September, 2022
**I have a wide range of audiences on this blog. I solely in my own opinion encourage this read for anyone, but if you have a hesitation, please take time to stop and pray and ask God. This is a topic on sexual sin. In my writing I am going to assume you know what I'm talking about. I really don't want to plant new ideas that don't need to be in anyone's head. So I'm going to be semi-vague but mostly tell it as it is. I desire freedom and unity, you are so far from alone, my friends. ** Please don't google your questions, my young friends. Just ask. Legit just e-mail me. The wide world isn't a safe place on this topic, trust me, I did it.
**Last one: once again these are my experiences and opinions. I am not a counselor. Just a girl figuring it all out through putting in the time. This is vulnerable. I hold no shame [anymore], and I offer none. This is me, too. Offering hope how I can. So my prayer is Jesus protects your minds and His truth permeates and overpowers "mine".
Beginning
Here was my darkest secret. If you'd told me at fourteen that I would preach my testimony around the world to strangers, I would have wanted to die. If you'd told me I'd tell my parents I would have wanted to die. If you'd told me I'd put it in writing for any human to read... you get the picture. But here's the thing: we all wrestle with one thing or another. Sexual sin is a pretty common thing that the enemy pummels us with. He makes you feel like you're in a dark prison cell, when really as God's child, you are a son or daughter of Light, fully transferred into God's Kingdom and you have been given power. God's not sitting around waiting for you to stop. You know, to *stop* before He will actually really love you. He is lovingly with you through and in spite of every sinful act, desiring and fighting to draw you out and into His freedom. It seems wrong, doesn't it? That kind of love that put Him on the cross? That kind of love: He doesn't leave you. He's not waiting.
It was in the smack middle of my sin His love spoke to me, I had an image in my head of Jesus smiling, holding out His hand and saying, "We can walk away from this now, *here*."
He wasn't supposed to be kind. With love shining in His eyes and all over His face. He was supposed to be disappointed.
But it was love, Jesus' love, not shame, that gave me strength to walk away.
If shame was a good motivator, I would have given it the finger. Like, I already felt ashamed, what was a little more.
But love?
Love really does change everything. -Don't roll your eyes, I see you.
Hey.
I SEE you.
...I see you. Oh darling. I am you.
How can I say I have found freedom and keep it to myself? How does that help my sister, my brother, who feels desperate, scared and alone? No, how can I live in my own comfort of cushy light and not take that light with me to throw everywhere I can? I'm so sick of the dark. So sick of it. It's time to fight back. As the Bible poetically says in John 1:5, The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
So let's dive in.
My Story
Last January I didn't even know what the word masturbation meant. I had a sinking suspicion. But this 22 year old had skillfully avoided the definition since I first heard it at 14 years old. I was honestly too scared to look it up and then become accountable for the word and my aligning actions.
In this post I'm going to address a lot of things. The first half is my story, because likely you've experienced similarly. There's power in shared experience. The second half will be practical tips for what to do to disarm this stronghold in your life, some lies to address and tear down, resources, and best of all assurance of God's love. That freedom is in fact possible, even for you.
So yeah, I was 22 when I got the legit definition. Whatever. It's not my fault people don't talk about this and that I was embarrassed to hear about it haha. By all that is Holy I ask you not to google it, yikes. By February, when ignorance was no longer an option, I certainly never wanted that word to leave my mouth. It was... dirty.
But here it is, because we're disarming the hesitancy and stigma: masturbation.
"Is it wrong?" "Is there a time where it's okay?" "Can it be done without lusting?" Oh geez. The questions we come up with to skirt things.
We don't hear any black or white answers from the church. Here is my personal view. Masturbation is distortive. C.S. Lewis describes it as selfish, in that it is literally you alone satisfying and training your brain where your husband or wife is meant to. It is isolating, extremely addictive, leaves you ashamed, defeated and actually sometimes a bit afraid. The chemicals in your brain you're calling up are designed to say, "Do it again". From the very one-time start. It does not, repeat, does not go away with marriage as I am told by many people. Anything that enslaves you to the flesh, especially so strongly, when you are unable to say no to it and yes to the Holy Spirit? That is wrong. And if nothing else guys, it falls utterly short of God's best. And we want God's best, we do! On a brighter note, God's best is still held and desired for you by God, and He will absolutely take you there. If you are seeking God, I do not believe for a moment that He is willing to leave you somewhere that is harmful. He is a good Shepherd. And He will see you through this.
