Fear From The Storm

Been a while

2009-03-25T13:33:00.000-07:00

I know it has been a while and realize that any readers I did have probably left months ago. I am not doing this to gain a mass following. I am doing this in hopes that someone out there is going down the same road I am and can relate to my story and find some hope from the constant storm they are living in. It is my prayer that someone will stumble upon this blog and find a God that loves and forgives despite the path they have taken.

For me the last six months have been up and down. But unlike the before instead of taking a step forward and two steps back I have taking several steps forward with only a few set backs and these step backs have been all mental. It seems instead of fighting a porn addiction, I am fighting my attitude. I tend let myself get lazy and let my flesh take over. Lazy in my walk with God, lazy in my family life, lazy in my finances.

On a side note, my wife and I made some strides in our sex life and more specifically our thoughts while having sex. Question for anyone, is there some things I can say/do to let my wife know that I love her and that she is enough for me and I don't want to be with another woman? I try to tell her that my addiction had nothing to do with her but her trust is something I am short on. Even though things are better, I struggle with ways to let her know that she is all I need.

May God bless you as you bless Him with your life!

A Quick Update

2008-11-04T10:57:00.001-08:00

Hi everyone, long time no see. I have been sober since September 22, 2008. My one month came and went and it seems like that month was a real renewing of the mind for me. I am still battling daily. My spirit is constantly under attack and I daily have to pray for strength and guidance. I find myself slowly winning battles here and there. Personally things have been a whole lot better between my wife and I. My attitude has been 100% better. The dark thoughts and mood swings have almost completely stopped. I have been constantly praying for God's spirit to fill me up where there is no room for evil spirits and thoughts.

I have been researching a lot on evil oppression and would love to share my thoughts and notes from these studies, so I plan to be posting about spiritual oppression and the warfare that goes on inside each and everyone of us. I also want to give people strength that struggle with the different spirits like lust, envy, deception, etc.

Pray for me and I daily pray that someone will be encouraged and empowered by my story and keep them from going down the same road I went down.

Mini-Battle Won

2008-10-16T15:50:00.000-07:00

As you can tell from the title of this blog that I daily live in fear from the next storm, the next temptation. We need to pray up so that way we can be prepared. Today I left to go run some errands and when I returned, my wife had left and took the kids to the park with some friends. I found myself smack dab in the middle of a storm. I was home alone with the internet. I prayed and studied the Bible to help keep my mind off of my temptation (its hard to want to look at porn when you have a bible in your hands). God gave me the strength and I resisted. Thank you God! Even though the war is long from being over, I claimed victory today.

Trouble Sleeping

2008-10-13T02:31:00.000-07:00

Well it's 4:30 AM and I have been up since 1:30. I usually don't have trouble sleeping but tonight is different. I have been in a bad place lately. This usually means that I will slip up but I am trying to keep strong. In trying to keep strong, my attitude has been rotten. I am short tempered and very irritable. That also means that me and my wife are fighting. It always seems that when I get like this, I take it out on her. I don't mean to but it seems that I look for things to get mad at. For example, I know the other night she was online talking with some friends from high school, one of them an ex-boyfriend. So I went snooping looking for the message history and she had erased it. So my mind started coming up things possibly talked about and they were not good. First of all I know I should trust her and not snoop, that is my fault. She has never done anything to betray my trust (unlike me). I love her and trust her but I sometimes feel that I am not good enough and she looking for an answer elsewhere. After all, look at what I have put her through.

Self-pity and insecurity sucks. How do you change those feelings of insecurity? How do you feel confident in yourself?

I guess since it almost 5, I will take a shower and go into work early so that way I can then leave early and take a nap :)

Fireproof

2008-10-11T18:48:00.000-07:00

If you haven't seen Firproof, you need to do yourself a favor and see this movie. This movie deals with relationships from every aspect. The main character also has an addiction to porn, so it close to home with my wife and me.

