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How I Broke My Sexual Addiction
It has been brought to my attention that this testimony focuses on religion. My hope is that everyone will find benefit from my story, however, the focus of this testimony is on Christians struggling with pornography. I have written this to share with others who are experiencing the same struggles as I have gone through. I believe that anyone can experience the same benefits that I have, but Christians struggling with pornography will be able to identify with my spiritual struggles as well as the battle to overcome pornography.
Around the age of 10, a childhood friend of mine found several large boxes of pornographic magazines. His older brother stored them in his house while he was away at college. Soon all the boys in the neighborhood had a stash of these magazines. At the time I thought this was a great discovery. It was not until many years later that I would find out that I was laying the foundation that my adult life would be built on. I accepted Christ at the age of 13. I desired to know God and decided to put the pornography out of my life. Unfortunately, I found that all those years I was not in control of pornography, but I was submitting to it and it began to control me. It wasn’t until I decided to leave it behind that I discovered just how strong of a habit this had become. My pornography addiction was a habit bigger than I. Looking back, I believe that there is something about exposing a young, developing mind to pornography that ingrains it and opens the door to an unhealthy obsession. It is hard to describe feelings and passions I struggled with, but I’ll try to give a glimpse of the war that was taking place inside.
I was determination to leave pornography behind me and a million times I made the commitment to never return. The craving for pornography had become my master. When the desire for pornography called, I would have to answer. It was as if my mind was sucked into a fog of desire so that the only thing I could think about was getting my ‘fix’. When that fog would over take me, it did not matter where I was or who I was with, I began to look for an opportunity to withdraw and enter into that pornographic fantasy world again. I could never break away for more than a few weeks. It was as if there were chains on my mind. I could only go so far before I would be pulled back. I can remember one time when I was reading my Bible and suddenly the fog of desire seemed to engulf me. I put down the Bible and began my quest to obey my desires.
I became very frustrated. I wanted to get this out of my life, but pornography was in control. I would binge on pornography for days or weeks at a time until I was so sick of it I couldn’t stand it any longer. Then I would face the real world again and feel ashamed of what I had become. I did not feel worthy of God’s grace and I felt like God had rejected me. Eventually I would repent and begin to seek God again. I would begin to grow spiritually and feel like I was making great progress. I would feel like I had overcome my addiction. Then the desires would return and the next thing I knew, I was jumping headfirst back into pornography again. My spiritual life was a roller coaster ride. I would seek forgiveness, commit to never go back, I would see strong growth in my life and then I would fall and sink down into the mire again. I felt so polluted that I would run from God. Because I felt like God was angry with me, I would drift farther away from Him until one of life’s events would drive me back to Him. Then I would start the cycle over again and each time it got harder to come back to God. At one point in my life, I was so distant from God that I did not actively attend church for 2 – 3 years.
I thought marriage would change things. It did not. If anything, it compounded the problem because not only did I still have these overwhelming desires, but also I began to live a double life. Pornography is not a desire for sex. It is a pollution of sex. It is like comparing an apple to a rotten apple. It is a corrupted version of what God created as good. Sex was created by God to be enjoyed in the design of marriage. Sex alone cannot provide true intimacy. It is only a small piece of the amazing institution of marriage. When pornography pollutes the gift God created, it becomes harmful. Like a rotten apple, pornography gives a rotten-sweet aroma that can be deceptive. In reality, pornography barely resembles the gift of sex it attempts to mimic. When a person consumes it, the sweet fades into desire to fill a craving that can’t be satisfied. We can get to the point we are sick of it and therefore temporarily cease from desiring it, but it doesn’t satisfy. This is why the progression is always to hard core pornography. Because it can’t satisfy, it gets harder to get that same fix and the need for harder and harder porn is almost always the result unless there is some restraining factor in your life.