Because if you are alive, congratulations. You are a sexual being. We don't flip the sexual switch after we say "I do". No, that switch flipped when you were like, twelve haha. Guess what? You were designed that way! It's a good thing. But it's a good thing we have to have self control over.
And you've got an enemy who plays dirty.
Before, I was utterly ashamed, and none of my friends seemed to experience this. I never ever ever wanted to talk about this with anybody. It killed me that I'd have to tell my husband someday before I married him. I thought maybe this one thing I could keep just between me and God. You know? Forgiven, no confession to people necessary. Maybe that's a familiar desperate hope. But I knew one thing. My entire life, one absolute truth sustained me: walk in the light.
So I told myself...
Sarah... if you've always preached to walk in the light... why would you stop now? Please don't stop now.
Please. Please for all you know is true and right, don't stop now. For your own sake. Don't stop here. Speak your sin and ask for help.
*I have the added bonus of years of experience sharing awkward and hard things. It's finally come to the point where usually if the Holy Spirit nudges me, I swallow hard, close my eyes and just plunge in. -With my family and friends and mentors ;). I'm much more tactful with y'all hopefully haha. But clearly I have much less of a privacy filter than most people and I personally like it this way. Because this is where I see freedom and healing come. Right? The apostle Paul says similarly. Let me look like a fool and an idiot - just let me see it mean something for somebody to Jesus.
So it wasn't until this last eighteen months that I started talking about it. Very awkwardly at first. I didn't use the word exactly, we've already established I didn't know it lol. I didn't want to fully admit it, like, how humiliating am I right? But I told my sisters. They seemed safest. Over text. Written word *seems* safe. It wasn't amazing of course haha, but it was okay. I dipped my toes in, trying it out on my Mom, maybe I'll just admit it's something I struggled with as a child...
But that felt worse than just confessing my current sin. So eventually the Holy Spirit said, "March upstairs and tell your parents right now you struggle with masturbation and ask for prayer." (Essentially haha. Paraphrasing.) I was like... right now?
No hesitation. Just go do it. Right now. Go. Go go go...
So I did.
I'm climbing the stairs slow, but not stopping. Trying to think what I'll say. So I just interrupt their movie, like, "Hey, guys? Can you pray for me? I need to talk about some things."
The fear the enemy said as I walked up - that they'd be uncomfortable or wouldn't have much good to say, or offer, or pray - was blown utterly out of the water. They prayed over me, spoke Scripture over me, offered me love and support. And I've never been so grateful for godly parents. They didn't just do this once. I've had to do this multiple times. And I am received with the same Godly love and support each time.
You might think, "Cool. She gets to stop there." And yeah, maybe I could've -just told my parents and kept it to myself. But I didn't want there to be anything I couldn't share in my testimony for God to set people free. We know confessing is important, Biblically. But to keep on sharing??- This is not some kind of misplaced penance. It doesn't save me or make things better. Only Jesus saves. I repeat, only Jesus saves and He fully heals the blow, the wound that is your sin, all at once by His Word. But this is our testimony and it has power, why would I allow the enemy to disarm that with fear of what other people think? So I kept talking about it. I got an accountability partner (a dear, solid-in-Jesus friend), who, bless her heart, hears every single time I'm tempted. And further, every single time I actually masturbate(d). Sometimes I tell my mentor instead, because sometimes I feel like a lot haha. But every time it gets out of my head, there is no room for secrets or keeping it "just between me and God". And for starts, I would always always always encourage the same for you. Even if you "don't think you can ever be as open as me". I've heard someone say that haha. Even if it's uncomfortable. You want to be free? Get out of prison. Get out of your head. You want to experience freedom? Confess to God, repent, and tell a trustworthy person about it. To my younger audience: tell a trustworthy older person.
So. Masturbation. *If you don't know exactly what it is, again, don't google it, that is only going to give unhelpful, worldy advice and explicits. Just ask. How did this start.
It is so unfair. The enemy is so unfair, y'all. In a lot of ways, this happened to me. I didn't ask for it. And it certainly didn't lead me where I wanted to be. I'm not playing a victim, but truly friends, sometimes you don't ask for what you are dealt. I was a very, very small child when I happened upon this action. Curious. Easily shamed. But in my ignorance, I didn't know it was wrong. I was a child. And I'm so angry at the enemy for preying on kids.
