Sexual Addiction

God Loves Me, Junk and All

by Jeff Fisher on May 15, 2012

There’s a key lesson I’ve missed about God for a while: God loves me, junk and all.

I don’t have to clean myself up. I don’t have to have my life together to come to Him. I just need to show up, junk and all.

Listen to what it says in:

Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

Romans 8:1-2 “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,[a] 2 because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.”

Romans 8:35-39 “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?

38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,[m] neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

There are some key truths here:

1. God loved us as sinners

2. In Jesus, we are not condemned

3. Nothing separates us from God’s love

I’ve known these truths for a long time, most of my Christian life. I didn’t think much of them until I my sexual sin blew up my life. I became very aware of my sins. I lost my job and church family. I hurt my family and many loved ones. My sin, the pain, and the consequences weighed heavy on me. It changed the way I thought about God. For the first time I saw myself as a sinner, and my immediate reaction to that was to run and hide.

Back to the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve, I try to run and hide from God.

A self-hatred began to emerge. I had messed up big time. I fell into despair and patches of hopelessness, and began to hate myself.

Intellectually, my mind spiraled down too. I started to believe the lie that God must hate me too. If I hate me, and I’m no good, God must feel the same way.

This is where Truth comes in. These verses in Romans fly in the face of my self-hatred and false image of God. God has never changed in his live for me and acceptance through Jesus.

I spent a year doing a podcast called Top Verses For Sexual Purity podcast. You can find these shows on I-Tunes. Just go to our Top Tips For Sexual Purity feed and go to any of the Season 2 shows. In this podcast series I looked at bible verses that related to sexual purity and shared my thoughts on them.

There are two lights that go on when I read God’s Word:

1. I understand what it’s saying (hits my head)

2. I believe what it’s telling me to do (hits my heart)

God’s Spirit helps us with both.

Sometimes, there is a tension when I read God’s Word. I hit a point of belief / unbelief. I hear these verses in Romans that God loves me junk and all. I know that they say that God does not change and nothing I do can separate me from His love. But it may take a while for me to believe that. I feel the tension. God’s Word is trying to bust up my false belief that God hates me because of all the bad things I have done.

Where are you with believing that God loves you junk and all?

I didn’t start believing this until I entered a Christian men’s sexual addiction support group. I was sharing my junk with these men and they were not condemning me. They listened. They were respectful. They did not shame me. They accepted and even loved me.

I started to get this feeling that this was how God operated with me. He used other men who understood junk to teach me that He loved me junk and all.

Of course I’m not saying that God approves of my sexual behaviors. Neither did the men in my support group. But they were able to see below the behaviors and value me as a person.

That’s part of the message of the Gospel. God loving ME junk and all.

–

jeff@porntopurity.com

@porntopurity on Twitter

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Top Tips 027 – The Dangers of “Checking Out” Emotionally

by Jeff Fisher on May 6, 2012

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THE DANGERS OF CHECKING OUT EMOTIONALLY

In a couple of days my wife will get over it.
Let me take my medicine now.
I just want to get it over with.
This will be over eventually.
It will all be forgotten about.
I’m going to take the beating.
I won’t feel it tomorrow.

This is how I talk to myself whenever I’m in trouble. I push past the painful moment and look toward a place where my trouble will be gone.

Coping mechanism – I can’t deal with the moment, with being in trouble, with the full effects of a person’s anger. I use self-talk to help me get through. It is a type of medicating.

Shield me from the pain – To protect myself from pain, I go into a numb, lifeless state. I am here physically, but put up barriers to protect my emotions.

Compartmentalize – Another variation of protecting myself. I flip the switch emotionally, block the other compartments of my life, and push this episode into a box in the corner. As a guy I have an incredible ability to compartmentalize and live multiple lives.

WHERE ARE THE LIES?
It’s one thing to protect myself emotionally from major trauma. That’s how God made our brains. But if I’m in the habit of checking out every time consequences come, I’m not healthy emotionally.

I think emotionally checking out is a form of denial and rationalization. When I disconnect, I run the risk of detaching myself from vital lessons that need to be learned. I lose sight of the weight of my sin and the consequences it causes. I disconnect myself from relationships. Disconnecting hurts the intimacy I have with God and with others.

