Is it possible that one of the reasons you have not been able to stop acting out and continue to return to sexual sin is a demonic influence?
I believe that today sexual addiction is being used by our enemy and his demonic hoards to seriously damage both men and women, destroy marriages, deeply wound families, and has a serious impact upon the ministry in the local church.
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If a high percentage of pastors are addicted to porn … is that a problem?
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If a higher percentage of the men in church are also addicted … is that a problem?
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If a growing percentage of women are becoming addicted … is that a problem?
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If the children of the man and or woman are exposed to porn … is that a problem?
The answer is yes … yes … a thousand times yes. Notice I did not use any percentages because I am not sure of their accuracy. However, here is one percentage I truly believe.
100% of men, women, and children
Must learn to deal with sexual temptation!
And with this highly addictive behavior being fueled by the omnipresence of pornography things will only get worse. If that is even possible.
Is sex your idol? If you were to record how much time, energy, and effort you put into using porn and your imagination with fantasy … how much time would you say you are giving to it each week?
Is it not the case that when you abandon what you truly believe about the Lord and what is good and right for you to do and then fall back into temptation … that you have gone to worship your god of sex? Investing your time, energy, and money? Giving your mind and heart over to your sinful nature to get a fix from it because you feel so bad in your real life?
I do believe it is possible for your struggle to be partially due to demonic influence. Paul mentions to the Ephesians that they were to not give the devil a foothold. He also mentions to the Corinthians that there can be strongholds in our lives which may or may not be the demonic influence. Perhaps this is referring to a generational sin which is usually an addictive behavior passed down from one generation to another.
I do believe that some people continue to struggle with sexual brokenness because of demonic influence, generational ties, and trauma in one’s life.
The good news is that we have a number of things working in our favor if we will learn them and put them into practice. The most critical is the simple truth that the Holy Spirit of God now dwells inside of our body. We are sealed by Him … so He is not going anywhere and is in us to help us learn to walk in the Spirit so we do not fulfill the desires of the flesh.
Secondly, we read this in Ephesians 2:4-7 we read;
“But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.”
Notice the past tense of the verbs. This is something that has already happened to us. Spiritually speaking we are raised up and seated with Christ in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus.
This is spiritual truth that we need to understand when we begin dealing with demons. We have been saved by God’s choice to love us. We have put in Christ in the heavenly realms, by His Grace and His Choice. It is a gift and so because we are in this position we can deal with demonic powers with the authority of Christ.
Jesus has all authority in all of heaven and all of the earth. We have been sealed with the Spirit and are seated with Jesus in heaven. Because of those two realities, we can learn to deal with demonic influences. When we speak in the name of Jesus our words have His authority and the demons must obey what we tell them to do.
Here is how I have learned to do this. First – I renounce any connection or any desire to be involved in sexual sin. I am not being doubleminded because if I am the demons will not be required to obey. So, I confess to the Lord anything I need to confess and renounce sexual sin from my life. I do not want it to have any influence on my life, thoughts, and decisions.
Second – I command any demonic influence with the name or the function of sexual sin, porn, masturbation, shame, or anything involving the use of porn and sex in my life to come into the light. Do this as a command from some who really knows how to give a command.
Third – Based on the authority given to me by my Lord Jesus Christ I command any and all demonic forces to leave me and go to the foot of the Cross to be a footstool for His feet.
Now, I do not do this if I am simply being tempted. But if I suspect the temptation is really strong or there is more power behind it than usual, I will find a quiet and undisturbed place to pray these prayers to have the demonic influenced removed and then ask the Holy Spirit to fill and empower me.