If there is one thing people struggling with sexual brokenness feel it is discouragement… especially if they are Christians. We live in a Christian culture that condemns sexual sin, while the world around us is constantly inviting us to participate. This is because there are plenty of passages in the Bible that are clear on this. For example…
“For this is the will of God, your sanctification;
that is, that you abstain from sexual immorality”and…
“Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality
so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more.”
Since we are part of a community that admonishes us to have nothing to do with sexual sin and we know that God wants us to be holy…as He is holy…our repeated falling back into porn and sex creates powerful feelings of anger, anxiety, condemnation, and self-loathing.
We feel great shame and isolate ourselves believing we must be the worst sinner in the world, and we even doubt that we are saved. And if you are married as I am your greatest fear is that your wife finds out and your marriage will end, and your children will hate you.
The reason I know this is first and foremost I had to walk that road myself. I know the pain, discouragement, depression, and anxiety of having secret sin which led to my having affairs that are not usually acceptable for the Senior Pastor of a Baptist Church.
When I had advanced in my own recovery and began to help other men, I found they were having to deal with the same crap I had to deal with. Fear that their secret life of sexual sin would be discovered, and their life would become an absolute train wreck.
One of the things all of us need on a daily basis is encouragement. Encouragement is like a pocket of air one discovers when drowning. It is something that touches us in a way that makes us feel better and helps us to keep our thoughts rational instead of the craziness of anxiety and depression. I found this verse in December of 2011 and decided that I would become an encourager to others…
“See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called “Today,” so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. We have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original conviction firmly to the very end.” Hebrews 3:12-13
Upon reading that passage I decided I would begin to write emails of encouragement to all the men I knew at Vineyard Columbus who were struggling with this issue. The verse says to do it daily, so I began doing it daily. I also was writing blog posts for Covenant Eyes and telling the readers that I would add them to my growing list. Today’s email will go out to 2702 subscribers in 72 different nations.
Now, look at that passage again. We are admonished to not have a sinful and unbelieving heart that turns away from God. This is such a danger for us to fall into because we do have a sinful nature still working inside of us that wants us to turn away from God…right??? We know those feelings of being tempted…wanting to not fall again…becoming worn down because the waves of temptation seem to never cease until we take the action and sin sexually again.
Sin is deceitful and uses the power of our sinful nature to draw us back to our sexual fix and the more we do that…and the longer we do that…the more our hearts will become hardened. Up becomes down and light becomes darkness, and we begin to believe the lies coming from our hardened hearts and demonic suggestions.
Part of the solution to all of this is encouragement. To be encouraged daily…and to encourage others daily. I have found that being encouraged daily helps keep me from sexual sin…and encouraged by others is essential as well.
So, on January 1, 2012, I began writing and sending to others my 180 Fresh daily emails of encouragement. 3,261 have been published on the www.18recover.com website as well as 960 podcasts.
Listen to begin to defeat this hardening of our hearts and keeping them from becoming calloused we need both things. We need to be encouraged daily and we need to encourage others daily. You are being encouraged by my emails and podcasts but are you encouraging anyone else? Perhaps forwarding my daily messages to a friend of yours whom you know is struggling would be a good idea. Then they can subscribe for themselves and the two of you will have things you can talk about with each other.
One last thing…when someone joins one of our Online Support Team you can receive daily encouragement from a group of men who text one another every day. We use GroupMe and everyone is to text the team every day…so that nobody needs to be alone ever again.
Just email me if you want to see for yourself what it is like to get multiple brothers in Christ encouraging one another.