Answering God’s Call for Purity
Our friend, X, bravely shares how she is among the 20% of Christian women who struggle with pornography, and how her faith has helped her to deal with this addiction.
Although I’ve sung this song since I was a child, it has never before moved me like it did recently. Listen please, if you will.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSqMiCu-CcU
We, as Christians, think that we need to be a certain way to be in line with the life that Christ led, but it doesn’t change the fact that we are also human, having the same temptations as any other person. One challenge I find amongst believers and non-believers alike has to do with transparency, being completely open with one another about the types of sin we struggle with. We leave these sins in the dark where no light can shine through thinking that we can handle it on our own. Sometimes, we think that if no one knows about our darkest sins, we won’t need to repent of it.
Last week was truly a blessed week for me. God downloaded all kinds of wisdom to me, some having to do with repentance, acceptance, temptation, grace, the list goes on. For a little over a year now, I’ve been clean of my addiction for sex. That’s not to say that I haven’t been and am not tempted every single day by it. With the strength and power of God, I am continually given the courage to say ‘No’.
The world is our enemy folks. It teaches us to idolize/value things that are meaningless to God. With that being said, I found myself caught in another dark addiction that I was ashamed of, one that went hand in hand with my previous one: pornography. With giving up sex last year, turning to pornography was my feed. In society, we generalize pornography to be an addiction amongst males, not females. But pornography addiction is quite real amongst females and I am now not ashamed to admit that I was one of them. I kept it hidden because I wanted to not only cling on so tightly to what I felt was the next best thing after giving up sex, but also because I was ashamed of it.
I continuously and stubbornly chose a path apart from God, which ultimately led into a path of destruction. In a series of events within the year, God gave me the confidence to be transparent about my addiction without any worry about others judging me. And with His grace, He reminded me that I was His beloved, His creation and that He loved me just as I was. That He called me chosen, for His kingdom, unashamed to call me His own. He gave us a way out of our destructive paths through the sacrificial death of His Son so that we could have a life with Him.
When I think of how much God gave for us to be with Him, I am ashamed of being a broken sinner, not being willingly transparent with Him. How transparent will you be with your Father?
“All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure” (1John 3:3, NIV). If you are struggling with pornography, please visit Pure Life Ministries to learn how you can get support in dealing it.
