2021
2020
An Open Letter to Those Debilitated by Their Sexual Sin
This article is part of the Open Letters series.
Dear friend,
What do you do when you are still struggling? What do you do when repeated failure, guilt, and shame weigh heavily on your conscience?
Let me begin with a story about a friend of mine. He had come to faith in Christ when he was in his late twenties. As they say, “He had history. He came with baggage.” I’ve never forgotten the way he described his life at the point when Jesus reached him. “If you divided my mental day into a thousand moments, nine hundred of those moments were immoral. I simply lived in a world of immoral images and desires and pursuits and behaviors.” His entire life was steeped in polyamorous, bisexual immorality.
Did his newfound faith immediately bring about a complete change? You know the answer: of course not. But his way of describing the process was particularly vivid. “It wasn’t as though I went from nine hundred immoral moments down to zero. But nine hundred went to seven hundred. And seven hundred became five hundred, and five hundred became two hundred, and so on. It was very hard to think that seven hundred out of a thousand meant progress! But it was. It was huge progress, and even though I was still failing, Christ was changing me.”
Jesus knows the kinds of people he has chosen to save.
He grew. Eventually, by the time I knew him, he was significantly changed—but still not perfect. And he lived with a daily awareness that, “I’m still vulnerable in the area of sexual temptations. I can never think I’m home free and will never struggle.” But he had entered into the long walk of discipleship, the patient, persistent obedience in the right direction, walking under the mercy of the Lord.
What sustained him for ups and downs of the long walk? I’ve never forgotten his words. “Early on I learned something that I’ve never forgotten. I had to presume that Christ loved me. Jesus knew the kind of person he had chosen to forgive and save. He who had begun a good work in me was committed to one day bring me to completion. I relied on the fact that his mercies for me truly are new every morning—I lived in that promise of Lamentations 3:22–24.” Christ’s love for him was the given on which his life depended. He could daily seek Christ’s mercies for what he needed that day: forgiveness from the Lamb, strength from the King, protection in the Refuge, guidance under the Shepherd’s hand.
Step by step by step by step he was moving toward the light. His long, hard fight was wrapped up in the mercy of Christ to him. It is the same for all of us, whatever our particular struggle—sexual immorality, anger and bitterness, fears, addictions, self-righteousness. Jesus knows the kinds of people he has chosen to save. We can seek him, and we will find him true and good for the long haul. My friend was honest, no secrets before God. He was honest to confess where and when he struggled. He was honest with friends, who helped him to seek and find the God who promises many mercies. He was honest in asking help from other people: accountability and prayer, counsel and conversation with brothers. He rebuilt a life that had good in it. He learned to treat both men and women as holy brothers and sisters, rather than as sexual objects.
Here’s an old metaphor about how a Christian fights against darkness. Envision your mind as a room. When sin reigns, that room is filled with dark thoughts, dark actions, and deceptive people who mean you no good. So how do you get darkness out of the room? There are two ways that you fight. First, you stand up to the darkness, expelling it from the room, learning to directly say no to evil. And second, you fight the darkness by filling the room with light. There’s no room for the darkness when the room is filled with worthy actions, true thoughts, and constructive people. When Christ enters the room, he is patiently committed to teach us to say no to what is wrong and yes to what is merciful and good. My friend began to care for other people, rather than using them as objects of his lust.
One of the actions that proved most helpful to him was getting involved in discipline teenage boys. (Pedophilia was not one of the sins he had indulged in.) They were entering adolescence and puberty in a hypersexualized world. At the same age that evil had trapped him, he could help to protect them from going down a self-destructive path. Serving others in need also helped him by filling the room with light so there was less room for darkness. In a sense, they were helping him as much as he was helping them.
Christ comes with mercy for people who know their sins. His mercy leads to doing simple things that consistently head in the right direction. Do you feel discouraged and defeated by your struggle? Don’t let anyone kid you that there’s some magic answer and somehow you missed it. There are no magic answers. But a Person full of light is willing to walk with you in the direction of the light. He is willing to walk with you the whole way home.
—David
David Powlison (1949–2019) was a teacher, a counselor, and the executive director of the Christian Counseling & Educational Foundation. He received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania and was also the senior editor of the Journal of Biblical Counseling. He wrote a number of books, including How Does Sanctification Work?; Making All Things New; and God’s Grace in Your Suffering.
