Recovery. I’ve talked a little about when you know you have beaten your addiction, but I want to explore this a little further. I’m starting to see three distinctive layers forming as people find they’re way to freedom.

The first layer to finding true recovery is eliminating the cultural influences on us. If you haven’t cut out the media in your life you really haven’t got much of a chance of beating pornography. We are constantly bombarded in the media with the sexual power of women and pornography is a way of dominating that power. We must always remember pornography is about power. Understanding this is essential to beating our addiction.

The second layer to finding true recovery is rooting out the areas in our life were we feel powerless. This can be almost anything. The thing that was so revolutionary for me when I began to understand pornography was about power is that this doesn’t have to be about sex, it could be anything. The first place to start looking is at our relationships. It could be our relationship with our parents, our wife, our boss, a girlfriend etc.. It could be related to some abuse in our past, where we were made to feel powerless. Another place to look would be at our circumstances, this could be our work, are we overwhelmed by the amount of work we have, it could be our financial situation as well, it could be the fact that it is finals week, any circumstance that brings stress into our life. In all these areas we must find ways of taking control and not using pornography to fulfill our need for power. I’ve found though just identifying these areas of our life can almost be like magic when it comes to stopping our compulsions to view pornography. Just recognizing the areas in your life that you feel out of control may be all it takes to taking control back. So if you have eliminated the media and you are still finding it difficult to gain your freedom, start looking at these issues in your life and identifying them. Then take the steps necessary to regain control.

There is a third layer that was very surprising to me as I got further away from my addiction and that is a new found ability to be assertive. Many men involved in pornography are “people pleasers.” Being a people pleaser when you think about it is giving our power away to other people. When you begin to recover from your addiction to pornography you are going to begin to see an unwillingness in yourself to give power to others. This is what I’m calling the third level of recovery, it is the ability to take back control of your life and not give it to others. Jesus is the greatest example of this kind of power. All His power came from God, He did not care what other people thought of Him and you will find yourself following Christ in this behavior as well. I just had a man I’ve been counseling for a while tell me he went in and talked to his boss about something he had done that before his recovery he would have tried to ignore. He said normally he would have avoided talking to his boss about something that could have provoked a conflict. But he had found a new courage in himself to express his feelings about it even at the possible risk of upsetting his boss. When you see these kinds of things happening in your life you know you have dug down deep into the power issues of your life, and have made some significant strides in your recovery. When you find yourself being assertive when you normally would have been passive and tried to avoid expressing yourself and your opinions, you know you are on your way to overcoming one of the biggest power drains in your life, being a “people pleaser.”

With this knowledge of pornography being about power it give us the ability to be self evaluating. It gives us the ability to discover what is driving our compulsions and stop them. That is one of the biggest benefits I’ve found from this recognition that pornography is about power. It gives us the ability to help ourselves and not be on this continual marry-go-round of trying to find new and different techniques for regaining control over our addiction. We have everything we need to solve our problem when we know the truth about pornography.

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Relapses, will they happen now that I know the truth? Yes and no. Let me run through what used to happen in my life when it came to relapsing. Before I knew the truth relapses meant having to find something new, some new way of dealing with my addiction. It was in a way like my addiction, with every relapse I had to step things up a notch to find healing. I think every addict knows what I’m talking about, it is like things work for a while and then they don’t. With every relapse also came another round of guilt and desperation that maybe I would never be free. Relapsing in the old days meant months worth of struggling to get back on track, with no assurance I would ever make it back on track.

So what about now? Knowing the truth does not mean you will never fail, but the relapse is different. You do not have to look else where for information, techniques or help, you already know where the problem lies, and it’s just a matter of teasing it out of your life circumstances. Secondly the guilt and shame should be manageable if you understand where this failure is coming from. And thirdly the time needed to get back on track is days, not months.

Let me take each one of these separately and expound on them a little. What is pornography about? Power, right? So if you are experiencing a relapse in your life the first thing you have to do is examine your life and find the source of your need for power. In other words we have to find the area of our life we feel powerless in and recognize this is the source or cause of our relapse. Just recognizing those areas of our lives we feel we have no control over is a powerful way of overcoming our relapse. Sometimes this is all that is necessary to get back on track. Sometimes though it may take more, it may take our becoming active in our own lives and regaining control over our circumstances.