Now that I was married and found that my problem was not a need for sex, I quickly returned to my porn habit. I began to seek opportunities to be home alone or I would stay up late at night so I could secretly gratify this desire. Because I was secretive, my wife knew something was wrong but she did not know what it was. This bred a lot of mistrust into our marriage. I would become angry if she tried to get inside my world because I knew she would not accept what was going on. Our marriage had a lot of tension and the damage took years to repair. This breakdown of trust and communication often destroys marriages. By the grace of God, your marriage survived. I spent money that could not be accounted for and I had become a chronic liar. After the fact I looked back and saw that because I lied so regularly to cover up my secret, lying became a habit that effected every other area of my life. My wife found things that tipped her onto what was going on, but I always had a ‘good excuse’ and an explanation that cleared my obvious guilt. Deep down she knew I was lying, but fortunately, it is hard for a woman to let go of the hope she has in her husband. Once that hope is gone, very few marriages survive. I was discontented in my marriage and unsatisfied with my life. It is amazing how one area of my life could directly impact every area of my life.
After almost 3 years without any relationship at all with God, I began to see the emptiness inside. I hated what I had become. After all the deception, lies and secrecy, I didn’t know who I was anymore. I was driven by this obsession and I was lost in the tangle of hypocrisy I had created. It was at this time I changed employers. I was placed on a project that did not require me to begin for several days. I was at the lowest point of my life, so I decided to take a walk in a wooded park near work to pray. I spent several hours there and I tried to pray, but I had grown so hard and so distant, that I didn’t feel like God was listening and that He was a million miles away. I sorted through my thoughts and tried to express them to God. I can remember asking God why I could not gain control of any area of my life. I left for home feeling like I didn’t accomplish anything. The longing in my heart drove me to return to the woods again. The next day, I returned to the park and spent several hours trying to pray but spent most of my day sorting through my thoughts and longing to change. I came back the next day as well. My heart ached for God. I wanted to have a consistent relationship with Jesus Christ and not that up and down lifestyle that frustrated me for the 20 years that I had been trying to leave this addiction.
This day would be the day that my life would change. For the first time in my life, I was actually broken. I realized that my life desperately needed to change and that I was powerless to change. I realized that all my life I had been committing to change, but my problem wasn’t commitment, but a need to surrender. I realized that my commitment had to be based on a heart that was surrendered to Christ and dependent on Him to equip me to overcome. Without ‘Christ who strengthens me’ my commitment was meaningless. On this day, as I continued in prayer, it was as if heaven opened up and God poured His power into my soul. Words cannot accurately describe what I saw that day. It was as if God poured Himself into every fiber of my being. I felt the desires fall like chains from my mind. I had been set free. It was as though I was experiencing God’s word flow through me. My mind felt like it was overflowing. I am not a charismatic or experiential type Christian. This entire experience was completely foreign to me.
Though I knew it was real, I still had to test it to know for sure. When I left, I got a concordance and a Bible and began to do word searches to see if the passages that came to mind could be found in scripture. I was amazed to find some of the passage almost verbatim. Two of scriptures that had the greatest impact on me was found in Romans 4:5, "to him who does not work but believes on Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness". And Isaiah 61:10, "I will greatly rejoice in the LORD, My soul shall be joyful in my God; For He has clothed me with the garments of salvation, He has covered me with the robe of righteousness". What an amazing Savior I have. My forgiveness is freely given and I became righteous because I was ungodly and trusted in Christ who died for my ungodliness. Because I trust and surrender to Him, God covers me with His salvation and wraps His righteousness around me like a robe. I walked away a free man. Free from the chains that bound me and free from my debt to God. I was cleansed by God and not by my own efforts. The because I don’t have my own righteousness ( which falls short of God’s requirements ), but I have God’s righteousness, I have the right and the privilege to walk with God and be 100 percent justified and I have the confidence that God accepts and loves me.
Even after all this time, I am still drawing out what I experienced that day. I searched and began to memorize scriptures. I began to prove what God has shown me through His word. Personal experiences mean nothing unless it complies with God’s word and changes our life by directing us to the upward call of God. I saw first hand the grace of God and it has changed my life. I am now satisfied completely and my marriage is better than I ever imagined possible. My marriage did not reverse directions over night, but when my life was changed, I was equipped to lead my family into the direction God is calling us.
