If You Can, Then You Will

Every Monday we’ll post something to do with maintaining sexual purity. Hope it helps.

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The following is an excerpt from my new book “Five Steps to Breaking Free from Porn.” (Harvest House 2013)

If that’s been an issue to you, you’ll find the link to the book at the end of this post.

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If You Can, Then You Will

“If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell.” (Matthew 5:29-30)

Never underestimate the power of the familiar. Therein lies much of a habit’s strength: its familiarity. There are probably scores of things you do daily out of habit without even realizing it –the way you brush your teeth, the times of day you drink your coffee, whatever you do to soothe yourself when you’re nervous or bored.   We were all created with a capacity to adopt an array of routine behaviors, for better or worse.

So it is with lust, one of the most formidable of all habits, and one I’ll bet you developed early in life. As boys, when we discover the rush we get when viewing a sexually attractive image, we find the warm security blanket of lust. It wraps around us, and we heat up from head to toe while chemicals rage and blood rushes, drawing us into a private, powerful pleasure, one that’s usually discovered in the pre-teen years. Then, when puberty kicks in and we discover masturbation, the combination of mental images (fantasies, memories) or visual ones (porn, attractive women, suggestive pictures delivered via television or magazine covers) plus self-stimulation, creates a potent, unforgettable cocktail. And any unforgettably potent experience is, by its nature, one you’ll want to repeat. Often.

Aggravating the problem is the general approval our culture stamps onto lust. Think about it: how many products are marketed through erotic images? How many attractive bodies draped in bikinis or Speedos are utilized to promote beer, cars, CD players, whatever? How many songs did we grow up on, extolling the “normalness” of fueling sexual arousal by looking at someone attractive? How many “Atta-boys” did we get in the locker room when verbalizing our desire for a certain young beauty? Lust not only comes naturally; it comes with applause. Small wonder, then, so many men are absorbed by it, sometimes secretly; often openly. (Note the commonness of body shops operating with a topless centerfold overseeing the proceedings.) It’s hard enough wrestling with a problem; harder still when your culture tells you it’s not a problem at all.

So if you wrestle with porn, you wrestle with a strong habit, easily accessed, delivering potent impact, openly approved of and shared by millions. No wonder you’re struggling!

Now let’s look for a moment at what exactly it is you’re struggling against, in Biblical terms.

A number of Hebrew and Greek words have been translated into the English term “lust” in our Old and New Testaments, but the one most applicable to our subject is found in Proverbs 6:25 when, referring to the wanton woman, the author warns “Do not lust after her beauty in your heart, nor let her allure you with her eyelids” (Proverbs 6:25).

The Hebrew word cited here is chamad, meaning to “desire covetously with delight.” The corresponding Greek word Jesus used in the Sermon on the Mount, when he described lust as a form of sexual sin whether or not it’s acted on, is epithymeo, the most frequently used Greek term in New Testament referring to lust. Epithymeo, similar to the Hebrew chamad, mans to “covet what is forbidden.”

So to sexually lust is to want, and dwell on, what’s not rightfully yours. If you’re married, your desire for your wife hardly qualifies as lust, since a sexual union with her is rightfully yours to enjoy. But to sexually covet someone outside of marriage is to violate created intent. It’s a pleasurable violation, certainly, delivering high impact, but a violation nonetheless.

And here’s the rub: If you’ve developed the habit of entertaining that violation through porn use, then you’ve trained your body – brain, pleasure receptors and genitals – to expect the high impact porn delivers. That expectation becomes a literal craving, and your ability to resist it has been weakened each time you gave in to it. Weakened to the point, in fact, that so long as the stuff is available to you, you’ll use it despite your best intentions and most fervent promises to God, your wife, yourself. That is the power of the familiar, a power you’ve no doubt proven time and again.

So Jesus, spot on and wise as ever, didn’t say, “If your hand offends you, try to reform it. Or pray for it. Or send it to therapy to see why it offends you.” Rather, He plainly advised, “cut it off.” Meaning whatever sin you’ve gotten accustomed to, you should have no confidence in your ability to say “no” to it. Instead, distance yourself from it as much as possible, and remove your ability to indulge it.

That’s the first principle I want you to face: If you can, then you will. If you’re serious about stopping your porn use, you’ve got to distance yourself, as much as possible, from the porn itself. If you’re not ready to do that, you’re not ready to stop.

This book is now available in Kindle and in print forms. To order a copy, click here:

http://harvesthousepublishers.com/book/five-steps-to-breaking-free-from-porn-2013/