SOMETIMES THE PAIN DOESN’T GO AWAY
On the day I was confronted with my porn use at work, I had a sense that the “jig” was up. I was summoned to a “special meeting” and was not given any details. On my way to the meeting I said to myself, “This is probably a confrontation. I’m not going to deny it. It will all be over in a couple of hours.” I was already bracing emotionally for the meeting and disconnecting. The roller coaster was rolling up the hill and I was going to ride it out. Eventually, the ride would stop and I could get off.

It was far from over. I don’t think it’s ever been completely gotten over, and I’m 5 years into my recovery. Even after asking forgiveness and making attempts to fix the relationship there were lasting consequences to those relationships.

LIES I BELIEVE

Things are not really that bad. I don’t believe they will affect things in the long run. In the big scheme of things, this is not a big deal. There are some things that are not a big deal. Being late for an appointment, anger, gossip. Some things will pass over and pass through. But looking at porn, adulterating my marriage, lying, covering up and deceiving… these have wider repercussions. I don’t realize how bad my sin is. I don’t realize what’s at stake in a relationship when I begin lying, and practicing falsehood .

I can cover this up and be OK. The cover-up of the lie is often worse than the lie itself.

I’ll can deal with this later, and be OK. It never works. Denying and cover-up always put a wedge in a relationship. The longer we wait to confess, the larger the wedge.

He’ll get over it. She’ll get over it. Sometimes, if the sin is small, there’s enough grace for the other person to let go of it. But my sins are causing hurt to my relationships. I have hurt others by my actions. I have damaged a relationship. They are not obligated to forgive. They have every right to be hurt over our actions. “He’ll get over it” is not a loving attitude. It’s very selfish.

I won’t feel it tomorrow – Maybe you won’t but the people you hurt might feel it for a long time. This is a very selfish thought when it comes to ruptured relationships.

OUR NEED FOR CONFESSION
Let’s go back to God’s relationship with us. God knows the power of sin and the consequence of sin. He wants a love relationship with us. He grieves when that love relationship is perverted with sin. But He commands us to confess our sin. When we confess He will forgive. What a huge promise in I John 1:9. The love of God through Christ is huge. I can’t hide from God and deceive God. I can ignore God it doesn’t do many any good to hold back and confess later to God.

DANGERS OF CHECKING OUT EMOTIONALLY

1. I shut off a vital part of who I am as a person – my emotions

2. I don’t feel the weight of my sin

3. I don’t realize the consequences of my wrong actions

4. I lose a chance to be made right in my relationships

5. I lose a chance to learn a valuable lesson

6. I plunge into a form of denial and rationalization

7. I don’t walk in truthfulness

—

jeff@porntopurity.com

@porntopurity on Twitter

Call-in voicemail line line: (321) 5-PURITY

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Top Tips 026 – Figure Out Your Emotional Age

by Jeff Fisher on May 3, 2012

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This may be the newest Top Tip I’m learning. Each of us has an emotional age. We do well to figure it out.

Recovery is not just about stopping our sexual behaviors. It’s about being transformed emotionally, relationally, intellectually & spiritually. All of the other areas work with the whole picture of sexual purity. Purity is a combination of a lot of things, not just behavioral.

So here’s something that will help us with our emotional growth. What is our emotional age? What age emotionally am I?

This is the year of my 40^th birthday. Forty years physically, but that doesn’t mean I’m 40 years emotionally mature. Inside my heart and experiences and woundings I’m a different age emotionally. And we’re working on maturing. Working on growing up. A lot of sexual sin begins in adolescence.

Disclaimer:

I’m not an expert on this. I’ve heard a lot of counselors talk about it. So consult your counselor on this one for specific advice.

Sometimes our emotional age has to do with our time of exploration. My sexual sin began in Jr. High. Twenty-five years ago. That’s a long time. That’s when I began to explore my sexuality. For me it was masturbation, looking at soft and hard core magazines, and surfing the late night cable channels.

Sometimes emotional age is tied to a time we consider “ideal”. It might be our high school, college, or young professional years. But it’s a phase in life we’ve never grown up from. We constantly try to live in this part of our past. It’s more than a fond memory, it grows into a fantasy. It’s like the person who idolizes his college age & continues to party on the weekends with his frat buddies. An idealistic time you look back on. A key milestone. A key time. But unfortunately, it becomes a key barrier for growing up.

