Sin nature

[dre91]

Since about 15 i have been dealing with an issue thats centered around pornography. I have tried to stop watching it. The longest i have went without watching porn is a week. It has and is causing problems in my marriage. The only way i have access to the internet is my cell phone. I use it to study rays material and i have used it to see pornagraphy. I have tried to stop but when i do it feels like im going through withdrawals like a drug addict. When i go online it feels like i can hear it calling me. I know that sounds strange but its the truth. Honestly sometimes i want to stop and sometimes i dont. These last couple of days have been hard because i feel like quiting in my faith because i know i disappoint God. I feel like giving up and throwing in the towel.

[Roy Coates]

Rom 2:4  Do you have contempt for God, who is very kind to you, puts up with you, and deals patiently with you? Don't you realize that it is God's kindness that is trying to lead you to him and change the way you think and act?

Pray, without ceasing to the Lord Jesus Christ for repentence. It aint easy watching porn while your praying to the creator of the universe. His will, will be done. I am praying for your strength, peace, healing and comfort.

[arion]

Php 2:13  For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.

There are no easy answers here Dre.  In the old days I would of given you a lot of advice but that advice hasn't helped me in my journey.  You can't overcome the flesh with simple willpower or trying harder.  I had a similar stumbling block which was very strong and plagued me for years.  Started about the same time that yours did and it really until I was in my 40's that I started to get a measure of lasting victory over it.  And I think that part of it is that the testosterone levels go down as you get older.  Some things you just have to walk through....there is no easy way through it.  Nothing you are going through has taken God by surprise and indeed He is the one who has determined that you must suffer through this.  God has allowed you to build a house of sand and it must collapse as it has/will for every one of us.  God knows what it takes to get us to come to the end of ourselves.  Once we get to the point where we realize that we are in a spiritual prison and only Christ holds the keys then it sets up the process for our deliverance in God's timing and not ours.  Stay plugged in here.  Keep reading the teachings here and try to stay in the word.  And know that nothing has overtaken you except what is common to man. 

[GinaMilan]

Wow, Dre91, that could not have been easy for you to do.  God Bless you for your honesty.  It just so happens that I ran across the testimony of a woman named Shelley Lubben who was a former porn star and I was FLOORED.  

I don't know why I found the testimony or what I was googling at the time (I think a documentary on ibogaine), but I found it and I watched her testimony she gave at a church in Georgia, and whereas before I looked down on porn actresses, I cried when I watched it.

I had no idea what these people actually go through or have been through.  It is so sad.  She was molested at the tender age of 9 by a boy and his sister, and as she puts it, her childhood got hijacked and it ruined her life.  

Her mother, the daughter of a Pentacostal preacher, was not a very compassionate woman and "LOVED to nag."  So Shelley, too afraid to tell anyone about the molestation, bottled it up, but it reared its ugly head in the days and  months and years to come.

Long story short, she ended up getting kicked out of her house because she was acting out sexually and doing drugs, and wound up on the streets in the porn capital of the world -- the San Fernando Valley, and was propositioned.  

To escape the threat of being killed or put behind bars, she accepted an offer to make porn.  And, dre, lemme tell ya, they're ain't nothin' glamorous about porn.  

I'm not going to get too graphic for the sake of the others here, but the things that she was asked to do and at other times, FORCED to do on the sets caused her to become a meth addict and an alcoholic just so she could GET THROUGH A SCENE.

Welp, she ended up getting burned and she caught genital herpes.  (See, you all don't see all this because when they have a breakout or catch and STD, they take their eight-day "vacation." )

She caught so many sexually transmitted diseases on the set that her reproductive system is totally messed up.  Pornographers don't enforce the Cal-OSHA requirement to use condoms.  So, she ended up having to have 1/2 of her cervix removed due to cervical cancer.  

She describes how porn totally humiliates and degrades woman (and the men, too).  They ACT like they love it, but she knows it's all an act.  

She says, it's IMPOSSIBLE for a woman to enjoy making porn because of what actually goes on the set.  The director "Yells 'cut! freeze! stay in position!' with FIVE OR SIX male performers inside of you, while you're staring at a pile of dirty rags off if some corner filled with feces, blood and bodily fluids...."  Okay?

These people do not enjoy what they're doing.  Can you believe it?

In fact, Shelley says "WE HATE MEN."

