5 WAYS TO STOP PORN OR SEX ADDICTION: DAY 5 OF FREE PROGRAM

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5 Ways to Stop Porn: Sex/Porn Freedom Day 5

WHAT ACTIVITIES LEAD TO A PORN OR SEX ADDICTION?

Watching the wrong things? Fantasizing about lustful things? What brings you back to the mad cycle? Porn/sex addiction gives only short-term pleasure and it adds destruction that is long-term. This brings the question. Can an addict increase their pleasure in life by going back to porn/sex addiction?

Overindulgence to give illicit pleasure leads to what I call selling our pleasure backward. Example: A drug addict gets extreme pleasure in the early stages of the addiction. But after 20-30 months they see that their pleasure is very short and their pain is constant.

A better example is a person who gives in to lust at every chance in High school or college, then graduates and does the same thing for the next few years with hardly a break. But 3 years later that behavior is not new but the depression is rampant and your joy is gone.

A short time of pleasure you now get when you fall again has been partially or completely overrun by the problems the addiction has created.

STOP PORN OR SEX ADDICTION AND FOCUS ON YOUR PLEASURE FOR THE MONTH

Understanding that you can’t increase your pleasure for the month by going back to porn/sex addiction is important. You can binge and go back to porn/sex and have short-term pleasure. But that is stealing pleasure from your month and selling it backward. Any pleasure you steal now will have to be paid back with interest. That interest is paid as a decreased amount of pleasure later with added pain and destruction.

Find ways to stop that cycle. Many people have prayed thousands of times to turn aggressively from sin. Turn from lustful TV, sinful thoughts, all sin. Pray with fire and your habit will fade. Like Jonah in the Bible, God has a mission for you. Jonah prayed passionately. Pray and succeed like he did.

Philippians 4 says: I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.

Could this mean you can become a rock star or TV star? No. It means that when we follow Christ we begin to increase in joy, then we can do more. We can always improve our day when we do things Jesus way.

WAYS TO STOP A PORN OR SEX ADDICTION: WHAT WOULD JESUS DO

I think He would go after change more aggressively than anyone else. I think He would attack the lust cycle. He would go to war with lust and replace it with love. Porn and sex addiction is empty and meaningless and it kills our joy. Then He might pray to the Father to try to get rid of the confusion and frustration that lust always brings. He would spend time in prayer with the Father, giving Him time to fill his/her mind with new thoughts and habits. Pray, Father, take away this spirit of lust and fill me with the Spirit of Self-control.

One might say, man, He would feel rotten and have all my bad habits. But unlike us, He would never look again to the right or left. He would follow Gods plan with a focus that would not allow Him time to mess up. He would do that because He would know how destructive satans traps are. The more often we treat our recovery the way Jesus would. The quicker we will be totally free.

LEARN WAYS TO STOP PORN OR SEX ADDICTION BY WATCHING WHAT OTHERS DO.

Tom changed his thinking by reading Experiencing God by Henry Blackaby.

Sue is memorizing the principal that pleasure can’t be added by a sex or lust habit. When tempted, she tells herself, if I give in to this temptation, I will not get more pleasure, I will just increase the pleasure now and decrease it later. And that comes with a huge price.

Today, read the Bible, read Christian books which can help you find your purpose. Make your goal today to replace lustful pleasure, which comes with pain, with the pleasure found from helping others around you and trying to bring them joy.

Say twice a day. “Pleasure can’t be increased for the month by going back to sex/porn. Illicit pleasure comes with

added destruction.” Never exaggerate the pleasure of lust. Always focus on the destruction it brings. That thinking will change your life.

Just like in the garden of Eden we have options on things we can think about instead of porn or illicit sex. Think of 5 things you like to do. Now if you focus on how you want to do one or two of those things, your thoughts will change. Next, Jesus will see your focus and effort and He will start to answer your prayers more often.

Leave your guilt behind. When we are sincere about repenting our sins are gone.

HABITS

We hear about skills for quitting: Being content is a great one. Pray about it and practice it – it really helps.

But you can focus on that all week and still fall.

Then we hear about turning aggressively from sin. Pray about it and practice it – it really helps.

But you can focus on that all week and still fall.

My skill for quitting today is to be around people. Church groups, 12 step, chess club, sports, etc. Be active and be around people. Plus, if you quit your addiction and then can’t shine your newfound light to anyone… is that a perfect success?

Pray about being around people and practice it – it really helps.

But you can focus on that all week and still fall.

90% of us try a skill for a while and then move on to some other miracle cure. Instead of doing that, focus on turning those skills into habits because we need a bunch of new habits if we are going to quit.