What’s the emotional age of the people you hang out with? This may be an indicator of how old you are emotionally. Maybe you still hang out with the frat buddies or sorority sisters to live the glory days.

Childhood woundings may figure into our emotional age. A friend of mine had a distant father and an emotionally abusive mom. It was hard for him to visit his parents and not feel like a 6-year old again. I can get stuck emotionally in my woundings. Woundings we need to heal from. Let God father us and mentor us back. Help us heal past that. This is a barrier to us growing up emotionally.

FATHERED BY GOD
John Eldridge’s book Fathered By God talks about different phases in life where we need to be fathered and mentored through. The book talks to men, but the phases and the principles apply to women. A lot of people never get past childhood.

One message Eldridge says we need to hear is “you are loved.” This needs to come from our parents, but often doesn’t. God can help with the deficiency through His Spirit and with other men and women.

Another childhood message is “you’re good”. You have value and worth. Some of us have never heard this growing up. It can cause a wounding and cripple us emotionally.

Figuring out our emotional age is a process of getting greater insight into ourselves.

USING SEX TO FILL THE GAP
This hits us sexually because we try to make up for the deficit through sexual acting out. We consider our times of sexual promiscuity, had a rockin’ hot girlfriend, having sex in college… we’ve idealized those times. We were really looking for deep fulfillment which come from healthy relationships and God. We thought we found it in sex and illicit relationships.

During my sexual addiction recovery I think my emotional age has gone from 7 years old to 13 to high school age. My idealized time was 11^th grade for me. Everything seemed to be going my way. Sexual exploration. Achievements. Girlfriends that I think are making my life complete. Had a girlfriend in early college that I thought I was going to marry and didn’t.

There are a lot of times when I emotionally act like a 40-year old, but when the right buttons are pushed, I drift backwards to a younger age. When my stress gets high, I go back to early parts of life that I consider “golden”.

I think that having kids has helped me grow up. I think getting married, getting out on my own, having to earn a living… those have been steps to manhood.

John Eldredge says we need other men in our lives to father us. Other women for women. God has brought me other men disciple me and help me grow up emotionally.

It’s amazing to meet someone who’s emotionally their age. These people have had healthy environments or worked on it with healthy people. They are comfortable in their skin, and are living for God in the moment. .

It’s uncomfortable for me to be 40 physically, but emotionally younger. It makes me feel like I’m not a grown-up. There are a lot of times when I feel I’m a young man wearing older man’s shoes. Some of it has to do with that I don’t love me the way God loves me. I don’t like me, the way that I am & I refuse to accept it. I’m always trying to live back in those skinnier jeans.

–

I hope my thoughts about emotional age will get your thoughts churning. Spend some time trying to figure where you are emotionally.

—

jeff@porntopurity.com

@porntopurity on Twitter

Call-in voicemail line line: (321) 5-PURITY

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Core Lies I Believed While Trapped in Bi-Sexuality

by Jeff Fisher on May 2, 2012

Yesterday, guest blogger Amy of the Walking In Freedom blog shared her struggles with bi-sexuality and lesbianism and the slow process God used to free her.

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It no longer felt like part of my identity. I realize that this may sound over-simplified to some people, but this is truly what happened for me. It was like that part of my life that had tormented me for years was gone. At that point, I thought that my battle was over. What I didn’t realize, though, was that just that particular part of my battle was over. I now realized that the “real” me (since my identity is now found in Christ) did not include bi-sexuality. This did not erase all of the lies that I had believed for so long, though. So, what were the core lies that I believed?

1) Deep down, I still believed that I would be happier with a woman than a man (even though I was married…and a Christian). As a Christian, I know this cannot be true, though, because the bible says that God did not create me to be with a woman. Since God created me, He knows what type of relationship I was created to be in, and no matter what it “feels” like – a woman is not part of that equation. God is my creator, and therefore He knows best. How dare I question my Creator concerning what’s best for me. That’s arrogance and pride at its worst…and I’ve unfortunately been there many times.

2) I believed that I could never get as close to a man as I could a woman. Every argument Kevin and I got into fostered this lie. Every time Kevin distanced himself from me or was gone for long hours too many days in a row, this belief grew even bigger. This worked as a double-edged sword and made the lie seem even more real, while driving me further and further away from Kevin.