Now, she's got a fantastic marriage right now and obviously out of porn, and she's testified before the State Capital here in California to get Cal-OSHA to enforce the law that's already on the books that says the porn stars/actresses must use condoms.  (The effects of that are twofold in my opinion.  It will hopefully detract from the viewers' experience, and will protect the performers from many sexually-transmitted diseases.)  Why don't they just stop doing it if they don't like it?  Good question!  And the answer is very plain and simple:  They are trapped by their own lust for money and clothes and fancy cars and the money feeds their heroin and meth addictions in many cases,  and so they'd find it next to impossible, without a good support system already in place, to be able to leave the industry, even if they wanted to.  It was LAPD who contacted her to testify before the State Capital, and so she gathered lots of hard (no pun intended) solid evidence and went to Sacramento and she convinced them to enforce the Cal-OSHA requirement that all porn actors and actresses must now use condoms.  I personally don't see it ever actually happening, but I don't know).  

Dre, you probably didn't know it but you're watching drugged addicted, mentally and emotionally abused women, and men, who in many cases have a sexually-transmitted disease, engaging in sex acts that are so hard on a their bodies and emotions that many of them commit suicide.

Did you know that the suicide rate in the porn industry is extremely high?  The music industry comes in at second in suicides.  

I don't tell you any of this to shame you, but to enlighten you in the hope that you will not continue to contribute to the degradation and humiliation of women (and men) who are, as Shelley states it matter of factly -- nothing more than slaves and prostitutes.  And as a doctor said on Tyra Banks -- many of these women will be in diapers (diapers) by the time they're 30 if they don't stop doing what they're doing to their bodies.

There are men on Shelley's website that are also porn addicts and they struggle with the addiction like you do and I feel so sorry for them.  They also say it's like a drug.  But there are many men there who've been able to, by God's grace and mercy,  break their addiction, and they are so relieved!  Marriages have been healed, men's sexual desire for their wives have been restored.  Many of them have lost their jobs because of their addiction.

Oh, Dre, I apologize for the length of this reply.  I didn't mean to talk you to death.  I hope this has helped you.  

Shelley Lubben is a mainstream Christian, but she'll also be the first to tell you she's not perfect.  Her testimony just blew me AWAY.  I used to totally look down on prostitutes and pornographers, but now that the veil has been lifted, I see them in a totally different light and I feel so sorry for them.

It's good to know these things are going on in porn because these are mostly women who have been mistreated in their childhood and / or were fatherless and lacked proper supervision and they lost their way and they turned to prostitution.  But they do NOT like it.  Shelley says, "Oh, they'll tell you they like porn, but they're lying.  I don't know ANY porn actress (prostitute) who isn't a BLATANT LIAR, and I've met probably thousands of them by now."  So add "blatant liar" to the list of items above.

She's helped many women and a few men exit the adult industry.  I thank God for that.  I have two daughters and the thought of either one of them being treated like that and abused and choked and spit on and that other stuff that goes on in porn just turns my stomach.

Shelley's really compassionate, but she doesn't pull any punches. She tells it like it is and has many witnesses to back up everything she says.    

God bless you, Dre.  I believe your prayers are going to be answered.   Thank you for opening up and I pray I didn't embarrass you.  Maybe my reply will help others who are struggling too.  It's a sin like the others that needs to be repented.  I certainly am not perfect, and I'll be the first to admit it.

Thank you for reading.

p.s.  There are internet filters and blockers out on the market, so maybe consider getting one for yourself?

Update: I need to say that I realize that except for a few minor changes I could be in your place Dre, or in the place of a porn actress.  I have a few addictions myself.  But God is very merciful and has been causing me to repent, in stages.  Your addiction might not go away overnight, but then again maybe it will.  I just wanted to say that I realize that I am no better than you or anyone on this forum.

[Deborah-Leigh]

I appreciate the seriously sober mature and sensitive response and information through Gina, Arion, Roy and those aching and praying for you in the invisible, silent and holy margins of this Forum.

ANY addiction is a condition and circumstance caused by God for the purpose of creating by direct experience, the knowledge of evil. We have to ALL come to the knowledge of good and evil not by an academic familiarity, but, by real life contact to personal experience.

There is NO ONE who has not experienced evil.

There is only One who has not sinned and we can thank God all the time, for that One who is His Son God. God the Father sent to us His Son. We'd be lost, hopeless, depraved victims without Him if God had not sent Him to us to finish and complete His Work of Grace and Love in us that finally will be consumated in ALL that God may be All in ALL.

The human condition that is incomprehensibly weak, is the cradle in which the miraculous work of God's immensely powerful Spirit is performed. God is doing, performing, creating and making a work of cosmic proportions! We only see the tip of God's pen meeting the paper of our flesh as God authors despair, humility, suffering, heart ache, entrapment and horror to our circumstances. Life is about suffering but don't make it about suffering. We are all part of being unwillingly bound to vanity.