It is easy to sit back and let life beat us up and say we can’t do anything about it and use pornography to give ourselves some kind of false sense of control. It is another thing though to have to deal with reality and take control of our circumstances. I’m experiencing this very situation in my life right now. I’ve been separated from my wife now for almost two years. There is nothing I seemingly can do to change that circumstance in my life. For a long time now I’ve felt powerless to do anything about it. Every attempt at reconciliation has left me feeling more powerless. But am I powerless? No. There are things I could do, like get a divorce and move on with my life, but I have not been willing to take such a drastic step. At some point though I am going to have to realize I can’t control other peoples lives, only my own and I need to do something about my life. Circumstances controlled me in the past, but I am free now to choose my destiny with the Lord’s guidance. I don’t believe God wants anyone to get a divorce, but I also believe His word says that we should not be separated indefinitely. So what do I do? Continue to allow the devil opportunity in my life or do something about it? As a Christian we should never feel powerless. I’ve chosen to pray about it and follow God’s leading, to stop letting the circumstances rule me and become an active participant in my life with God’s guidance. The choices may be incredibly painful, but we cannot just sit back and let our addiction fool us into believing we are in control.

Dr. Patrick Carnes says one sign of recovery is a clear awareness of personal limits. I would say it this way. When you begin to realize you are not a god and capable of controlling people and circumstances you are on your way to freedom. We can only control ourselves with God’s help. In other words in my circumstance I must realize I cannot make decisions for my wife. All I can do is follow God’s leading no matter how painful the path He is leading me down may be. It is another paradox of Christianity. We must recognize our powerlessness, in order to become powerful.

Secondly we must not only recognize the source of our relapse is our feelings of powerlessness, but our attention to the flesh. Remember what Paul said in Romans 8:7? He said a mind set on the flesh is not capable of keeping God’s law. When you experience a relapse in your life it is because something has focused your attention on the flesh, and a person focused on the flesh is not capable of controlling themselves. The fact that you relapsed is not something you could help, it is going to happen, it is a truth of God. What we have to do is recognize when our attention is being focused on the flesh and redirect that attention to the Spirit. The problem is many times we don’t recognize when this is happening. We may have disconnected from the matrix and reduced our attention to the flesh a thousand fold, but we must still be on guard for the many other circumstances in life that focus us on the flesh. In my example above just having a wife is in some ways focused on the flesh. Paul said he wished all were given the gift of celibacy as he was, so we could focus on nothing but God’s work. But not all men were given the gift of celibacy and must divert our attention to the earthly concerns of taking care of and pleasing our mates. But even when our attention must be focused on earthly matters we can still frame those circumstances in a Spiritual way. We need to keep ourselves constantly in line with God’s Spirit if we are to avoid relapsing, but if you do relapse recognize it is not your fault and don’t beat yourself up about it. Just recognize the source and cause, and go on with your walk with the Lord in the Spirit.

And finally I want to talk to you about the amount of time it takes you to get back on track. My definition of recovery has changed over the last year. I’ve had so many times in my life of great joy thinking I had finally beaten this thing, only to find myself back at square one. I began to wonder when a person could truly say they had won over their addiction. I don’t believe like some that once an addict always an addict. But I can see how that may seem true. I’ve heard of men going three or four years without a failure and then, do to some circumstance out of their control, they are confronted with pornography once again, and they end up right back where they started, addicted. When failure can seem to strike you at any moment, and your relapse can be so strong you wonder if you are ever going to get back, addiction seems like it will be a life long struggle. But here is why I think what I have learned is different, and has caused me to question the once an addict always an addict belief.

Recovery is not about how free you feel. It is not even about how spiritual you feel. It is about how you react, when through no willful act of your own, you are confronted once again with pornography. When you’ve been “sober,” will say, from pornography for a year and you go to the bathroom in a book store, and their on the floor next to the toilet is a pornographic magazine, and you can throw it in the trash without looking at it, I would say you are no longer an addict. When you go to the mail box and a “Victoria Secrets” catalog is there and you can pitch it in the trash without looking through it, you have recovered from your addiction. Only when we can see the lie and understand the truth about pornography can we do what I’ve just described. If your recovery is based on blocking pornography, whether that is with software or accountability partners, recovery will last only as long as your lack of exposure lasts. But when you know the truth, it can last a life time.

