Once you come to the point of admitting your sexual addiction, you then need to wrestle with and understand the story of how you have gotten to this place. Patterns of wrong behavior often point to a long history of a hurting and empty heart searching for life in all the wrong places (John 4:13-18).
Although this is no time for excuses, there are often painful relationships and events in your story that you need to explore with the help of others and God. Most men who are ensnared in the web of porn have learned to deny how much they’ve been hurt in life. Even if they do admit to taking some hits, they try to tell themselves that it was not a big deal. The truth is that getting hurt is part of living in a fallen world. And some of the wounds we suffer are often a much bigger deal than we let ourselves believe.
As you honestly reflect on the key moments of your story, name the actual hurts of your life that left you feeling confused and insecure. Write down what happened and how it affected you. Many men need to write out how being exposed to porn at a young age affected them. Others need to face and put on paper the disappointment of a busy dad who left them feeling unaffirmed or the sting of a shaming parent who made them feel like a loser.
Thinking through and writing out the shaping events in your own personal story will be difficult, but it will provide you the chance to start challenging the truthfulness of what you’ve believed about yourself. If, for example, you’ve been ignored or kicked in the teeth by others, it has probably left you feeling unsure about your own adequacy and strength. But with the help of your heavenly Father and the caring men in your life, you can explore the pain of your own story, confirm who you really are in Christ, and put words to your real strength and potential. Then you will be able to see your true worth as a man and begin to stop believing the untrue messages that held you down for so long.
Coming to see the truth will take time, but Jesus said that knowing the truth “will set you free” (John 8:32). That’s why the evil one wants no part of this. He fears that revisiting the painfully defining moments of your story will expose and free you from his lies. He also knows it offers you the opportunity to rebuild your faith in God.
Men who regularly seek out pornography are in a serious crisis of faith. They may put on a good front and appear to be content in their Christian life, but their secret struggle betrays how empty they feel and what they truly believe about God. As you think through your story, however, it also creates an honest context to challenge and wrestle with your unbelief.
Like Jacob, Gideon, or the prophet Jeremiah, there are times for you to openly struggle with God (Genesis 32:24-30; Judges 6:1-22; Jeremiah 20:7-12). Leveling with God about what you really think and feel about the heartaches of life can prepare you to see Him in a brand-new light. When you talk to God from your heart (and not just your head), you can start to hear His deeper voice of truth that will restore your faith in Him.
Though you may wrestle back and forth with God and still have lingering doubts, you can grow to be more certain that God really does offer a whole lot more than what you’ve found in the X-rated world. As you catch more of a vision of the life God wants to restore in you, you will start to believe that there really is good reason to stop searching for answers in the false world of pornography.