2020
Encouragement!
Hello Daniel I hope this finds you doing well!
Thank you so much for thinking of me, I wanted to write an email of encouragement for you and your guys.
The first thing I want to say is well done! Getting into a group of honest men, all focused on overcoming the things of the past and becoming a victor not a victim!
Having a community is so important and surrounding yourself with like minded people brings about the accountability and encouragement you need to overcome.
Pursuing Jesus above all is the greatest honor I have ever had in my life, it has given me peace, given me strength and brought clarity to my life when i was confused, lost and without identity.
You see I was exposed to pornography at the age of 6 years old and from that moment it planted a seed in me that would hold me in bondage for another 20 years.
It intensified throughout highschool and into college and trickled over into post college. It became my crutch to feeling something and escaping from reality. It had my mind consumed and my body having complete control over me.
It wasn’t until I rededicated my life to Jesus, that I started to have clarity in who I was, how valuable women are, and how freedom truly felt and how bondage can be lifted in an instant.
I can tell you that after I rededicated my life to Jesus the temptation went away. And I can stand here today being porn free and having peace and freedom only Jesus can give.
I decided at that moment that I was going to choose to pursue Jesus over everything else and learning that God didn’t create us for our bodies to control us. He created us so that we can control our bodies.
You see I used to feel helpless and entrapped in my habits and emotions. I believed the lie that what my body feels is truth and i am only following what is true.
But as the Lord has shown me and by the power of his Holy Spirit I have learned that I am more than a conqueror and the peace of God which surpasses all human understanding will guard my HEART and MIND.
When I allow God to be the center of my heart he protects me, he leads me and he restores me. This is available to every human being on earth.
God is no respecter of persons and he wishes no one to perish but all to come to the knowledge of the truth.
So wherever you are today, know this, when you CHOOSE to follow Jesus he will always lead you to the freedom only his children have access too.
No matter how you are feeling right now, what you have struggled with or are continuing to struggle with Jesus is right there willing to step in for you.
Repent of that action, put on the full armour of God and walk in the authority Jesus died on the cross for.
We have the greatest helper on this earth, the Holy Spirit. He will guide you, he will convict you and he will help you overcome.
The future of your family depends on it, the future of your freedom depends on it and your testimony to help lead others to freedom requires it.
Stand tall, fight for yourself and know the God of the universe is walking with you!
WHOM THE SON SETS FREE IS FREE INDEED
Josh
2020
An Open Letter to Those Nonchalant about Their Sexual Sin
Dear friend,
Sex is like fire. When it blazes in the fireplace, a good fire warms and brightens the room, enhancing joy and companionship. But when fires ignite in the wrong places, the house burns down. Is your sexuality igniting in the wrong places? Are you treating sexual sin casually? How do you know when this has happened? Let me offer a few tests that can rouse your conscience.
- Is what you are doing simply wrong? The outright evils of sexual immorality are not hard to identify. Our culture makes the water very muddy, and preaches the doctrine that dirty water is good to drink. But the line between love and lust is clear. We are to treat other human beings in a familial way. You don’t ever sexualize a person whom you are called to treat as your brother or sister, your mother or father, your son or daughter. Sexuality is reserved for marriage. You are to protect other people, not lust after them. Consensual immorality is still immorality.
- Are you captivated by sex? One sure tip-off is that you are preoccupied. When something takes up too much airtime in your mind, when you’re driven, when you must do it, you just do it, you can’t help doing it, you can’t not do it, you’ve got a problem. Whenever sex becomes obsessive, impulsive, or compulsive, it’s going astray.
- Do you hide what you are doing? Hiding what you are doing and the time you spend doing it is another clear tip-off. Wrong doesn’t love the light (unless it’s become shameless and brazen). We hide when we know something is wrong. When you create a secret garden of any sort in your life, mutant things inevitably grow. So we hide from the eyes of others, from the eyes of our own conscience, from God’s eyes.
- Do you use sex as a refuge? Boredom, stress, loneliness, and pain tempt us to look for an escape. Do you try to flee discomfort or mask pain? We are meant to look pain in the eye, to grasp the experience, to bring it in hand to our God, to cry out for help, to find refuge, and then to do what can be done constructively, however seemingly small our powers.