That doesn't mean relapses won’t happen, but the cause is totally different and is manageable. It may take you a day or even a week to recognize what is driving your desire, but at least you know where to start looking and how to deal with it. Blocking type cures though when relapse occurs are much more difficult and can take months, even years to get back to sobriety. You have no idea where to go or what to do; there is a sense of hopelessness that only drives you further into your addiction. And I would say most just don’t seek help a second or third time. We may think these ways of dealing with the problem are working, but I suspect it is the other-way-around. We can experience the euphoria of recovery through these other methods and programs because we have experienced, for some of us the first time in our lives, a time in life without this sin. But when we know the truth about what causes our addiction we can not only experience the euphoria for a short time, but we can sustain it for a lifetime.

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Having integrity is not what you may have thought. Have you ever heard this definition of integrity? “Integrity is about being the same person when people aren’t looking as when they are.” In other words do you act the same way in private as you do in public? This had long been my definition of integrity, but a couple of nights ago that definition underwent a major overhaul.

The problem with the public, private definition is that it smacks of “people pleasing”. It isn’t about the internal, it is about the external. Now you may say I don’t get that from the definition. But when you’re a people pleaser, as I once was, you know exactly what I’m talking about. It is all about how you appear to people. The subtle connotation of the definition is that people and their opinion of you should be the motivation for your actions. Don’t believe it? Let’s say that you are a complete jerk, and you are a jerk when people are looking, as well as when they aren’t. By the definition above you would have to say this man is a man of integrity, right? But we know that isn’t what’s meant by this definition, we know what is meant is that our actions should be acceptable to people, both publicly and privately.

A few days ago though I had this definition turned on its head. I came to realize that integrity is about doing things and saying things that may not be acceptable to people. Look at Jesus life. He ate with sinners. Not acceptable to the Religious. But he didn’t care what the religious people thought, he did it anyway. Today we like the self-righteous of Jesus day would advise against such behavior and use integrity as a reason for our advice. You need to consider your integrity, we would say, “What would people think if they knew the kind of company you kept?” In other words we need to be concerned about how we appear to people. This revelation came to me as I was coming home with some friends from a bar where we had been to hear a band. Just a few years ago there is no way I would go to a bar for fear of how it would look. But as God has helped me overcome my people pleasing I have been able to go places I never would have considered before.

I wasn’t sure when I accepted this invitation just how I would feel about it. But I actually enjoyed myself. If there is anything I could say about the people and the band at this bar it would have to be they were real. No pretentiousness about whom or what they were. As I sat there I thought this is what it means to have integrity, to be real, to be yourself no matter where you are. I was just as much a Christian at that bar as I was on a Sunday morning. And I can’t tell you how God’s Spirit filled me that night as I thought about for the first time I didn’t care what people thought of me. I didn’t care what the people at the bar thought of my Christianity, and I didn’t care what Christians would think of me for being there. I knew who I was and I was that person. And the most exciting part is that I knew God loved me and I was starting to love myself because I was being myself, regardless of what people thought. I can hear though the accountability partner believing Christians, and their cynical beliefs about a man’s ability to have integrity, warning of the dangers of such actions. But I don’t care anymore what they think. Men are capable of integrity and that’s all there is to it. That lie and its inevitable attitudes are of no concern to me anymore.

Before God started working on me and my people pleasing I would have been ashamed of my Christianity at a bar. I wasn’t anymore. But hear is the real kicker to the story. Not only was I not ashamed of my Christianity at this bar, I had also began loosing my shame of faults and sins around Christians. Again this flipping of the definition of integrity occurred. I began to realize that I didn’t care what Christians thought of me either. All my work to make pornography an important issue in the church had not won me a lot of friends. My sin for a long time kept me from working in this area. But I had come to a place now I didn’t care what “Christians” thought of me either; just as I didn’t care what non-Christians thought. So I may offend some people by saying they are being negligent in their duties to shepherd God’s flock and that some of the things the church is teaching are not scriptural. Jesus again did not shy away from offending the religious either. Being a man of integrity is not about being acceptable to people in public and private as much as it is about being unacceptable in public and private. Being a man of integrity is about being a rebel. Something I always thought of myself as, and frankly think every Christian should. Never though had I linked being a rebel to having integrity. But here it was staring me in the face and I loved it. I have accepted God’s call to be a rebel. Have you?

“People pleasing” is a part of being an addict I believe. It is a way of acting out in private what you wished you could do in public; which is to exert your power. What I mean is that we as pornography addicts want power. But we are misguided in the area we have chosen to exert that power. When you loose your people pleasing tendencies though along with your addiction you find a kind of power you always dreamed of having; the power to be a rebel in the face of this society, the power to be yourself. It really is the call to be a prophet for God in the tradition of the greatest prophet of all, Christ. Who didn’t care one iota what people thought of Him. He if anything was the antithesis of a “people pleaser” and an absolute inspiration to me in this area of His life. Once you find freedom from pornography you may also find yourself being called to be a prophet. Accept it and run with it. God needs more people in this world that aren’t afraid of being themselves and proclaiming the truth whether it be outside the church or in it.

