phone) to check in on you. If you’re married, you may need to commit to going to bed at the
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You most likely view porn from the same sources again and again. You must eliminate, not limit, your access to these outlets for pornography. There are three main ways in which a person can access pornography today: pay for it in a store, view it on the Internet or TV, or access it through a friend.
If you live alone, you should consider getting a roommate to make it even more challenging to keep immoral material around.
It also may be necessary for you to forfeit your freedom to drive a car for a season. This sacrifice won’t end your life, but it will require some adjustments.
You might even need to find a new job or a different place to live so you can put your driving on hold indefinitely.
You may need to provide your bank passwords to someone who can monitor your transactions. If you do, you should agree to avoid cash withdrawals or to provide receipts for any cash purchases.
First, you can ask someone to put passwords on your computer, phone, or TV that will make it impossible for you to access the Internet or to view pornographic material without the code, which only your accountability partner or perhaps your spouse would know.
install accountability software on your computer and phone. This software is inexpensive, is available from many different sources, and either blocks objectionable websites or records your Internet activity and sends it to someone of your choosing. It’s best to use software that does both. You also should implement filtering and monitoring strategies for your router — not just for your individual devices.
The honest truth is that you don’t need any electronic device, but you do need to be holy.
Because many hotel televisions make immoral programming available without an additional fee, it may be necessary to have a maintenance worker remove the television from your room. They really will do this if you ask them. One man I counseled would text me a time-stamped picture of the television being removed from his room whenever he was out on the road.
And according to Jesus, both of these are far less painful than hell.
If you are stressing about these things, it’s because you are considering the seriousness of the strategy without considering the seriousness of the stakes.
No one removes a limb because it’s fun or handy. They do it because they realize they cannot keep the limb and live. It’s a life-and-death decision.
outward measures, regardless of how radical they are, can never change your heart. This is why it is critical to employ radical measures in your thought life first. You need more than a change in your circumstances to win the battle; you need a change in your heart. Frog and Toad tried putting the cookies far out of reach, but eventually they found a way to eat them, because no matter what they tried, they still wanted to eat the cookies.
radical measures give you space in which to grow. Change takes time. Old ways of living must die; new ways of living must form. New kinds of thinking must be learned. If you are enslaved to pornography, God will not usually change your desires instantly but by degrees (see 2 Corinthians 3:18). Radical measures allow the space and time needed for you to direct your attention toward Christ instead of porn.
employing radical measures gives you an opportunity to “produce fruit in keeping with repentance” (Matthew 3:8). As you learn to rely on God’s help to set you free, you will want the full-blown power of having new desires. As you press forward in growth, you can still experience some change before your new desires have fully formed. These external measures are the first steps of change, and even though they don’t automatically transform your internal desires, they are expressions of real change. You need the grace of Jesus to accomplish them. When you experience his grace to take these first,
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Tom admitted that he had spent a considerable amount of time looking at porn, but he stressed that he had quit almost a week ago. He knew what he had done was wrong, so he told another friend at church and downloaded accountability software onto his computer.
the Bible tells us that confession is the way we receive the promise of God’s mercy and blessing. This proverb teaches us that it is bad to cover up our sins and that it is good to confess them openly. Notice this is not in the form of a command — it’s a promise.
God’s Word graciously calls us to confess our sins because confessing is better than concealing. Like surgery, pain actually promotes healing. So the first and most obvious reason you should expose your sin of looking at pornography is that it is a mark of wisdom to seek the merciful blessings that come with uncovering sin.
One kind of mercy that comes with confession is the blessing of openness and restoration in relationship.
