I struggled on and off with looking at porn for 40 years. When the internet and the phone in my pocket made it easy to access porn at any time, it did not take long for me to become addicted.
My addiction was uncovered because I was accused of having an affair with another woman in the church. I was so sick of myself and my absolute failures to stop. I was ready to reveal everything to my wife and our four adult kids and put everything into God’s hands. If the pieces could be put back together again, it would have to be Him doing it.
That was 14+ years ago. My wife and I celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary and I now work full-time running 180 Ministries. We are touching the lives of over 3,000 Christian men in 56 countries around the world.
The Most Important Lesson I’ve Learned
It did not take me long to realize that if I was going to recover from my sex addiction, I needed help. A lot of help.
The lesson I have learned and taught over and over again is: recovery must happen in community.
Put another way, a lone sheep is a dead sheep!
I know there is deep shame and fear gripping the heart of a sex and/or porn addict. You fear that if anyone finds out what you are really into, they will reject you and view you as a pervert or worse. I had those fears for 8+ years and I was the Senior Pastor of a church. I was so sickened by my sexual sins that I withdrew further and further into my dark isolation and believed there was no way out.
But there was away out for me and there is for you as well. Please understand that it will take time and a lot of work, but I truly believe that God has healed me of my addiction. However, I can only remain free by doing the work I need to do every day to maintain my purity by the power of the Spirit and the help I receive from my support teams.
This is going to be a three-part article on the absolute necessity of being part of a support team if you are going to begin to experience transformation by the Spirit and freedom from sexual sin.
Why do I need a support team?
The first part of this series will answer the question: “Why do I need a support team?”
I know why that question needs to be answered. We would much prefer learning how to deal with this issue, getting a little counseling, and perhaps joining a men’s group at our church. Those are good steps in the right direction but extremely inadequate and will not solve the issues involved.
We would love for God to heal us and just keep it between us and Him. The problem is that God wants all Christians to live in community and finding strength from one another to deal with the problems of life. We underestimate the size of the problem and overestimate our ability to stop.
How long have you been trying to stop and yet have not stopped? Perhaps we should learn from the Bible what God suggests for all Christians to do.
Why do we need community? I mean our culture has been taking us in the opposite direction for decades. We want independence. We do not want to depend on anyone.
We all need to know that we as Christians are in a battle–a very real and demanding battle. This is because we all have three enemies. If we were living in the Shire with Bilbo Baggins, then no worries. However, we do not. This fallen world we live in is more like Mordor and there are enemies afoot.
Enemy 1 – Our Sin Nature: We have a sin nature living inside of us which the Bible calls the flesh. It is where our evil desires reside. It was rotten to the core when we were saved and will remain that way until we die. So, we have an internal enemy which loves to lead us into sin.
Enemy 2 – The Enemy Around: We are told in Ephesians 6 that we do not do battle with flesh and blood, but with demonic forces of evil in our fallen world. We cannot see them, but they can influence us and teach us their lies.
Enemy 3 – A Fallen World: We live in a fallen world where we now have access to porn and sexual sin almost anytime and anywhere. If we want sex, we can just look up or hook up. Opportunity is all around us and there is always the last resort of going into the adult bookstore in our mind’s memory banks.
So, we have an enemy within, an enemy around us, and we are behind enemy lines. This is our everyday spiritual and physical reality. If we remain in isolation, we will be an easy target and we will be controlled by our flesh.
That is exactly why we need to be on a team of others who can help us. We are not meant to live an isolated life. We are to be with other believers where we can love one another and help one another–confessing our sins to one another and ministering to each other.
Think about it–even God is a small group! God exists as Father, Son and Spirit. Jesus never lived alone but had at least the twelve disciples or Peter, James, and John, with Him day and night.
In the next article I will cover how to find the appropriate small group, one that will be a place for you to heal and help others to heal as well.
180 Ministries currently has 12 Online Support Teams running. Stop by our website to learn when they’re scheduled and how they work.
By God’s grace I have been privileged to start a whatsapp based ministry that is helping people overcome sexual brokenness (pornography, masturbation and illicit sex addiction).
We are learning a lot from Covenant Eyes and most articles posted by John Doyle(180). We have been able to distribute FREELY many pdf books and videos from Covenant Eyes and other ministries.
We are also having a small physical support group that we are running…hopefully it will grow. I find that the area of sexual brokenness is not getting adequate attention in the church here in Africa yet there are a lot of issues that are affecting the church due to the challenges of high speed internet and technological gadgets which are opening more avenues to sexual sin.
We hope our ministry will grow too.
We have been blessed by the ministries in the Western world and we hope God will use us to minister into the Third World.(Which is sadly catching up on the vices available in the internet)