My parents were nominal Christians who took me to church every Sunday. Attending church was just a ritual for me until God really saved me and I started volunteering for my church’s young adults group. As I got more active in church and more serious about my faith, girls started taking notice of me, even some whom I had a secret crush on. But, God had called me to be a missionary by then, and I left my hometown without the blessing of my parents, because as a missionary, I would be shaming my parents by “begging for money”.
I was lonely and alone, full of shame, believing that my choice to be a missionary was the choice to be a beggar. I therefore could no longer support a family and thus disqualified myself from marriage. Porn wasn’t just an addiction to me by then; it was a fantasy, an outlet, a coping mechanism to medicate the pain of rejection in me. And I was still shy, too shy to ask a girl out, and whenever I mustered the courage to do so, I got rejected out of hand, which reinforced my identity-based lies. Porn became a refuge - the fantasies never rejected me.
But a porn addiction is a career-ending disclosure for a man in ministry, so I never disclosed. My mission agency never asked either. My coping mechanism was to work long hours so that I would be too exhausted to be tempted. That worked, sort of, until furlough. Then I would have down times, be reminded of my loneliness, and inevitably fall as the internet made my porn addiction easy to feed and easy to hide. Self-control, even for a missionary, can only get you so far.
How I Got Freedom
My salvation came, from all places, my wife’s gang rape when she was a teenager. Not only was it traumatic for her in recalling that memory, but it caused secondary trauma in me. We sought counseling and researched many counseling models, both secular and Christian to find healing. We used our theological training to categorize and compare healing methods, consulted with several experts in healing, and the culmination of our research is this website.
What we found common to secular and Christian integrative models of counseling is that they de-emphasize sin and find the solution in working harder or better to overcome your problems. That didn’t work for me; I inevitably ran out of self-control, and those healing models set me up for failure as I got in a cycle of sinning, feeling guilty about it, resolving to not do it again, and then falling again and repeating the cycle.
Inner healing ministry approaches worked, but only partially. I studied several of them for commonalities to understand why they worked, and found that it was simply the gospel: the problem is sin because it separates you from the Father, the solution is in Christ alone, and the only counselor who can really change you is the Holy Spirit. If you repent of your sin, forgive others as Christ forgave you, and ask God to deliver you from the effects of sin, you will be saved.
I always believed that, but only for my future salvation and not my present reality. It never occurred to me that God could save me from my present addiction to pornography through the gospel rather than through self-effort. My path to freedom only took an hour of prayer once God corrected my theology. I just simply asked God for a story of porn, and then repented of it. Then I asked for the next story of sexual sin, and repented of that too until God said I was clear. We call this process the Story Method.
The breakthrough in this process came when God reminded me of finding my father’s magazine collection by accident. That initial exposure to porn required a deeper level of healing, so I repented in front of my wife and asked her forgiveness for all the times I looked at another woman in lust. She forgave me as we realized that my initial exposure was not even fully my own fault, and when God removed the root trauma in me, I no longer was addicted to porn.
I have never looked at porn again because God took away my desire for it and healed the deep sense of loneliness and shame in me. Instead, I find completion in Him, and enjoy a deep level of friendship and companionship with my wife where I have forgiven her of her sins and she of mine, even to the point where our marriage is healed of her gang rape. It took a while to verify that I was really free from it, because I could successfully resist the temptation for weeks or even months at a time, especially if I kept myself busy. However, I know this time is different because porn no longer tempts me; I suppose I could force myself to look at it and be hooked again, but I have no desire to do that. God delivered me from a decade-long addiction to porn in only one hour of prayer by simply practicing the gospel, and living free of it is now effortless for me and for others who have followed a similar process.
Take-aways
The start of an addiction is not always your fault
Every addiction starts with an initial exposure, and that exposure may not be your fault.
You’re not cured until you’re healed from the desire to sin
The initial exposure awakened or revealed an evil desire in you. Ask God to kill it before it kills you.
Working harder does not work
Salvation is by grace, not by works. When God kills your desire to sin through His power, not yours, you won’t sin anymore.
Wait two years before testifying
You know you’re cured when you’ve gone two years without a relapse. Fruit takes time. Your testimony is worth waiting for.
Further Reading
The Story Method flowchart shows how you can be freed from the desire to sin through the Intercessory and Personal Prayers. We base our repeatable experience of complete freedom in Christ on the foundational theology of sanctification by grace rather than works. Read How Do I Stop Sinning and Healing Methods Overview for an in-depth discussion of why and how these healing methods work, and how they differ from other methods that rely on willpower to succeed.