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A pastor once said that only 5% of what a person is dealing with is in relation to the present. When dealing with porn or sexual addiction, this is crucial to understand.
The experiences you’ve had in life often form the present beliefs that you are operating out of. You may have had wonderful, godly parents, but that doesn’t necessarily make you immune to the dark cloud of negative thoughts. Even great parents are not perfect. In the mind of a child, even those small shortcomings can be significant. Add to that peers, siblings, extended family, or significant others, and they all play a role in triggering feelings of worthlessness, rejection, and low self-esteem.
Maybe someone told you, “You’re worthless,” “You will not amount to anything,” or “I wish you were never born.” Those hurtful words form scars that create low self-esteem. Or maybe you had a void in your life that was the result of a parent’s busyness, absence, or even death. Subconsciously, the enemy has used these things to tell you that you have little or no value.
Those scars are deep and have helped create the shame and low self-worth that you try to self-medicate with pornography. Because of your struggle with porn, you are filled with an even higher level of shame. It fuels an on-going cycle of destruction. And now you realize that your porn usage is not only negatively impacting your life, but is causing harm to your family, and your relationship with God.
As a result, you may have decided that you are not worthy of anybody’s respect, love, or help. But nothing could be farther from the truth.
You Are Not Worthless
The intense shame you feel because of your porn usage causes you to withdraw into your fictional world of pornography. In your isolation there, you don’t have to worry about the people in those images judging you or rejecting you like you think real people will.
But the events of your past or the porn viewing of your present do not define your worth and value as a creation of God.
Dr. Doug Weiss, a licensed psychologist and the founder of Heart to Heart Counseling Center, explained that many men in sexual sin feel that they don’t deserve to be loved by God or their wife. They think “I’m bad. If you really knew me, you wouldn’t love me.”
Dr. Weiss said,
“A lot of men believe that because the shame of sexual sin has gotten into their heart and infected it, and it no longer says, ‘I did bad,’ it now says ‘I am bad.’ When you believe you are bad, you’ll push love away, you’ll push help away, you won’t feel worthy of the blessings of God, and then you’ll act like you’re worthless.”
Unforgivable
You realize that viewing pornography is a sin because of the lust, adultery, and other improper sexual thoughts and actions involved. But pornography usage is not an ‘unforgivable’ sin, and it is not an ‘unconquerable’ sin.
According to author Carl Thomas,
“The problem is that we have been lied to and told that sexual sin is especially heinous and needs to be covered up. However, the truth is that sin loses its power when we expose it.”
He added, “Jesus did not die so we all can live in our own little prisons of brokenness and isolation. When he took on your sin he also took all the shame that comes with it.”
Romans 3:23 reminds us that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” You may struggle with porn, but everyone has sinned. And thanks to God’s eternal and amazing love for us and Jesus’ death on the cross and resurrection, we can have complete forgiveness of every one of our sins – past, present, and future.
Even A King Can Commit Sexual Sin
Of course, sexual sin did not come into existence when internet pornography started. In fact, the Bible has many stories that describe a wide assortment of sexual sin. They may not have had the internet back then, but Satan has been using sex to destroy lives and damage people’s relationships with God for centuries.
King David saw a woman bathing on a nearby rooftop and had her brought to him. After their affair, David had her husband killed in battle to cover up his sin. Yes, he actually followed up his sexual sin with murder.
So how did a king who had everything, including wealth and power, fall to sexual sin? In order to answer this question, we must first take a glimpse into his past.
Perceived Identity
King David is discussed in the Conquer Series, a small group study created to help men struggling with porn addiction. Dr. Ted Roberts, main host of the series and founder of Pure Desire Ministries, shared that David had a wounded heart.
The prophet Samuel was on a mission to anoint the future king of Israel. His journey led him to Jesse’s home, where he learned that the sons in attendance did not meet the criteria for the next king. When asked about any other sons, Jesse mentioned David – referring to him as a “HaKatan”. When translated, “HaKatan” means worthless one. This belief became deeply rooted within his soul, and became a driving force in the choices that he made – even the sinful ones.
If you think that surely there would be no way that God could forgive someone – especially a king – after such sin, you are wrong. The prophet Nathan confronted David, and “Then David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.” Nathan replied, “The Lord has taken away your sin” (2 Samuel 12:13).
And 1 John 1:9 tells us that “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
David made no excuses. He did not shift blame on to someone else, but instead confessed and repented of his sin. The most important thing to note is that God forgave him. He continued to use David to accomplish amazing things for God’s Kingdom and His people.
God Has Great Plans For You
Like David, your sexual sin does not disqualify you from receiving God’s grace and forgiveness. He will never stop loving you and has plans to use you to accomplish His will. He wants to see you walking in total freedom from pornography and your past.
God will also help you restore your marriage, family relationships, and all the other areas of your life that were damaged by your sexual sin. Philippians 1:6 says you can be “confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”
God is not done with you yet! You are never too far gone for God’s love. He will use your new porn-free life for His glory, and you will be a testimony to His miraculous power.
You Can Defeat Pornography
Maybe you have felt worthless or unable to be loved by God because of the negative things you have been told in your life. Perhaps you’ve turned to viewing pornography as a way to self-medicate your pain from those memories.
Article first appeared here. You can start your journey to a life free from porn as over one million men around the world have done. The Conquer Series is a 12-DVD cinematic resource that uses powerful testimonies, solid Biblical teaching, insightful scientific information, and military action scenes.