If you are being nonchalant about your sexual sin, I hope that my list arouses a proper sense of unease. Fires are burning outside the fireplace. Is something not right with your sexual behavior? You are a child of light—don’t walk in darkness! God’s point of view is good, right, and true. He beckons you. Walk as a child of light—for the fruit of light is found in all that is good, right, and true. The God who invites us into what is good also warns us off what is bad. You may be sure of this: everyone who is sexually immoral has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Don’t let anyone deceive you with empty words. Because of these things, the wrath of God comes on the disobedient. That’s the gist of Ephesians 5:5–9:
For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous (that is, an idolater), has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. Therefore do not become partners with them; for at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light (for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true).
By the mercy of Christ, you will live a brighter, more loving, and more fruitful life.
Take it to heart. Don’t let peer pressure or the culture deceive you. By the mercy of Christ, you will live a brighter, more loving, and more fruitful life.
How do you change? There are many facets of that big question, but I will point to four. First, the starting point for change is to say, “What I am doing is wrong.” That acknowledgement gets you pointed in the right direction.
But God doesn’t just tell you to shape up. The second step is to realize “I need mercies from my Father. I need him to love me and forgive me. I need his strength and forgiveness.” Recognizing wrong leads to awareness that you need something that only God can give you—something he freely gives. He gives himself in Jesus Christ.
The third step in changing is to act on this. The Lord calls you to seek him, to find him, and from him to receive what you most need. Psalm 25:11 brings this to life:
For your name’s sake, O LORD,
pardon my guilt, for it is great.
Cast yourself on the care of your Father. Find grace and help from outside yourself. Seek, and you will find the mercy you need.
The fourth step is not really a step, it’s a lifestyle. It’s learning to walk out what those “good, right, and true” things look like. This has many different aspects that work out in our lives at different times. Choose to spend time with different companions. Put filtering software on your screens. Set up real accountability with someone you trust. Make the kind of lifestyle changes that get you out of the path of where you’ve gotten yourself into trouble. Jesus uses a vivid picture of how to deal with our own evil. If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off; if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out. He shocks us into a radical amputation of evil. And, of course, none of these battles are one-and-done. God intends to work in you a committed resolve to take seriously what’s wrong, to need him, to pursue what’s right. It’s an ongoing fight.
Here is one of the most helpful things I heard early in my Christian life. Think of your soul as a room. When you’re in sin, that room is full of dark forces, dark people, and darkness. There are two ways you get rid of darkness in your soul. One way is to cast it out, fight it, resist and reject it. The other way is to fill the room with light. As your life fills with better people, better things to do, and more reasons to live in the light, then there’s less room for the darkness.
Jesus Christ gives a beautiful call. He invites you to live a radical life. He challenges people who think that it’s okay to do wrong. He challenges people who think they have moved past outmoded cultural values. He challenges people who think that current cultural assumptions are good, right, and true. Don’t go along with the crowd. Don’t drift with the culture. Do what Flannery O’Connor said we should do: “Push back against the age as hard as it pushes against you.” Live out in the daylight, not in the shadows and darkness.
Finding the mercies of Christ and learning to walk in his light is courageous. It has an impact on people around you. You demonstrate the Lord. That’s bigger than any one of us individually. In a world where the light is going out on sexual rights and wrongs, you have an opportunity to turn on the lights.
—David
2019
Living in Freedom from Addiction
Posted November 22, 2019 by Austin Fruits from Josh McDowell Ministries. www.josh.org Used with permission
In the midst of addiction, our hope for freedom can be clouded by a loss of control, depression, and isolation. From personal experience, the light at the end of the tunnel becomes more and more dim as failure and shame build. While trapped in my addiction to pornography, I thought for years that freedom was unattainable.
My pride and desire for control lead me to think that I could fix myself. The harsh reality was that I couldn’t. But I sit here today, in this moment, with a new level of health and freedom. How did I finally get here?
“Freedom is not having the ability to do what you want to do, freedom is having the ability to do what you ought to do.” – Josh McDowell
Identifying Freedom
First of all, let’s define “freedom,” specific to addiction. About a year and a half ago, when asked to define freedom by a few of the staff here at Josh McDowell Ministry, I thought a moment and replied, “Freedom is not struggling with temptation or sin.”
At the time, I really thought that was the goal I was supposed to be aiming for. It was certainly my personal goal in the first few months of my recovery. But I have come to realize that it’s not the right goal or definition, because it’s completely unrealistic.
