It seems everywhere I look and listen lately I hear stories of men and women living in painful addictions to lust. Be it porn, infidelity, sexual abuse, anger, same sex attractions, fantasies or even seeking to up their value as a person through non-sexual intimate relationships.  Be there, done that, still dealing with on some levels and definitely dealing with the consequences of my choices.  Just a few examples:

• The Daily Audio Bible plays phone calls of people asking for prayer requests from the community.  At least 3 different men have called in over the past few weeks to share of their struggles with pornography & masturbation (see #lust).
• This article in Today’s Christian Woman on women sharing their stories of internet porn addiction (#lust)
• I could go on and on, but I’m sure you’ve heard them too.

I’m sorry to say that there is not a magical set of principals that you can follow that will fix this addiction. Sure you can put an internet filter and accountability software on all the computers you use (I definitely recommend this. You can find more information on the “Content Filters” section of this site), you can meet regularly with an accountability partner (assuming you’re gonna drop your pride, take a real risk and be really honest with what’s going on in you), read a book, go to sites like xxxChurch, read blogs and promise yourself you will never do it again.  These are all really good things!   You will most likely have some success, even “sobriety” for a time.  But it will not last.

Why?   Why don’t these strategies work long term?  Everything mentioned to this point are behavioral, they don’t attack the real problem in our hearts in our wounds.  We all have issues (problems, ways of looking at the world, etc) that have brought us to this point and have led us to be a lustful person rather than a loving person.  You must have been wondering earlier why the “#lust” tag on the end of statements.  Because lust isn’t just a thing that we do, it’s a way we begin to see our world, that leads us to our choices.

I want real freedom, if you are reading this, I assume you are looking for a way out . . . a way to freedom.  To find that way we need to take off the glasses we have used to perceive the world (#lust, #wounds, #issues), so we can begin to see what the Creator really meant when He created us and, in that, begin to see the path to freedom.

“Where are the resources?” you may ask and you are correct to do so – but it isn’t as simple as a few (or even a hundred) things you can read, listen to or meditate on.   In my next installment I will begin to share some of the resources that have helped me in my struggles to take off the glasses I’ve built and some of the pitfalls I’ve experienced along the way.