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What causes addiction? I’m no psychologist or psychotherapist by any means, but I can tell you my personal experience and opinion. I believe my addiction was caused by my early exposure to pornography. I talked to my mother recently and she thinks I was more like nine or ten, than eleven, when I was exposed to pornography. That experience at a young age changed me. It changed the way I thought about women, it changed my fantasy life, it even, I would say, changed my physiology. It changed how I reacted to women in a physiological way, with feelings of anxiety and fear. Everything from that point on was about sex. But there is more to it than this.

I was reading a book recently by Jean Kilbourne entitled “can’t by my love: How advertising changes the way we think and feel.” She makes this observation about addiction and advertising, “Advertising doesn’t cause addictions. But I will argue throughout this book that advertising, an enormously important part of our culture, contributes mightily to the climate of denial in which relationships flounder and addictions flourish.” I would add that not only does it add to our denial, but it perpetuates addiction. It feeds the fire of addiction. What I found was when I disconnected from this cultures influence was that the motivation, the compulsions subsided.

We have to realize that if anything in this world could be said to focus our attention on the flesh it would have to be advertising. Advertising is about nothing but the flesh, and a mind set on the flesh cannot please God. A mind set on the flesh has no self-control. I often get the response from people when I say we need to disconnect from this world’s media, that I don’t watch much TV. But it is not a matter of how much, it is a matter of do you understand what the media is doing to you those few hours a week you do watch. I’ve told you my testimony and it only took one news program and a basketball game to cause those feelings of lust to return. Now that I know what is going on, I know the issues of true beauty, the desire for power and how the matrix drives that desire I can be exposed to it without influence. But before that I couldn’t. And even now knowing what I know I do not take it lightly that the brightest minds in persuasion are behind those commercials you don’t think are affecting you. Billions of dollars of research, polling, production costs and psychology are behind those commercials you are watching.

The more I learn about the media the more I learn of its power. You may have thought TV was for airing programs. But it really is for collecting products, “you,” to be sold to advertisers. Did you ever wonder why the media is turning more and more to young hip programs and not to issues that affect the older generation? Because the young hip have the money and all that matters when it comes to producing programs for TV is to generate an audience that is beneficial to an advertiser. Just look at all the kids programs today that are product motivated. Advertisers found out how influential kids are on there parents buying habits and look at the results. It also makes the poor, the minorities and the rural folks invisible when it comes to TV programs. They don’t have as much buying power as the young successful city dwellers. Think about it. Corporate America is not dumb when it comes to were to spend its money. Advertising does work and the fact we think it doesn’t is to their advantage. It may not cause addiction, but it definitely perpetuates it.

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How do we gain self-control? This is really the central issue when it comes to addiction isn’t it? How do we gain control of ourselves? The church for the most part has taken the avenue of accountability partners. By that I mean having someone in our lives that will hold us accountable for your actions. But accountability partners never worked for me. I know many men that this avenue of bring about self-control hasn’t worked either, but the church doesn’t offer much more help than this. I tried twelve step programs as well and found some gain of control by learning all the ways to break the sexual cycle etc., but it was inevitable that sooner or later I was going to come into contact with the matrix’s form of beauty and be back to square one. Some psychologist, secular and Christian, will tell you that shame is what is driving you to this behavior and if you could just get rid of your shame you would find self-control. But although shame is a part of addiction it is not what sets us free to manage our actions. At least it didn’t for me. Some say the truth will set you free, but never quite manage to deliver us from our compulsions. So how do we gain self-control?

I remember reading the list of the fruits of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22,23 and coming across self-control as being one of those fruits. To tell you the truth it really irritated me, because I felt I had the Spirit, but I didn’t have self-control. It was a puzzle that had no answer. How could Paul say self-control was a fruit of the Spirit and say in Romans that “We do the very things we do not want to do.” It seemed like a total contradiction.

I really though had no idea how the Holy Spirit produced all these fruits. I guess I just thought they magically appeared in our life once we became Christians. Think about it though, what is one of the most important roles of the Holy Spirit in our lives? Isn’t it to be a guide into all the truth? How then does the Spirit produce self-control? He does it by leading us to the truth that will allow us to exhibit self-control in our lives. But what was that truth I was missing? This is what nearly drove me mad most of my Christian life. What was the truth I was missing that would allow me to bear the fruit of self-control?

