The Master Healer

Pornography is a vicious master. Even when it’s not around I can recall images in my mind and fantasy is a powerful alternative to porn. I have been striving so hard to find a way out of my chains. I have been “working my program” and been very diligent at it, not perfect, but diligent.

I keep having days I’d best describe as cloudy. Though there are bright rays of hope and peace scattered throughout to keep me moving forward I have also felt dazed by not knowing when I will be free. I struggle because I think that “if I just work the program I’ll be better.”

Recently as I read a book by a man who struggled with porn and masturbation addiction that overcame it, he cited all the efforts he poured out to try and rid his life of the prison of pornography. He struggled for 30 years and felt hopeless though he kept trying.

One day it hit him…the answer wasn’t in “trying to be like Jesus” alone, it was in giving his life over to Jesus! Jesus, he rightly stated, is the only name by which mankind can be saved. Thus, any efforts, no matter how great they are insufficient to deliver us from the slavery and sin of addiction.

Only in Christ as our foundation can we be set free. I have felt that many times, but so often forgotten it as I print out a checklist of all the things that he asked us to do and begin doing them. I get lost in the details and find myself right back in the same trap.

So, here, I’m admitting that I don’t fully understand the great doctrine of Christ, the kind that saves, but I want to and commit now to seek him out until I know him.

Just before my religious missionary service I gave myself to a study of the word of God. It wasn’t in the act itself, but it was in what I was looking for that a temporary deliverance came to me while I served. Sober for a year. Alive in Christ. A Mighty Change of Heart. That’s what I want again. Christ, take my heart and make it pure!