Choices are what define our lives every single day. On the basketball court choices are the difference between me and Michael Jordan. He made the choices to pour every ounce of his energy, passion and drive into that game. He made the choice to put in time to practice jump shots, shoot free throws and hit the weights when nobody else wanted to. Those choices are why he is now regarded as the greatest basketball player of all time and I didn’t even start on my 9th grade basketball team. Choices that become habits are the difference between years of sobriety and years of bondage.
Freedom from pornography or other sexual addictions can come in one isolated incidence, but freedom is walked out and maintained one day at a time. The choices we make day in and day out that become habits are the determining factor in whether we return to the sin we’ve been set free from or we turn and begin a whole new chapter in life. These choices are rarely easy and almost always require a degree of discipline that few people are comfortable with. The people who stay free are the ones who do what nobody else wants to and are now able to have what everybody wishes they had; total freedom from sexual sin.
I knew the exact moment that the power of porn was broken off of my life. It was a moment that changed my life forever, but it was also a moment that was followed by many hard decisions and major adjustments to the way I lived my life. The definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again and expect different results, so freedom comes when the way we do things changes altogether. These changes include relationships we have with people, music we listen to and the things we allow our eyes to see. These choices are rarely popular, comfortable or fun, but are all essential to making freedom a lifestyle as opposed to a two week emotional experience.
In the same way accountability has to be a daily choice to be a priority to be effective. I am not a believer at all in once or twice a week accountability. I tried it and found that each day is simply filled with too many opportunities to compromise the promise of freedom. Just like our relationship with God, these things require daily attention. The day we think we’re okay without spending time with God is the day that our life starts to fall apart without us even seeing it.
Almost everything that has to do with God is two-sided. The first part is always started by God, and the second is simply our response to what God has done. God has made a way for us to be free from sin of all kinds, but the way we choose to respond is completely up to us. Freedom is always one daily choice away.