Unwanted: How Sexual Brokenness Reveals Our Way to Healing

by Jay Stringer

Rather than fighting lust or shame, let your sexual brokenness motivate you to find greater meaning in life. If you want to fight, don’t fight to eliminate desire; fight to discover meaning.

This is pornography’s seduction to men: Bring me your weary and defeated heart, and I will give you a world where it will all go away. In the end, pornography confiscates not only your purpose but also your heart.

James 4 brings these together: Lust and anger are related.[6]

I have never met someone who struggles deeply with lust who is not also battling with unaddressed

anger.

If you want to see your unwanted sexual behavior transformed, name anger and lust as the partners in crime they are.

The six core experiences of deprivation, dissociation, unconscious arousal, futility, lust, and anger reveal the why behind your current unwanted sexual behavior.

Most often, our sexual lives are hijacked in three areas: futility is hijacked by resignation, lust is hijacked by perversion, and anger is hijacked by degradation.

Evil is never content with futility in one sphere of life; it wants to invade all of them, particularly the places that hold the greatest potential for beauty. I

There is always a victim, no matter how disguised: no victim, no pornography.”[6]

If you wish to stop your perversion, learn to listen to your lust.

Let me state unequivocally that I believe that pornography exists predominantly due to male violence against women.

Pornography exposes one of the tragic dimensions of the heart of a man: his violence.

UNWANTED SEXUAL BEHAVIOR is shaped not only by your personal story but also by our culture.

As Franciscan priest Richard Rohr said, “‘If you do not transform your pain, you will always

transmit it.’ Always someone else has to suffer because I don’t know how to suffer; that is what it comes down to.”[2]

“Pornography is pictures of prostitution.”[6]

We contrive these justifications to distance ourselves from the reality that we are using human beings to fill our emptiness (lust) and making them the surrogate objects of our hostility (perversion). Pornography is violence

against women, and the sex industry allows us to choose the level of degradation we can tolerate.

The most common themes I hear about are loneliness, frustration, futility, and boredom,

Healing is not about simply saying no; it is about saying yes to the good, the true, and the beautiful.

Sexual healing involves four dimensions: reclaiming your body, leaving sexual sin, forgiving yourself and others, and addressing curses and soul ties.

Psychologist and author Rollo May wrote, “Eros is the center of the vitality of a culture—its heart and soul. And when release of tension takes the place of creative eros, the downfall of the civilization is assured.”[3]

“We are born in relationship, we are wounded in relationship, and we can be healed in relationship.”

The first thing to remember in conflict is that it is not your responsibility to change the other person.

The fantasies within unwanted sexual behavior often reveal our inability to find what we want and need in reality.

Using anger to intimidate others is not strength; intimidation is bullying.

Melissa struggles with the other counterfeit version of strength: abdication

of power. When strength is distorted through anger or abdication, ...

skunk

If your hope is not moving your story into greater passion and comfort, your desire for freedom is too small.