Tip: Repent fully of all your sin. Then seek the Lord and ask for direction on which skills you should turn into habits first. Then start to form habits that will give you the power to quit.

I use a notebook to plan new habits. I put notes by my TV and computer. I have a specific time for my new habit. I make a decision to do my new habit every day and then do them every day.

Key point: Decide on 2-4 skills that you want to make into habits and get started with those. Every few days add another 1 or 2. Now you can see why you need a notebook (plus, going through the notebook is your reminder of what to do).

Reality: Some will pull this off perfectly. I won’t (yeah I know, I wrote the article). But I am going to try to follow my own advice. And if I mess it up, I will try again.

Reward yourself: Giving yourself a tiny reward when you succeed, will remind you that quitting will give you huge rewards in life.

Action plan: On page one of the notebook have a list of your skills for quitting. We can add to this list all the time. On page 2 are the new habits. When, where and how will we do them.

Have a desired goal – 9 new great habits this month. And have a minimum goal – 3 great new habits.

It takes 66 days to form a new habit. The results can be shockingly good.

Vampire films were the rage 20-30 years ago. In the classic version, you had to invite the dark one in. When you were in your sealed house you were safe unless you invited the dark one in.

When we repent and have a plan for turning from lust we are sealed. But when we look and don’t instantly turn from lust we have allowed the opening.

Every day in every situation we need to focus on keeping our house sealed. We have 2 great reasons for keeping it sealed. #1 to avoid the destruction. #2 to continue to seek an increased blessing in our lives.

Finally, any sin weakens our seal. Sin… takes us away from God’s joy and it forces us to chase fun and pleasure like some zombie in a classic film.

Meditating on scripture strengthens the seal. I am currently up to 12 verses that I meditate on every day in the morning.

Preparing for temptation with prayer strengthens the seal. I have worked so hard on learning the skill of praying, “Father, help me to turn from lust,” that now it is virtually automatic.

A full commitment strengthens the seal. We spend time in Bible study and prayer because of that commitment. We commit to spending a block of time every day at this site because of a full commitment to Christ.

Change always involves sacrifice. God always gives us more than we expect when we make that sacrifice permanently.

Stop Staring

Yesterday I attended my daughter’s high school volleyball tournament. At this event maybe half of the men there certainly were staring incessantly at certain high school hotties. Some of those men were just consistently looking, not straying into full sinful thoughts. So the question is, why do they keep falling later?

Second, we are watching TV and some hottie is wearing shorts. Some men’s eyes stray about 99 times to those legs while attempting to watch the show. I could write about this same exact behavior at the beach and at 100 different places.

I will list four reasons why staring is a problem. #1 it is the opposite of praying without ceasing. #2 it is the exact opposite of worshipping God. #3 it is the exact opposite of praising God. BJU noted: “We are commanded to praise the Lord thirteen times in these six verses. Praising God is not an option; it is an obligation. It is both our delight and our duty. The greatest truth about God is that He is worthy of our praise, and the deepest truth about ourselves is that we have been created to praise Him.” Praising the Lord is a great tool to use for fighting lustful thoughts. #4 If one keeps staring at hottie’s body parts they will flunk the upcoming test.

The upcoming test is… that hottie you see that may cause you to fall into lust. Or, that hottie on TV that is about to show way too much. If you kept staring all week at just about everything… how in the world do you think you can now turn it off or fast forward? In that case, one has already fallen before they fell.

Instead of staring incessantly, we can choose to be working on increasing how much we pray without ceasing, praising, and worshiping. Before you are in your next tempting session, prepare. Take one of these three things, do a Google search, and make a printout of what you are going to do instead of staring.

For example: Increasing in love is a great Christian thing to do. To prepare to break the habit of staring one might print out:

1 Corinthians 16:14 ESV Let all that you do be done in love.

1 John 4:8 ESV Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.

1 Peter 4:8 ESV Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.

Now, when you find yourself tempted to stare yet again, read a verse. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

Next, consider doing a Google search and making printouts of the traits from paragraph three. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

Job 31:1 ESV “I have made a covenant with my eyes; how then could I gaze at a virgin?”

Job never says “gaze with lust” he just says he made a covenant not to stare. If we make a “Covenant with our eyes,” and keep it, we will rarely “Fall before we fall.”

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Thank you for reading day 5 to learn ways to stop porn.

Copyright 2015 © THR Publishing LLC

Index

Day 1: Overcoming cravings

Day2: Is God real?

Day 3: Quitting addiction exercises

Day 4: Getting negative emotions out

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