For years, I believed I was doing a good job of controlling my life. But there was always one thing I just couldn’t get under control—my pornography addiction.

No matter how hard I tried to control my wayward sexuality, I always felt like it controlled me.

Believe me, I tried everything to control it. Sometimes I’d do great for a week or two, but as soon as I began to think I was getting my sin under control, I’d immediately fall. No matter what I tried, nothing worked for long.

So I kept looking for new answers. I looked for new books to tell me what I needed to do to overcome this terrible habit. I looked for new sermons that would give me the steps I needed to take to get free. I searched everywhere for the missing secret of how I could effectively control my sin, but I never found it.

I was asking the wrong question, though.

I kept asking, “What do I need to do to control my sin?” But the reality is, there was nothing I could do. I couldn’t win this fight with my own power. If I were ever going to find freedom from my pornography addiction, I would need to look outside of myself for the answer.

In order to find true freedom, you must give up
on your own ability to control your sin.

The only way any of us will ever find lasting freedom from our pornography habit—or any sin for that matter—is to reach out to Jesus for help. You simply aren’t strong enough to fight sin on your own. None of us are. That’s because all sin is a spiritual battle with a very real adversary who will choke you out if you try to fight him one-on-one. But remember, greater is He that is in you than He that is in the world. So if you’re trusting in the superior power of Jesus to help win the battle for you, your victory has already been won.

It isn’t easy for us to accept this. We don’t want to admit we need help. Heck, we don’t even like asking for directions. There’s something in us as men that makes us want to fight our battles solo—especially these deeply personal battles. We want to believe we are strong enough to control our sin on our own. We all want to be a spiritual Rambo.

If you’re being honest with yourself, though, being told you can’t control your sin probably isn’t that big of a shock to you. The fact that you’re reading this book means you are already beginning to explore your need for outside help. But what happens if you’re at the point where you recognize that you keep failing but you aren’t ready to reach out to Jesus yet?

Chances are, you will keep finding ways to justify your sin—or make excuses for it—until you figure out how to finally get it under control.

You will also be extremely tempted to keep your sin hidden no matter what, which will require you to become an expert at lying to cover your tracks, manipulating others to get your way, and digging yourself out of any mess you end up in.

• Because you lied to your wife and she believed you the previous ten times, you assume you will be able to do it again and again.
• Since you’ve successfully hidden your online behavior for years now, you become extremely confident that no one will find out what you’ve been up to.

These deceitful tactics seem to work well at first, so you’ll likely keep repeating them to keep from being exposed. Eventually, you will start to believe there is no situation too difficult for you to wiggle out of.

If you continue down this path long enough, you will more than likely come to view yourself as invincible. You may still recognize you aren’t doing very well at controlling your sin, but at least you are doing a great job of managing its effect on your life. The longer you believe that lie, the harder it will be for you to recognize your need for outside help.

Which is why everything in your life may appear to be manageable for you right now. But eventually, God will lovingly step in and allow all the hidden crap in your life to hit the fan.

Friends, God loves you too much to sit back and watch you destroy yourself. He isn’t going to allow you to keep wandering into battles you can’t win. He knows your desire for control is hindering you from knowing Him fully and personally. That’s why He will never stop pursuing you, or stripping away anything that gives you a false sense of control in your life, until you reach the end of your rope where you can finally see how incapable you are of controlling your sin on your own.

He wants you to reach a point where you have no choice left but to reach out to Him.

You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope.
With less of you there is more of God and his rule
(Matthew 5:3).

So, let me ask you, is this the year you finally give up on trying to control your own life and trust God to take control instead?

What’s keeping you from letting go of your rope and giving up?

This post was an excerpt from my upcoming book,
10 Lies Men Believe About Porn, available in Spring of 2014.

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