After several months, God began to deal with me to get things right with my wife. I knew this meant I had to open up my closet of skeletons and confess what I had been doing all those years. I wrote my story out from beginning to end and sat down with her and shared it. Finally all the questions she had were answered. She had already seen the drastic change in my life but this was a necessary step toward healing. It was a tearful time and it was hard for me to open up and let her see into the world I had carefully protected for so long. It still took a lot of time to heal the wounds, but the benefit was and is well worth it. What is ironic is that our relationship has more satisfaction now than all the fantasies ever hinted toward. Porn can try to mimic the physical, but it is only a mirage. Real intimacy satisfies the emotional, spiritual, intellectual and physical needs of a marriage. Pornography robs a marriage of all these areas and saps the life out of a marriage. It may give the illusion of satisfaction, but over time it deceptively drains the life out of marriage. If sex is all a person focuses on, there can not be intimacy. Pornography, like a fermented apple, may seem make a man drunk with its rotten-sweet taste, but over time it will become a disease. The strength of this disease is blindness to reality and a loss of understanding as to what true intimacy is all about.
Another problem with pornography or anything that takes place of the good that God has designed for us to enjoy is that it can’t satisfy. You can gratify yourself, but you can’t satisfy yourself. Only God can satisfy. By gratification I mean that you can fill your desires to the saturation point, you may even get to the point of being sick of your desires. You can get to the point where you quit desiring, but you can’t satisfy yourself. God is the One who satisfies. It is God who gives us to drink from the river of His pleasures when we trust under the shadow of His wings. (Psalm 36:8). No one was created to be self-sufficient and no one can be fulfilled outside of God’s will. When we try to fill the void in our lives with anything other than the God who created us, we are forcing a square peg into a round hole. You can make it fit, but you can never fill in those gaps. It’s the same way with God. You can never fill the spot God designed for Himself. You can fill your life with pornography and any number of other things, but you can’t fill in the gaps. You can cover them over, but the empty spaces will always rise to the surface as the memory of the pleasure fades. When the pleasure fades, you will either feel the emptiness or you will be driven to find something new to cover it up again. If a person gets to the point when they grow weary of chasing pleasure, they will either seek God or be overcome by their emptiness.
Maybe that is where you are. Maybe, like me, you are sick and tired of chasing for something that will fulfill the longing. How many times have you said, after this fix, I will be satisfied? Or after this, I am going to change my life. Are you sick and tired of being sick and tired? God does not hate you and doesn’t reject you. It is important to realize that God loves each person and declares the value of your soul to be greater than the whole world. God also said He will judge and avenge every sin. For those who believe on Jesus Christ, God already has avenged our sins. That is why the Bible says "it pleased the Lord to bruise Him (Jesus on the cross)". It pleased God because it paid the debt to sin so that each one of us can have forgiveness through faith in Christ. Without receiving this gift of forgiveness, we are still under the condemnation of our sins. Only God can forgive sins and He did so by satisfying His justice and avenging the sins by the shedding of His own blood. He took your judgement by dying in your place. When you surrender your sins, lifestyle and failures in exchange for His righteousness and holiness, the Bible says that you become the righteousness of God in Christ. You become as justified and righteous before God as Jesus Christ, not because of anything you have done, but because of the completed work of the cross of Christ.
When a person accepts Jesus as their Savior, God literally puts His Spirit within us and transforms our lives from the inside out. No longer will you be driven by your desires, but you now have the option to be led by the Spirit. If this is what is missing from your life, I encourage you to allow Jesus Christ to take your sins and transform your life. If you want God’s free gift of forgiveness, just say this simple prayer. These are not magic words, this is a guide to putting your focus on surrendering your life to Christ. Praying and surrendering by faith is what is important. Faith is simply putting your trust in Christ and proving your trust by acting on His word. By faith, say this prayer:
Lord Jesus, I know that I am a sinner. I ask you to forgive my sins. I give you my sins, failures and lifestyle and by faith I receive your righteousness into my life. I open the door of my heart and invite you in. Please be my Lord and my Savior and I will serve you with my life. Amen.
Eddie Snipes
Exchanged Life Outreach
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