My One Great Sin

  For many years I thought that I had one great sin.  Something I hid, was ashamed of, and didn't tell many people.  This post is about lust and pornography.  I'm not going to get into gross detail about this topic, but if you want to skip this post I completely understand. But this is a topic that affects everyone. It has invaded our culture and effects so many people today.

  I was introduced to pornography in elementary school, probably sometime around fourth grade.  My friend found his dad's playboy magazines. I still remember him pulling them out of his backpack in secret when he brought them to school. Or going over to his house and finding his dad's stash.  In middle school I found it online and was introduced to the playboy channel on TV by a babysitter. 

  It was a secret struggle for years.  I didn't tell my youth pastor, or my high school friends.  I didn't even tell my college friends, even though we were in an accountability prayer group together. It was embarrassing, shameful, I was full of guilt.  Even now as I write this, I still feel that guilt from all those years.

  When I was finally brave enough to open up I felt relief.  Over the years I've talked to pastors, counselors, good friends, my brother, my wife, and at times my church.  It is connected also with my depression.  Depression leads into lust.  Lust leads into depression.  It's a vicious cycle, a Ferris wheel that never stops.

  One of my core longings is for intimacy.  I long to be known, accepted, appreciated, and to find people I can truly trust.  To know people who care about me for who I am.  People that appreciate my unique gifts and talents and personality.  I've struggled with trusting people over the years, but God has put in me a deep desire to find intimacy.  This doesn't just mean sexual intimacy.  But intimacy in the sense of deep friendships, meaningful conversations, sharing of inner thoughts, trusting people.  

  For me, when I get bored, lonely, tired, stressed, hurt, depressed, I go to pornography.  Pornography is cheap intimacy. It is a short cut to feeling loved and appreciated.  To being seen and known.  It is pleasure, a sense of escape and adventure.  It's a puzzle to be solved.  This is the core, deep longing that pornography and lust try to fill: intimacy.

  But it doesn't fill it.  In fact, every Christian guy I've talked to who struggles with this issue says that immediately after he looks, he feels guilty, shamed, and lost.  Satan takes the drive to fill that hole inside of with lust, and then turns it around afterwards into shame and guilt.   

  I think that most men struggle with lust and pornography. While our culture speaks against the belittling and judgement of women, it also thrives on sexual immorality.  TV producers will put in sexual content just to get an MA rating, even though it has nothing to do with the story line.  Clothing lines emphasize more and more of a women's body.  

  Satan knows what he is doing.  Men are visual.  They often get bored.  They are physical as well as sexual beings.  Men get angry, lonely, tired, stressed.  And Satan knows that when men are weakest, they can be tempted, become hooked, and enslaved.  Satan has taken something beautiful that God has made: marital intimacy and distorted it into lust, pornography, adultery, LGBTQ?, polygamy, one night stands, sex outside of marriage, and so much more.

  As a husband and as a pastor I feel immense guilt and shame over this issue in my life.  This will be a life long struggle.  I believe that I've had victories in it as of late, but every time I struggle with even my thought life I feel like I've lost the right to be a pastor.  Because of the junk our church went through two years ago, and almost being fired, I fear being fired.  Whether it's from lust or something else, I still have a fear of someday, for whatever reason, being fired.  It's irrational and unfounded, but Satan uses it in my life to make me fearful.

  I've titled this post "My one great sin" because for years I thought if I could just get over this one thing, if I could just stop doing that, I would arrive.  I would be just about perfect.  That's not even close to true. Yes, lust, pornography, the problem of intimacy are all great in my life.  But, they are part of a web of sin.  I struggle with selfishness, pride, anger, idolatry, boredom, and so many other things.  

  For years I thought the answer was to stop sinning.  That sinlessness, or at least not looking at pornography was the answer and opposite to sinning.  I would pray over Genesis 20:6, where God "kept Abimelech from sinning." And ask God to keep me, stop me, from sinning against him.  But the answer is not perfection, or at least not yet, and not to do this on my own strength.

  The answer ultimately is grace and worship.  Grace is the opposite of sin and pornography, not sinlessness.  I need to realize the amazing grace God has bestowed on me to forgive my past, present, and future sins.  And that every time I sin I am not in danger of losing my salvation or of losing my intimacy with God.  Grace ultimately allows me to have the deepest, best, and rarest kind of intimacy, one with God. 

  The answer is also worship.  I don't have a sin problem, I have a worship problem.  Ultimately, I am playing with desires and idols that can only find their fulfillment in worshiping God.  He is the greater beauty.  He is the greater pleasure.  He is the only one worthy of worship.

  What helps me to stay in God's grace and to continue in worship?  Good habits and hobbies, good friends, accountability partners,  being daily in the Word, the love of my wife, my brother, my church, my savior.  If this is an issue you have struggled with in your life I'd love to help. I believe one of the reasons God has allowed me to have this struggle is to be a help to others and to sympathize with so many other men.  Please reach out.  Don't struggle alone. 

6 Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, 7 casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. 8 Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. 9 Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. 10 And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. 11 To him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen.

- 1 Peter 5:6-11