There is HOPE also in the consequence of having been caused to experience the natural and then the spiritual which is the methodology of our marvelous God and Father who is long-suffering to bring us out of darkness into His spectacular light.

To encounter and experience the dominion of sin over us, is not a walk in the park or a Champagne sparkle of bubbles without horrific consequences.  For those of us who have drank out of this cup of abominations and evil experience who are older perhaps, or have been through what anyone is experiencing in being bound to repetitive sinning,  it strikes a deep cord of pain and gratitude for deliverance from that sin that no longer has dominion that only God can bring to us. God is not lax or tardy to perform His miracle of deliverance and healing in the time appointed and the order He elects for His work to be consummated in us. God consummates His work in us through spiritual fire.  God is a consuming fire purging out the imperfections and blights, blemishes and tarnished acidic corrosions of our hearts and souls.

As Jesus also is not unsympathetic or removed from our experiences of infirmity and liability to sin, we can testify to the fact that sin will not prevail. Even with  deliverance and for those who know by experience what you are suffering and may have been released from the dominion of the suffering you feel, we still feel the pain in others fresh to the experience of horror and agony of suffering imperfection not willingly but by cause of God. This is like the pain a Father has for the suffering of his child. We feel it. It is a different kind of pain wrought in human grief and despair. Love not vanity is the bond of our Hope for relief in your release out of the hold of dominions of sin. Life is about Love, make it about God. Everything we suffer is about God making us into the image of His Son causing His family to grow and expand.

It is the soul that ever turns to God in the duress of suffering, that is the soul that is being softened not hardened and for whom God is causing the knowledge of His Mercy to prevail. Trust His Mercy through the effect of the ravages of vanity bringing feelings of worthlessness, self pity, anger and defiance. Jesus says resist not evil but resist the Devil. Life is about evil. Don't make it about the devil for God is in charge and will not be mocked. The Devil is a deceiver.

The taking off of the mask that Gina brought to the expose of porn, gives us different eyes to see the lie lacquered up by false lights of enjoyment and screened out consequences of vanity induced harlotry that God has no pleasure in.  


Believe that God will bring all, shame, nakedness, arrogance and pride to His light that for the relief of finally being exposed to stop and discontinue imparts the fullness of gratefulness that One parted with His Soul to give us the joy of His blood spent justification that affords to us seasons of blessings that will come as we grow in His Image of spotless perfection. Your life is about God. Make it about His Son.

His Spirit is come, and His Life prevails through all the shame, bondage and vanity that is caused us to suffer to bring us to the point of celebrating freedom from the pains of deception and the agonies of bondage to vanity. God is our promise and Hope for His appointed time that is His right and promise to ALL.

In the deep shades of lies truth comes unannounced, in clouds obscuring arrival and in the deep recesses of darkened broken despair hearts of weak off setting depravities, God touches us and sets us free. God has touched you Dre91. You will come out alive, purified and made wise to the deep dark deceptions of addiction and like God, God shall make you despise evil,  abhor error and love to yield to that Hope that is the promise of the Love and Presence of our God.

He, who God sent, is our sin sacrifice within. Jesus Christ is not aloof, cold or distant to your cry Dre91. Trust His Mercy endures stronger and beyond our strength allows. He will make you know it. He will.

Keep Hope Dre91

Arc  

[markn902]

Hi Dre

         I can tell you what helped me and hopefully it can be of some help to you. I have come to see (me personally) that by the time I got to actually looking at the porn on a website I had first been lusting after what I saw everyday. Which for me was basically anything female that walked past me. I became aware (after time and prayer) that I was checking these girls out all the time. looking at body parts and all of that. Anyway(for me) I found that by the time I got to looking at the porn that that  was a result of an action! not the action itself if that makes any sense. I realized that I was lusting after women in my heart and that was the sin. The actual looking at porn (and what happens next) was the RESULT of my sin. not the actual Sin itself. Something Mr L Ray Smith said about Eve and the Apple. Eating it was the result of her lust in her heart. (at least thats the way I understood it) So I changed the way I look at people now. I look at girls in the face now and see them as people, wives, daughters, sisters, other of God's children and that has helped me. It didn't seem like it would because for a long time I didn't put the two together but I have learned alot of helpful things on here and this was one of them. This is my personal experience anyway I hope it helped somehow. No matter what don't give up! There is a difference between "shame" and "guilt"

Shame- I am bad-I am worthless-I am nasty etc...