3) I believed that being with a woman was safer (emotionally) than being with a man. Making myself vulnerable to a man seemed foolish. To me, men were all about one thing (sex), and I never saw women as being this way. The relationship I had years ago with my friend was incredibly emotionally enmeshed and I didn’t feel used. I felt loved and accepted for who I was. Somewhere along the way I equated men+sex=being used. I suppose all of that pornography didn’t help matters, and it has taken a long time to replace this lie with God’s Truth. Sex is a good thing between a married man and woman, and God created a sexual relationship to be satisfying to both of them.

4) The last thing that I dealt with that I wouldn’t necessarily call a lie, but a huge obstacle, is that I put so much focus on women in my mind for so long, that it created almost what I would call an automatic “pathway” that my brain always took. I don’t know if it started with all of the pornography, or what it was, but I often fantasized about things that no married woman (or any woman!) should ever think about. I did it so much that I wasn’t even aware of how much I did it until God started to shed light on it all. No wonder my relationship with my husband was not the way it should have been! Not to be too blunt, but there’s not too much that any woman and my husband have in common – physically or emotionally. When you think about the opposite of your husband for long enough, it will destroy every part of your relationship. (I’m sure this applies to anyone who fantasizes about anyone else other than their spouse – male or female.) Talk about a real intimacy killer in a marriage. I thank God, though, that He is able to restore any marriage that is given to Him. My relationship with Kevin is not perfect, but it is far better today than it has ever been (and getting even better all the time!).

God has done so much in my heart over the last few years, and I am not the same person I was! The lies I listed above are not something that were exposed and conquered in my life in one day. Some of them still come creeping into my mind during stressful times or even sometimes when Kevin and I have a disagreement. I have learned to recognize them and cast those thoughts out of my mind now, and this has made me so much stronger, spiritually.

Layer upon layer of junk in my heart has been exposed and then disposed of. It is so important to become aware of the lies that you believe if you are stuck in bondage to something. If we keep trusting in, believing or acting out in certain ways that are sinful, we are believing some sort of lie that is contrary to the Word of God. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be so compelled to do it in the first place. When we repeatedly replace these lies with God’s Truth, we will be able to slowly become the people God created us to be. This is not an overnight process, and I’m aware of that now. I’m encouraged, though, because I know that by God walking me through this step-by-step, I will be able to help someone else through this process also. I know that God has called me to minister to other women who deal with unwanted same sex attractions, and that is so exciting to me.

While we are not always delivered or healed quickly, we can be assured that God uses everything we turn over to Him for good. He will also use our experience and healing journey to help somebody else free – and that makes it all worthwhile once that time comes.

In what area(s) of your life has God been slowly healing / delivering you?

What lies have you been believing about this situation, and what truths from God’s Word can you replace them with? If you’re not sure, ask God to reveal those lies to you and He will! So often we don’t even know we’re believing any lies that are contrary to God’s Word. Once you discover the lies you have been believing, you can attack them with the truth of God’s Word and begin to tear down the stronghold.

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Listen to Amy’s Testimony (Audio)

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Healing and Deliverance From Bi-Sexuality

by Jeff Fisher on May 1, 2012

“When Healing and Deliverance Comes Slowly” – Guest Blogger Amy of Walking in Freedom.net

I spent many years feeling like I had a secret I could never share with anyone. I felt with every fiber of my being that I was bi-sexual. Sometimes I can even look back and see myself questioning whether I was even a lesbian, or not. I say this, because after trying to suppress these feelings for a number of years, their importance seemed to grow. I became more and more focused on this attraction I had to women, and less focused on men. My attraction towards women was more emotionally driven than anything, and I just never felt that way about men. “Who can really connect with a man, anyhow?” is what I always thought to myself.

The sense of connection was what I was drawn to, and I was convinced the only place I could truly find that was with a woman.

The problem? I became a Christian when I first started to realize the depth of all of this. This meant I would always have to just shove this part of myself down and ignore it forever…so I thought. Then I met my husband, Kevin. I somehow knew he and I would have a future together, because the first time I ever talked to him on the phone I told him everything about my past. Well…most of it. I told him all about my relationship with my friend after high school, and everything related. (That was totally out of character for me to do something like that, but I somehow feared if I didn’t put it out on the table right away – I would never tell him.) We talked through it all, and I was so incredibly blessed to one day become his wife. The only thing was the issue with my sexuality started surfacing again a couple years after we got married. I thought I had dealt with it and put it behind me. Little did I know it was just about to come to the surface in a major way.