Jump forward to pre-teen. I still didn't know what I was doing but I had an awareness that it made me feel like I was putting distance between me and God. And I didn't want that. So I rashly promised I would never do it again, and that promise carried me through another decade of life.
Maybe you've done the same thing. That same promise has left your lips. Because you want to know the stats of men, women, boys and girls that wrestle with masturbation? They are staggering. It doesn't matter if you are a Christian or not - they are staggering. This is why I'm writing about something so personal, because you need to hear this: a minimum of 40% of women admit to the struggle across the board, a VERY generous stat, and equally as generous 64% of men. So roughly one out of every two people. I picked the low-ball statistics.
This is not just a guy problem.
Oh Heaven. This is not. just. a "guy problem". When our strong Christian leaders assume girls do not need to hear about this as if we, too, were not sexual beings, it is... the largest disservice. Because it is a big gun in the enemy's arsenal.
So when I broke my promise. When I hit my twenties you cannot imagine (... well, actually, you probably can) the shame I experienced in my own internal dialogue. Jesus had DEALT with this. I had come to truly own my faith after I promised God I would *never*. I'd had that big milestone that was supposed to change everything and here I was again. I was supposed to be long past this. So long past this. I mourned.
If you know me in real life you probably know I'm sensitive. Not so much like, "Oh be careful of her feelings, she's sensitive." But I mean like, I feel things very deeply. I'm pretty keenly aware of empathy, peace, a lack of peace... this is good because I am teachable. But it might not make sense to you why I react to this so strongly, so I'm explaining.
I'll explain more in a minute, but I came to a point where I realized it was a serious problem, to be dealt with like a serious problem. I was fighting my mind, like, all the time, and I didn't want to be. I don't know how it happened, suddenly the thought of desiring sexual satisfaction was just a constant battle almost. I wanted to go back to normal. To... I don't know, "clean". I wanted a clean mind. I wanted Jesus more than my sin, but I was scared I was stuck with my sin. It went from like, a quarterly slip up to like, a monthly thing, to a weekly thing... and growing. And I suddenly realized it needed to be eradicated somehow. Stat.
So I decided to hard core fight with the absolute intention to win. Grace for if I fell, but no outs. No mental space reserved for the possibility of masturbation.
This is odd: In the beginning especially I refused to promise God anything about masturbation, even if I thought it might help. Because I take promises very seriously, God does, too. I'd already broken one promise. I would not be doing that again. I wouldn't promise not to masturbate. Because I didn't think I could keep it. And that itself wrecked me. It was a deeply rooted lie and belief.
Let's dig it up.
Lie one: I didn't think I'd ever stop.
I didn't think I was capable of sustaining forever.
Because all my well-intended, best made efforts fell as I threw it all to the wind every time the temptation was strong enough. Reason didn't work. I knew all the things to say. I just chose not to care anymore very easily.
Lie two: I wasn't trusting that God actually loved me.
I thought it was a surface love. A love I had to pursue to keep and maintain, as if it wasn't the God of the universe Who pursued me. For my part I don't mean pursue like read your Bible and be in relationship with God - that's simply called a relationship. Gotta do that to be a healthy two way relationship haha. I mean I strived to be perfect for Him so that He would love me. Did I not know the Gospel at all? That Jesus came to save the sinners just like me? I needed a good performance card, I thought. I needed to make sure I was still likeable. Surely God did not love me when I behaved so badly. I have a whole list of where He's taught me He loves me: it'll all-encompassing. There were a lot of places I told Him He wasn't supposed to.
And God said to me: "Let Me love you, first, before anyone else does." Go over those words slowly, emphasizing different ones. Let Me love you. Let Me love you. Let Me love you. Let Me love you.
That was the beginning of my journey. Letting God love me.
So this fear that He somehow left me when I sinned... that He was disappointed, angry or upset... you see, I figured I needed to pull it together. That He was waiting on me to be better before we could really experience the God/Daughter of God relationship I wanted.
And boy, my willpower sucked.
So I was pretty much sunk.
In the following, let me name some more lies for you. Let's talk about your triggers (Oh yes. I reallyyyyy didn't want to deal with those. You might not like to, either.), let's talk about what you hope to get from masturbating, - the things.
