INTRODUCTION Overcoming Masturbation

This entry is an introduction to a multi blog series of topics describing the main areas the Lord worked within me that ultimately led to me gaining more control over masturbation and having more freedom, peace, and joy in my life than I ever thought was possible.  I am writing in hopes that what I learned through my healing process can help you in some way.  But you must push into your own relationship with Father for him to reveal to you how he wants to uniquely heal you. 

Overcoming an addiction to masturbation is so much more complex than I ever imagined.  Masturbating is a surface level symptom that is fed by many underlying causes.  When I speak of masturbation, I am defining it as encompassing the actual act of masturbating as well as having sexual thoughts/fantasies and looking at pornography.

I am sure many of you have had times in life, possibly after a spiritual experience or ‘spiritual high’, that you said “I am never going to masturbate again!  I am done with it!”  You may make it a few weeks or maybe even a month if you were really inspired to white knuckle it out.  But you always ended up in the same place; giving in and spending twice as much time doing it as before.  I have repeated this cycle MANY times- beginning in middle school and lasting until my mid twenties.  It is dehumanizing to try over and over to not do something and then end up worse than you were before. 

Through this entire process I wasn’t sure if the actual act of masturbation without pornography or impure images in my head was considered a sin.  What I was sure of was that looking at pornography and masturbating to pornographic images in my head was sin.  No matter your thoughts on this topic, you must follow the nudging on your heart for what Father wants you to deal with. 

Freedom from masturbation cannot be accomplished separate from the healing of the individual.  It was truly the complete regeneration of my life, dying to my old self and being made anew in Christ that ultimately led to me having self-control in this area. 

My journey began when I attended a healing conference put on by a group at my church that was largely influenced by Leanne Payne’s ministry.  A lot of this information listed can be found in her books.  This is where I learned many of the prayers and techniques I am going to share with you in this entry and the following ones.  Many of the things I am going to write about are not my original thoughts but are rather a compilation of thoughts from my prayer counselor and many great writers. 

This has been a process for me as it has taken me three years of learning, healing, and maturing to get some control in this area.  During this time, I still regularly masturbated and sometimes looked at porn.  I had to learn to continually confess my sin, repent, and accept the Lords grace while he was healing me.  Jesus was the only sinless person to walk this earth.   It is impossible for us to be perfect, especially in our fallen state and during our regeneration process.   So it is best to have a plan that includes accountability for confession and be quick to receive the Father’s forgiveness when you fall into sin.

I will use the below prayers and ways of thinking throughout the blog posts that will follow this introduction.

Confession of Sin

Confession was an integral part of the early church, “confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.” (James 5:16)  In The Spirit of the Disciplines by Dallas Willard he states, “We must accept the fact that unconfessed sin is a special kind of burden or obstruction in the psychological as well as the physical realities of the believer’s life.  The discipline of confession and absolution removes that burden.”  This means that unconfessed sin slows our healing process and limits the Lord’s ability to work in our lives.  The pathway to transformation begins with the confession of sin.

Confession to another mature believer who you trust is God’s way of healing us.  Many of you have stated you don’t have friends you feel you could do this with.  If this is the case, start by confessing to God in private, but pray to the Father for safe friends.  When I first started this journey I didn’t have anyone I could confess to. 

 

~Confession to the Father

When alone, I would specifically say the sin I committed out loud.

Father, I masturbated and looked at porn. 

Then I would repent and pray for Him to strengthen me.

Father, I am sorry for giving in and I repent for doing this. Father please strengthen my will so I won’t sin in this way again.  Descend into me, strengthening my power to initiate change and continue to choose rightly.

Then I would listen for his voice (I described listening prayer in one of my previous posts). Here’s an example of one of the things He said to me:

Adam, you are forgiven.  I love you so much and have so much more for you in this life.  You will overcome this.  Have patience. I will faithfully continue the work I have started in you and will see it to completion.  Accept my grace and do not beat yourself up about this. 

Over time, He brought me friends who were mature in Christ and who I could be vulnerable with and we started confessing our sins to each other.  This was difficult at first, but it brought transparency and deepened all my friendships.  Now all my close friends talk openly about the things we are struggling with and are quick to jump into prayer with each other.  It truly makes a stronger, more spiritually connected body of believers. 

 

~Confessing to Other Mature Believers

When confessing to another person the process looked a little different.  I would name the sin specifically as I did when I was alone but not so much that I would create a stumbling block in the person I was confessing to.  I wouldn’t name specific websites or give graphic details; I would just state what I did.