Back then I expected that there would be a moment in my recovery where I would experience complete freedom — which would last the rest of my life. I thought freedom meant I would no longer struggle with lust, experience the temptation of sexual sin, or have to deal with the consequences of my sin. Now I understand that complete freedom isn’t possible here on earth, because of our inherent sinful nature. We still sin.
Justification
From my mindset of not struggling, I defined freedom through the lens of justification. Justification is a big theological term that means “to be declared righteous, or to be made right with God.”
5:18-19 tells us what Christ did for us: “Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for fall men. For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.”
When Christ died on the cross, He took our sins upon himself. In His resurrection, He conquered that sin. Because of His gift of grace, we believers are justified, or declared righteous, when we surrender our lives to Him. Christ paid the price that we could never pay; we are fully forgiven, if we choose to accept it.
Sanctification
I think a much better definition of freedom is found in terms of sanctification. To be sanctified is “to be brought into the presence of God and to share in the life of His Son through the Holy Spirit.” That sounds intimidating, so let me break it down.
You and I have been brought into God’s presence by Christ’s death and resurrection on the cross. This is called adoption. With this adoption, we gain the gift of the Holy Spirit working in our lives. The Holy Spirit helps us in many ways, including convicting us and leading us toward repentance. When we repent and turn away from our sin, we become more like Christ. So sanctification is our growth toward a life that imitates Christ; a life of holiness.
In the same way, finding freedom is growth toward health. We find freedom in health. 1 Thessalonians 5:23 says, “Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Full freedom isn’t possible because of our sinful nature, but we can gain health.
If we look at Josh’s definition — that “freedom is having the ability to do what you ought to do” — we get a better grasp of how to view freedom. If we are free to do what we ought to do, we remove the barriers that keep us from doing what we ought to do.
Freedom, or health, looks a lot like being connected to the life of God.
Restoration
Christian counselor Michael Dye created an addiction recovery tool called the FASTER Scale. The scale identifies the stages people move through toward relapse, so they can see it coming and get proactive. The FASTER acronym stands for Forgetting Priorities, Anxiety, Speeding Up, Ticked Off, Exhausted, and Relapse.
The FASTER Scale focuses on restoration (accepting life on God’s terms, with trust, vulnerability, and gratitude). If we live in restoration, we live lives saturated with healthy relationships, vulnerability, intimacy, identifying and dealing with emotions, walking with the Spirit, and working through pain. These aspects create health, which produces freedom.
This freedom is based on connection with God and other people. No matter our state of health, we still experience temptation and sin. But if we are living in restoration and connection, our connectedness provides healthy ways of dealing with them.
Often, to gain health or freedom, we must go to what hurt us in the first place: people. We learn to cope as people closest to us hurt us. But this woundedness creates isolation and barriers that keep us from living in intimate connection with God and others. To break down those barriers and return to health, we must learn to trust others and experience the intimacy that God intends us to enjoy.
Can we really gain freedom and health? Yes!
Walking in Freedom
I have been finding freedom and health for the past two years. It is unbelievably fulfilling to walk in health, because it is how God created me to experience life. Has it been hard to find health? Yes, but incredibly worth it.
I found health primarily by returning to my identity in Christ. I had to identify the root of the problem — my belief that I was not enough — and to experience my worth in Christ. I have had to process the pain in my past, and experience who I am in Christ through relationships with others. I have learned how to trust others with my fears.
Freedom is found when we live in health. It is characterized by vulnerability, connected relationships, intimacy, walking with the spirit, identifying and dealing with emotions, working through pain, and experiencing our worth in Christ.
Freedom is returning to our identity in Christ. Freedom is being less bound to the sins that entrap us. It is not always constant; it fluctuates day-to-day as we walk with others and navigate our sin-soaked world. We won’t find full freedom from sin here on earth, but we can find freedom from addiction. This is the hope that I and other addicts have, that freedom and health are possible. Here. Now.
Christ came to redeem, and we cannot forget that. No matter the struggle, we have worth in and to Christ.
Your road to health may be hard, but take my word for it: your experiencing intimacy with the Lord and others, and being who you were created to be, will satisfy your soul. It has mine. That is God’s design. That is freedom.
Want to learn more?
- Need a Josh McDowell Ministry speaker at your church? Ben Bennett speaks on living free.
- Josh has compiled decades of research here: The Porn Epidemic.
- Join the Resolution!