In the beginning, before I had a plan or an idea of what to do, I wrote this in a note on my phone: "This [masturbation] is not what you want, but you won't believe me. The rush leaves an imprint like a ghost and there's this tantalizing desire to go resurrect it. But when the feelings fade and you are again operating in your sound mind (and God has given you a sound mind), this thing you are now ashamed of, how has it served you? It only leaves you inevitably, immediately, incredibly sad. And you weren't meant for that, Love." Jake Scott's song Yours became my anthem. I'm assuming it was written for some sad relationship, but with a slight word alteration fit perfectly for my relationship with this sin.
"Is it ever really over if you leave the door open? With a shadow on the other side, the kind that keeps you up at night. I moved on like I needed, but I kept you like a secret... had to let it go to let it die... I don't need to ask, I know. [Thought] I'd need another chance with you to see, but [I see] yours is something I don't want to be."
I wrote to S T A Y. To cling to Jesus. To not move, grab a fistful of blanket and remain unmoved. Or. I wrote, "I don't care if it's late, get up and go do something more interesting. It will pass. Stay steady. It's a fight and you cry and it's hard and I'm so sorry. But this isn't who I am, it isn't who I want to be. I don't like it. And I'm so tired of being scared I'll just fall down again if I try to quit."
So the lies? The lie is 1. That you actually DO want it. You'll be quite convinced of this. 2. Maybe it's not so bad. 3. Maybe you'll only go *so far* and that won't be so bad. That will be acceptable. 4. You just want release. You want the feeling to leave you. 5. You will anyway so just get it over with. 6. You go back and forth between you will and you won't so much you decide: "you probably just will" inevitably, because you're weak. 7. You don't actually have a serious problem and you can stop at any point. 8. You can't talk to God about it because what if you fail Him by deciding to sin? 9. Don't talk to God about it because you know you WANT to sin and wouldn't want to be convinced otherwise. 10. You want a rush more than anything, so just do it.
But God doesn't leave you sad or scared or empty.
They are just lies.
Don't reason with it. Just run away. Frickin' leave your house. From the first moment, the first thought, train yourself to jump up and run.
Because there is no sexual release outside of marriage. None. Zip. Nada. Sex outside of marriage is a no-go, and this falls under that category. For your good. Read that again. There is no sexual release outside of marriage.
As I mentioned, my whole life I told myself I didn't have a serious problem. I didn't wrestle with porn (though I sadly saw images like most middle school kids. That's it's own whole story of redemption.). Masturbation happened a couple times a year, I repented and felt bad, tried not to, it would be fine. It wasn't until it started becoming more and more frequent, stronger and stronger pull that I was like "Oh God I have a problem. I didn't want to do this, but now I do [it], and I have a problem. And it has to stop."
Practical Tips
"Why resist something tomorrow if you have the power to cut it off today?"
So I searched for some resources I'll share at the end. And I tackled my triggers. Especially the ones I didn't want to. ... Yeah, there were many.
I quit being alone all the time. When did it most often hit? When I was bored and tired. Almost always in the afternoon or after work. So I'd come home and I'd immediately hang out with friends, or I'd go spend time with my family. When I started noticing patterns I was able to tell when I would need friends and fam ahead of time, just cut it off upstream. So as time wore on, my introverted self was still able to healthily enjoy my alone time.
I started praying. Seriously praying against the sin and for Jesus to fill me with Himself. Don't skip that.
I deleted all unhelpful things. Example: Pinterest boards. Even if they weren't "bad", they weren't helpful.
I quit listening to secular music for a while. I quit watching rom coms or movies scenes with kissing. I'm not saying be legalistic and NEVER: These things had never ever bothered me before. I enjoy listening to When Good Things Fall Apart and watching You've Got Mail, but the desire and message of love from the world was beginning to feed the monster and I wanted it gone. So I took a serious break, a fast for my good, to be healthy.
One of my triggers was feeling too pretty. Very egotistical ha, I know. But I deleted all the pictures, all the selfies, whatever, that I felt a wrong kind of pretty in that triggered me. I'm not saying don't look good, girls. But you know the difference.