Look at what Paul says in Romans 8:5 “For those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are of the Spirit the things of the Spirit.” First off how can we as Christians say we are setting our minds on the things of the Spirit when we constantly let the matrix influence us through its media? It literally blows my mind that the church is not more outspoken when it comes to how our minds are being set on things of the flesh through the media. Even people that are not Christians realize how we are being destroyed by the matrix’s messages of sexuality, violence, greed, consumerism, etc.. But the church seems totally unaware of this fact. I know if you asked them they would say they believe we are being influenced by the media. But what are they doing about it, what are they teaching about it? So let me say it if the church wont, stop watching the worlds media; stop watching its programs, its advertisements, its news, its entertainment, its sports, its talk shows, its billboards, stop listening to its songs, its jingles, its morning jocks, its late night talking heads. There is a reason they call it “American Idol.” If you want self-control in your life that comes from the Spirit of God, the first thing you must do is disconnect from the matrix’s influence. This seems so obvious to me now it shouldn’t need to be said, but it does. This world’s media is the most influential thing one could imagine turning our head’s toward the flesh and we must stop its influence on us if we desire self-control.

Let’s read a little further with Paul. Romans 8:6-8, “For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace, because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so; and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.”

First thing to notice is the source of my irritation at Galatians. A mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God. I was irritated with God’s word because it wasn’t working, but it wasn’t working because my mind was set on the flesh. The second thing to notice here is that Paul is talking about self-control. And he says a person who has set their mind on the flesh is not capable of self-control. If you continue to let the matrix set your mind on the things of the flesh you will not be able to control yourself. Bottom line. I don’t care what counseling you have gotten, what programs you are in or have been in, what truth’s you think you know, you will not be able to control yourself if you do not set your mind on the Spirit and not the flesh. This is one reason I am so against accountability partners because they in a very subtle way set the mind on the flesh and not the spirit. But we must realize the media is the most influential thing in our life setting our minds on the flesh. Isn’t it? So how can we ignore this? It is beyond me.

Now for the second thing absolutely essential when it comes to self-control is the truth. This is how the Spirit produces His fruit of self-control in us, by leading us to the truth. We just couldn’t see it before because our minds were set on the flesh, but once you check out of the matrix you will be able to see it.

I want to start this explanation by telling you a riddle. There was a father and his son traveling down a dark country road during a terrible rain storm. As they were driving along they came upon a sharp curve in the road and the father lost control of the car. The car skidded off the road and slammed into a tree, instantly killing the father. His son however was taken to a local hospital were if he had surgery he would most likely survive his injuries. As the boy was laying in the emergency room the surgeon walks in and says, “I can’t operate on this boy he is my son.” How can this be when the father was killed in the accident? The boy has no step-fathers either. Take a few minutes and think about this riddle. I have yet had anyone solve it that has not heard it before, yet the answer is amazingly simple.

I tell this riddle because riddles are a perfect example of how Satan deceives us. Riddles are only riddles because the truth that could solve them is hidden from us. Pornography could be considered a riddle as well, because there is lie in it that has been hidden from us keeping us from finding the answer to our self-control problem. But it is not just any truth that will set us free, it is a specific truth. Just as I could tell you about hospitals, surgery procedures and emergency room policies and you still wouldn’t be any closer to solving my riddle of the surgeon, so many truths have been laid out to solve the riddle of pornography with no effect. And that is the point I want to make in this blog. There is a specific truth that solves the problem of pornography, the truth about true beauty, the truth about power, the truth about the matrix’s influence on us. We can talk all day about Christ forgiveness, the omnipresence of God, about shame, about sexual cycles, about any number of things, but until we talk about the truth that unlocks the riddle we are not going to find freedom. That is why I think my book is so important. Because it is the truth that will set you free. It solves the riddle by revealing the lie. This is how the Holy Spirit has given me the fruit of self-control.

The answer by the way to the riddle is that the surgeon was the boy’s mother. Can you see though how talking about, hospitals or emergency departments or surgical techniques would not have helped you solve this riddle, though all that information may have been very true. But if I would have talked to you about how women are making advances into jobs once held only by men, it would have made the answer quite obvious. This is how it is with pornography. A lot of truth is being thrown at the problem, just not the right truth. The truth is the only thing capable of giving us the fruit of self-control.

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