This is around the time that I started struggling with looking at porn online. By this time, I was struggling, like never before, with thoughts of being bi-sexual. I even started having thoughts that I would have been better off never getting married in the first place, because I would be much happier with a woman. I would constantly tell myself that I couldn’t ever become as close to a man as I could a woman. I eventually stopped looking at the porn online, but my thoughts continued to race, and I was having terrible dreams which made it all worse.

Due to these dreams, it was even more difficult for me to convince myself that bi-sexuality (or lesbianism) was not something that was part of my identity. If my identity as a Christian is in Christ (like the bible says), then these thoughts/ beliefs/ identities/dreams were not a part of who I truly was anymore. I believed that with my head, but my heart told me a different story. I could never truly grasp it, and I just felt like no one understood how deep this all went for me. I rehearsed scriptures of who I was in Christ often, but they never sank in. These attractions felt as much as a part of me as my own name. My lust (because that’s what it was) towards women felt like it was a real part of me that just wouldn’t go away. It affected all of my friendships, because I always stayed at arms-length from women – just in case. I was afraid that I might feel something I didn’t want to feel.

I thought it was all just me…just something I would have to bury and hide.

I would say that my healing in this area really began when I first started telling people about almost 2 years ago. Then, when I was delivered of those dreams, the first big change happened. I suddenly no longer felt like being bi-sexual was part of my identity and realized that it wasn’t part of who I truly was, after all. (This is not easy to explain, but I will try my best!) This is something that I spent years trying to convince myself of, and now I just knew it in my heart.

This is when I realized that something (that felt very much a part of me) had left me.

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Tomorrow, Amy will share some of the Core Lies I Believed While Trapped in Bi-Sexuality.

Listen to Amy’s Testimony (Audio)

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Top Tips 023 – Are Sexy Dreams Sinful?

April 22, 2012

Press HERE to Play Podcast or Download Sexy dreams are something unavoidable during our sexual purity journey. We’re in a battle. We’re fighting for purity. We’re contending with our lust. It’s a conscious battle that sometimes spills into our unconscious. It shouldn’t surprise us that we have sexy dreams. In the past, we’ve lusted with [...]

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When Do You Get to Maintenance Level in Sexual Recovery?

April 18, 2012

In a previous post, I talked about “The 5 Stages of Sexual Addiction Recovery”. 1. Crisis Stage 2. Picking Up the Pieces Stage 3. Repair Stage 4. Strengthening and Conditioning Stage 5. Maintenance Stage I wanted to talk more about the Maintenance Stage. This is part of the “big picture” of sexual addiction recovery. The [...]

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Top Tip 022 – How to Deal With Triggery People at Work

April 11, 2012

Press HERE to Play Podcast or Download We spend a good chunk of our time in our work environments. It’s a major place of influence that demands your energy, creativity, and the building of relationships. You have to include your work in your purity strategy. It’s not unusual to encounter triggery women at work. They [...]

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Top Tip 021 – 6 Breakthroughs in My Sexual Addiction Recovery

April 9, 2012

Press HERE to Play Podcast or Download What major breakthroughs are you experiencing in your sexual addiction recovery? A new blogger friend recently asked me “How long had you been in your recovery before you started helping others?” Marsha and I were in the Crisis Stage of sexual addiction recovery for about 6 months. Once [...]

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Comfort For Those Having a Tough Time During the Holidays

April 6, 2012

HAPPY EASTER FROM JEFF AND MARSHA! Hey everyone in our P2P community. We hope you’re Easter was a good one. But we are reminded that holidays can be rough for those of you in the middle of sexual addiction recovery: 1. Holidays are hard for some of you – Your family may be busted up right [...]

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Top Tip 020 – Newlyweds and Sexual Sin

April 5, 2012

Press HERE to Play Podcast or Download Let’s face it – sexual sin is a blow to any marriage. But for newlyweds, it can be traumatic. A young marriage is shaken. They start asking questions like: “Where did this come from?” “Did I marry the right person?” “Is our marriage over?” We want to offer [...]

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