Once I confessed my sin, my friend would then say something like:

Adam, God receives your confession and in the name of Jesus Christ you are forgiven.  God promises that if we confess our sins, that He is faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9)

We then would go into prayer starting with a strengthening prayer such as:

God, I ask you to fully release Adam’s will from his desire to look at pornography.  I thank you that you have given his will back to him and it is his to choose freely what to do with it.  God please strengthen his will.  Descend into him, strengthening his power to initiate change and continue to choose rightly.

When you are being weighed down by your sin and you are beating yourself up for giving in, there is something so powerful about hearing another person say out loud to you that you are forgiven.  So many times I’ve broken into tears at this point during confession and would feel my heart soften to the Lord again. 

After this you MUST receive the Lord’s grace if you are going to walk in freedom. 

Romans 3:22-24:

“This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”

Romans 8:1:

 “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.”

Jesus did not die on the cross for you to NOT receive his grace. I know you don’t feel like you deserve it.  I know it doesn’t make sense that it is so easily available to you.  But you must receive it and then go about your life like you never sinned.  Continuing to beat yourself up only leaves the door open for the enemy to attack you while you are down increasing your odds to fall to sin again. 

In the past, when someone would confess to me, I would try to counsel them on what they did wrong and how they could have avoided it.  Now everyone who holds me accountable or who I hold accountable have been taught this new way of confessing.  We don’t get into a long conversation about what happened.  We receive the confession, offer the Lords forgiveness, and jump right into prayer.

I learned this confession process for my sexual sins but now use it in all areas of my life.  I use pornography as an example sin but these prayers and this process of living can be used with any sin. 

Cleansing of the Imagination

I use the cleansing of the imagination prayer all the time! The Lord uses this prayer as a way to pull out all the images of porn, past sexual encounters, fantasies, and anything else that needs to be removed from your memory.  We are constantly putting images into our brain like files onto a hard drive.  This is a way to delete the files off the hard drive.  Or similar to antivirus software, cleansing the imagination prayers seeks out poisonous files and deletes them. 

The first time I used the cleansing of imagination prayer, I prayed it following the confession of my addiction to pornography. I chose, as an act of my will, to repent and turn away from looking at pornography.  I then used my imagination to focus on the cross of Christ, invoked God’s holy presence, and commanded any unholy images from within to come forward. 

Using my imagination, for the next 30 minutes image after image of pornographic material came pouring out of my forehead.  It was like a film reel.  Years of images came up.  Even ones I thought I had forgotten about!

I then looked to see what God was doing with the images.  People have many different ways of seeing this.  Mine came out as black tar that then dripped into a fire.    Another time they were like pages flipping in a book that were torn out and burned as they turned.  

Lets give it a try together…

-          Remove any distractions and quiet yourself

-          Invoke God’s Holy presence

• Father, please draw near to me right now.  I invite you into this time.  Please guide me in what needs to be cleansed from my imagination.

-          Now Take a few deep breaths and focus on Jesus.  Use your imagination to place yourself before Him.  He is ready to take anything you give Him.

-          Use the confession prayer from above and name what you are choosing to forsake (pornography, fantasy thought life, etc.)

• Father, I masturbated and looked at pornography. I am sorry for giving in and I choose as an act of my will to forsake looking at pornography.

-          Command unholy images to come up

• I command any unholy images to be brought up into my mind.  Holy Spirit, I ask you to help me give these unholy images to you so they can be removed from my mind.

-          As the images come up choose to give them to Jesus.  (You can touch your forehead and pull them out if needed).  Don’t rush this, wait and let all the images come up and out of your mind.

-          After you give all of them to Jesus, look to see what He does with them. 

-          Pray to re-consecrate yourself and your imagination to the Lord for His purposes.

• Father, I give you my mind, what I let into my mind, and my thought life.  Please use my imagination and creativity for your purposes.

Isn’t that cool?  I bet you are already starting to feel lighter.  You can repeat this process any time you are being harassed by a vile, dark or unholy image.  I would love to see in the comments below what Jesus did with your images as they came up. (Please don’t describe the images only tell what Jesus did with them.)

It is amazing how free and light you feel after this.  I will talk more about how I use this everyday and how this was ESSENTIAL to me overcoming pornography and masturbation.

I am looking forward to writing this series of blog posts.  They will walk you through some ways of thinking and living that have helped me over multiple years to walk into wholeness.  It will be like starting a physical training program when you haven’t worked out in years.  You will learn exercises and routines, but in the beginning you are weak, clumsy, get sore a lot and have a hard time staying consistent.  However, over time you start to feel and see results and then working out becomes a part of your everyday life.    

A book that describes the healing process in great symbolism is “Hinds’ Feet on High Places” by Hannah Hurnard.