This may not make sense to you, but it was huge for me: I threw out clothes. Again with the feeling pretty thing - some clothes triggered me. Some days they were totally fine, some days they weren't. So I dealt with myself very honestly, put every last one with a trigger history in a bag and handed it to my mom to privately and immediately deal with so I couldn't go back and change my mind. My absolutely favorite shirt I took scissors to, I cut it up, so I can use the pretty fabric and make something beautiful out of it. That felt less sad, more redemptive, more empowering. I am not, repeat am not saying don't be pretty, don't wear pretty things. I am, absolutely am saying, if something repeatedly trips you up, know the difference.
Have I masturbated since all this? Since cutting up that ridiculously cute crop top I thought I was mature enough to handle? Yes. I was very sad about that. It felt like I had blown a forever-type of milestone. But grace, friends. Grace, grace, grace. Don't reset. Keep going.
This is for the girls: You are literally God's beautiful princess. This is just a picture, God doesn't ever actually leave us to begin with, but: If your curiosity or desire leads you into a forest of thorns, your Daddy will come and rescue you. He'll come for you. He doesn't want you to be scared or alone: He says nothing can separate you from His love. Trust that nothing means nothing. Trust in His love. I cried the first time I realized the Bible shows God will come for us. I don't know why this happens to us, why the enemy so easily entangles us, but your Daddy is a Warrior and He redeems you. I don't trust my faithfulness remotely. But I trust His. You're tired of giving it all the finger. You're tired of feeling like a failure. ...Someday there might be a day where you revisit the feelings, where you loose a skirmish in the grand battle, but SO MANY times you will say no and win and I hope you'll celebrate those more. It was important to me I didn't give myself any outs. But grace is important, as well.
My mentor was teaching on sexual sin and asked God for an analogy of when to confess it. He gave her a funny real-life example: If a bird poops on you, don't walk around thinking you have to just deal with it for a while first. No, go get clean. Go shower. Go wash. God is the same - there is no need to sit on our guilt for a while. The time to repent is while you are in the act, honestly. That's a great time. You're not too dirty for Him there. He's not mad at you there. He doesn't leave you while you commit the act. Our sin breaks His heart for sure, sin has natural repercussion, God is just, but God loves you and your Dad wants you rescued by Him, not shamed. He wants you to come to Him there.
I know there is so much more than what I can write on. I can empathize greatly, but I didn't wrestle with porn; I have never just looked at a guy and thought I need to be with him. Attractive, sure. Lust? I mean I don't think so, anyway. But thankfully I have an amazing resource for you, here is a link to Becoming Unbound. It is literally the most amazing work I have ever read outside of the Bible. My dad leads a group of young men and regularly teaches through this, he gave it to me to see if anything in there helped. Um, yes. Yes it did. Don't put it off, don't tell yourself you hate reading, buy it right now and commit to read five minutes a day. Just five. More than five may naturally come, but do it. Or get it from the library. Call me and I'll read it to you. I don't care.
So here's one last illustration: You have a flame before you. And you touched the fire with your fingertip. Not much happens. It's exciting. You touched fire! It looks reasonable to build a fire pit on your bedroom floor. Then you stuck your hand in the fire. You got burned. But before you knew it you were putting your whole arm in the flames. - Learn that your whole body doesn't need to burn. Your whole house doesn't need to burn down because the fire was where it doesn't belong. Go put some honey on your burns so they don't scar and stay away from the fire until - girls, your hubby, or ma' boys, your wife- builds it in the fireplace where it is safe and warm.
Don't quit on love. Don't not know how to healthily celebrate sex, it's not like it's dirty or forbidden, it's just meant to be shared between a husband and wife. It's not meant to be experienced alone.
So I am not perfectly there. Do I still face temptation? Absolutely. But I am not desperate like I once was, without hope or strength. It is much fewer and farther between battles. It is not as strong of a pull anymore to desire pleasure more than God. I paused, even recently, in the beginning debate. (You know how it starts.) --I decided to read my Bible before taking that thought further. One example of proof God in fact always gives an out: it was the last chapter of 2 Timothy I randomly opened to. Do we love pleasure or do we love God more was the question. And it goes on to encourage the believer. That simple question snapped me out of it. Boom. Victory. Celebrate that. Take away: Pause. Change course. Turn to God. Resources:
Life Church, Ben Stuart and The Porch are all great sermon/podcast resources for young people. I listen to them all regularly. Music:
Fear is a Liar by Zach Williams
Yours by Jake Scott
By Your Side by Tenth Avenue North
Love,
Sarah
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