My Recovery Update

2008-10-11T18:36:00.000-07:00

I have a need to discuss my recovery so far. I have been sober since September 22, 2008. It has been both tough and easy at the same time. Daily its a struggle but I can't believe it has been over 20 days. Even though I haven't "acted" out my addiction, perversion still consumes my thoughts. It's a conscience decision to not turn my head or to keep my eyes north. What's tough about lust addiction is that our society is addicted to lust and so there are "triggers" everywhere. TV, commercials, magazines, websites, etc. Sex sells and it's everywhere selling everything. My prayer is the longer I keep from purposely looking at porn and drinking in those images, the cleaner my thoughts will become. Those of you reading this, please say a prayer for me because I pray everyday that people living in bondage and people affected by lust addiction will find peace in God and ultimately deliverance from their addiction and hurt.

A Cancer Inside All of Us

2008-10-08T13:04:00.000-07:00

Lately I have been struggling to find who I am. I have been wondering what is it that God wants me to do with my life. Over the last two months, I feel the need to purge from my life addictions I have been living with. These addictions keep me from reaching my full potential when it comes to God’s plan for my life. My addiction to lust is a given. I need to break free from that bondage but I also am addicted to numerous other equally destructive behaviors. These include self-pity, anger and confrontation. The Bible talks about these:

When you follow the desires of your sinful nature, the results are very clear: sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division, envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and other sins like these. Let me tell you again, as I have before, that anyone living that sort of life will not inherit the Kingdom of God.

Galatians 5:19-21

Sound familiar? Sin is like a cancer, it may only start out in one area of your life but left alone, it spreads and affects other areas of your life. I am very guilty of this. My cancer may have started out as anger but then it spread to lust, sexual immorality, envy, greed and ambition, etc. Why do you think the Bible is so clear about giving things over to God and why do you think addiction is so destructive? It’s because when we hold onto our one little guilty pleasure it begins to grow and grow until before you know it, you find out that your life is ruined and you are at risk for losing everything else that is close to you, including a relationship with God.

Addiction

2008-10-04T11:40:00.000-07:00

Dictionary.com defines Addiction as:

the state of being enslaved to a habit or practice or to something that is psychologically or physically habit-forming, as narcotics, to such an extent that its cessation causes severe trauma.

For some, addiction may come in the form of drugs, some alcohol, while others may be less obvious addictions (but still as fatal) like pornography, sex, eating, etc. For me I was addicted to lust and it came out in the form of pornography, fantasies and masturbation.

My addiction started as a young boy sneaking peaks at magazines and staying up late to watch movies that came on late at night. As I got into my teens, I discovered masturbation as a way to escape the problems that normal teens face. Looking back, I had a low self-esteem and I also felt like I didn't fit in. During high school I discovered the internet. That opened the door to a new source of fantasy for me. I found porn a very real and very easy escape. I would have times where I would swear off my addiction and time and time again I would always find myself back on the same websites.

I met my future wife during my freshman year in college and we fell in love. Our relationship, though, was built upon lust for each other. No surprise less than a year of dating, she was pregnant. We married and I remember thinking that now my monster will die. I will no longer feel guilty for having sex because we are married now. I don't need pornography or masturbation anymore because I have my wife.

Things went great for the first year. Then we moved to a bigger town, bought a computer and got the internet. My monster was back. I found myself consumed with this demon. It seemed I went through cycles, I would stop for a time only to find myself indulging again. This usually happened when my wife would discover what I have done and confront me. I hated myself, hated what I was doing to my wife.

Progressively, I found that my thoughts began to change, I no longer was able to see a girl walking down the street without turning my head and wondering. I began to fantasize about different scenarios. This is not me, what was happening to me, then the bottom fell out. After seven years my wife left me. My wife took our two children and left. I was devastated and I had never really understood how I devastated her, how this had affected her until that moment. I had a choice to make either I could choose my angel or I could choose my demon.

That week she was gone. I began to wake up each morning and study God's word. I began a 10 day fast. During that time God got a hold of my life. Sure I had been a Christian and read my Bible, I was even an ordained minister and served as Youth pastor at my church but I let my work in the church take the place of my personal relationship with my Father and God.

That week I began to really see what God wanted from me, what he expected from me. I let my addiction control my life, it became my god. It became number one in my life. It wasn't until I rearranged my priorities, that I am now able to face my feelings and face the fact that I am powerless to this addiction and the power to stop comes from God.