Guilt-  I DID something bad- I DID something that goes against my Moral Values but I am NOT a bad person.

Guilt can be helpful in making the changes we need..Shame has no place in your life. If for no other reason that Gods Love of you personally gives you value and worth. God sees the end from the beginning and has placed it in your heart the desire to change. So hang in there  

[Terry]

Jas 5:16 Then confess sins to one another and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The operative petition of the just is availing much.

Dre i believe you just took the first step to your healing, by confessing this took great courage you must really hate this sin to be able to bring it out of the darkness and into the Light, while i don't watch porn anymore i still have the lust of the heart and i also hate it i'll be praying for you and ask for prayer also.
God Bless
Terry

[judith collier]

Dre, you are in such good company here. Not everybody has the courage to admit sexual deviations. Women are not innocent in this matter either. Wasn't it Paul who said it was better to marry than to burn. Right there, "to burn". You think God doesn't know and will not deliver you eventually. My father always said if we could live long enough we would all be saints. And if not in this lifetime then purified after.
One thing that helps me with my particular sin is to remember that when God called me He knew exactly what I would do in the future. And no one comes to God unless God calls him.
Thank you Mark for the explanation between shame and guilt.
Thank you Arcturus for your divine writing. I copied down the one sentence, "Trust His mercy through the effect of the ravages of vanity bringing feelings of worthlessness, self pity, anger and defiance." It was just last week I learned of vanity from this site, what it really was and how we were created in it. Would you believe I never knew this. I was so delighted to know exactly what the heck I was made of. That explained a lot to me concerning my seemingly never ending battle.
Gina, I learned a good deal more about what women go through making porn. I never could have imagined.
Thanks, Judy

[Joel]

Hey Floyd
I don't count myself as anyones superior, I to have been through many trials and tribulations, as have we all.
The thief doesn't care what method he has to use to steal, kill, and destroy. What works on one person may not work on the next. I have been in a place where I wanted to "GIVE UP, and "THROW IN THE TOWEL also.
I gave up and did everything I could to disassociate myself from Spiritual matters for 20 years, then one day God's Spirit started drawing me to Him, and things have gotten progressively better.
As a matter of fact two years ago today, May the 23rd 2008, I was in a head on collision that was a miracle I wasn't killed or at least badly injured. But that day God spared me for what ever reason He saw fit. I hardly had a scratch in the accident??
I know God is able to bring us to our senses, even in the hogs pen, or He can cause the whale to vomit us back to do whats right, and HIS will. Just remember " Jesus came that we might have LIFE and that more abundantly.
I am praying for you.

Joel

[Terry]

John and Joel very well said
Terry

[Stacey]

dre91, not one member here is any different than you with respect to our sinning nature. I'd be willing to ponder a guess that since we are here on the BT forum and obviously have computers or other means of access to the Internet that, more than a few of us have been attacked by the evil draws of pornography. You are not alone!

WWPS = What would Paul say.  What does Paul tell us concerning our sin nature?


Romans 7:15-25

15.  For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I.
16.  If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that it is good.
17.  Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.
18.  For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not.
19.  For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.
20.  Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.
21.  I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me.
22.  For I delight in the law of God after the inward man:
23.  But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.
24.  O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?
25.  I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.

Paul struggled with sin as we all do and will continue to, unless God delivers us from this or that sin, until we are rid of these wretched bodies, these sinning machines.

God bless you dre91, hopefully with the ability to leave this sin behind you, and give you a new outlook concerning it, a testimony of victory over it!

[Patrick]

I have tried to stop but when i do it feels like im going through withdrawals like a drug addict.

That's exactly what your going through!
Your craving the drug (porn).

"If we are among the chosen that overcome, then the Stone falls ON US, and our spiritual house built upon the sand comes crashing down. And when Jesus falls on us, He GRINDS US [along with all of our idols of the heart] TO POWDER!"
And,
"Some of the things we must go through seem bad on the surface. But as in all of God's dealings, what appears at first to be something horribly bad, is in reality, only a necessary stage in the process of overcoming sin and self so as to be qualified to reign with Christ in bringing the rest of humanity into a knowledge of the Truth, redemption, salvation, and finally, glory."
L. Ray Smith


The fact that you are here and confessing to us, is proof that God is working on/in you! Don't give up!

[jingle52]

Hello Dre,
Thank you for your testimony, we All fall short of God's Glory, but through His Grace, we are on the road to healing, on His time and All His Will be done! Hang in there!
God's Blessings!