To borrow terminology from the Twelve Step Movement (i.e. A.A. or N.A., founded by godly Christian men, incidentally), “recovery” is a funny thing… While briefly serving as a live-in drug and alcohol counselor in a Christian recovery program, one phrase I heard repeatedly was “Nothing changes if nothing changes.” Think about that seemingly meaningless phrase. Nothing changes if nothing changes.

One of the greatest dangers we face as Christians trying to kick porn is mistaking willingness for action. To put it another way, we mistake understanding what must be done for actually having done what must be done… Or again, we confuse “I’ll go, Lord” with actually going. Now, before you start madly posting Bible verses in rebuttal, hear me out.

I’m not saying a desire to change doesn’t matter; I’m not even saying taking action is more important than an initial desire to change. Both must be present. Isn’t the first step “We admitted we were powerless over our sexually addictive behavior—that our lives had become unmanageable”? But, as Christians, we can easily make something out of prayer that God did not intend, where we pray with crumb-coated lips “Lord, help me lose weight” in between bites of a Twinkie with our La-Z-Boy in full recline.

Careful now. Don’t go running off and start pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. The immortal, grumpy, deist’s life verse coined by Ben Franklin is not in the Bible as some people erroneously believe. God does not help those who help themselves. He resists the proud and gives grace to the humble.

But… Nothing changes if nothing changes. How badly do you really want to get better? Badly enough to do something inconvenient? Badly enough to do something really inconvenient on a regular basis? How badly do you really want to get better? C.S. Lewis wrote “A famous Christian long ago told us that when he was a young man he prayed constantly for chastity; but years later he realized that while his lips had been saying, ‘Oh Lord, make me chaste,’ his heart had been secretly adding, ‘But please don’t do it just yet.”

What would taking action look like in your life? I’ll give you a couple of real-life examples in my next post. Blessings.