January 2023
There's a saying in bull riding. "If you look at the ground, you'll be there shortly." - A. Crowley
Eyes up.
We go in the direction we decide. We go in the direction we think. We go in the direction we feed. We also do what's easiest. I'm going to be applying this to the point of masturbation. I was listening to Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis recently and he was talking about two chief instincts we all have **(that point to some kind of unspoken moral law that each man understands inherently but no one created or communicated. --Or did Someone). Anyway, we do what's easiest by nature. For example, there's the law of self preservation and the "moral law". If a man is drowning in a river, your self preservation (which keeps us alive and is usually stronger than any urge or desire we may feel in opposition) will say to stay safe yourself. The water is cold, uncertain, fast. But the moral law in you says you ought to help. And that law, although much harder and more inconvenient for you, is stronger. You know deep down you must help. Hang in there with me:
The Holy Spirit is stronger. Whatever kind of pull you have in any other direction, know this: God IS stronger. He IS stronger than you think He is, a hundred fold. I wish I would quit relying on my own strength.
Moral law is stronger than self preservation. *Pause and think on that*
Even our strongest instinct of the physical nature may be disarmed by something of the spiritual nature, as morality is undoubtedly of a spiritual realm since every conscience acknowledges it without necessarily being taught it.
I'm reading too much C.S. Lewis, sorry. I'll tone the language back down.
The Spirit is likewise stronger than the flesh.
Story time, I watched a trapped squirrel this week. I gave him a clear opening to get out of the chicken coop but he kept running and banging into the wall, over and over. Why?
Because he didn't trust me. Where I'd been, what I was doing, my intentions towards him.
And I don't know, it's not a perfect analogy but I was like, "God, what can I pull from this?" and this is what I got: We have an open door to real life. Quit looking at the wall, quit banging your head against the wrong exit hoping you'll somehow get out if you do it enough times. Trust God, not yourself to get out of your sin, and walk out the door that is very much open.
I'm here with you. I'm not sitting on my high horse, I'm in the mud preaching at us hoping you'll follow me as I jump into the ocean to get clean.
"If you look at the ground, you'll be there shortly" -- Quit "looking" at masturbation. Quit thinking about it, dwelling there wondering when the next time you're going to screw up is. It's so easy to -- in the midst of the fight to abstain-- focus so heavily on what you're not doing that it feels inevitable somehow. Like it's only a matter of time until you'll sin; it looks that big and scary. And if you look long enough it somehow becomes appealing.
Sarah, how do I just "quit"?
Good question. I asked it, too.
One, I asked for prayer and someone anointed me and straight up prayed against the spirits of lust, death and depression. And I feel... CHANGED. Like I can't explain. It's not necessarily easier, but it is... different. It is lighter. I feel capable, as though it's not me fighting for control anymore, but there's another Spirit living here, the Holy Spirit, and I can call on Him and let Him have His place.
But before I did that, all I knew to say: is accept God's mercy, patience and grace we so desperately need and (hang with me) renew your mind. Replace the thought. Not just with anything (although distracting yourself by going on a run, doing things you love and being creative are all life-giving and decent distractions), but replace it with Scripture. That's not corny, God's Word is actually life-giving and true, useful for all sorts of things. If you don't read your Bible daily, why not? Start. --So masturbation: thoughts comes up, you're beginning a battle in your mind, and you need to first get your eyes up and off the ground. Replace the thought. Think on what is true. "Is this action going to lead me towards the life I desire, towards sexual freedom? Or toward sin and defeat? Is the strength or desirability it offers me real, or is it an illusion? Is it true? Is what it tells me true?" Is it lovely? "Does this look like wisdom in Proverbs, or the prostitute calling out to the simple man who doesn't know he's walking into a trap? Is it lovely or is it poison? What is lovely that I can insert here instead to help retrain my brain and challenge that embedded thought, so that we can uproot it?"
This is spiritual. It's not just physical. How do I know? Because I had a crazy encounter where a voice told me I didn't have to decide right then, I could just sorta rest my hand somewhere it didn't need to be and decide later. Of course I sinned. That same voice later told me I should kill myself. I didn't believe it - it's a wild story linked here for you - but it opened my eyes that this is not just me fighting my primal nature or whatever. This is a spiritual battle for our hearts and future marriage and a lot of other things we don't see in the moment.
Do I love being vulnerable and saying words like masturbation or resting where I don't belong? No. No I don't. Sometimes I get tired of exposure. But whatever. If it points you to Jesus like it did for me, I'll say it.
So for me what that looks like is: I'm spent and tired, bored and alone and the thought comes along. I have to take it and immediately do one of these options:
1) Run. Get up, move, just start moving and keep moving and leave.
2) Call a friend right then and there and say, "Hey, I'm struggling. I need prayer and maybe to hang out."
3) Turn on worship music, get on your face before the Lord, pray, and let His love, mercy, strength and delight wash over you to fight your battle for you. Because He does indeed love you. Some of you wrestle with this so let me tell you: God's love is not shifting sand and shadows. He does in fact love you just the same *HERE* as when you're "at your best". Isaiah 54:10, “'The mountains may shift, and the hills may be shaken, but My faithful love won’t shift from you, and My covenant of peace won’t be shaken,’ says the Lord, the one Who pities you.” Lamentations 3:22-23, "Certainly the faithful love of the Lord hasn’t ended; certainly God’s compassion isn’t through! They are renewed every morning. Great is Your faithfulness." His love isn't shifting and shaken like mankind's. Eyes off masturbation. Eyes on the cross. Focus on the Savior. On His Truth. My words can't transform you. No amount of reading this can save you. The cross can. Jesus can. Only Jesus can. It's so hard to sin when your eyes are on the cross. Anger melts like butter, sin loses it's strength, laziness loses it's appeal. Fight to focus in the right direction. God doesn't desire sin for you. But instead offers/continually calls you forward, draws you to the way out, to lead you in the way of everlasting. He does in fact want you healed. It's not the same as the Garden of Eden, but He's making something new. He's always growing you. Every day He is sanctifying us, growing us and changing us to look more like Him. Let the Holy Spirit change your life.
4) Bonus: Read Proverbs before closing your eyes or right when you open them for the day. Then mull over them, let the words occupy your mind. Determine in advance to set yourself up for success.
5) Double Bonus: As Craig Groschel says, if you struggle with porn and need to buy an actual alarm clock and go back to a flip phone, do so. It's not hard. An alcoholic doesn't pour scotch and leave it on his nightstand. Why do you leave your phone there?
Cycle through and repeat these options as many times as you need to in a day. Because sometimes it's been weeks since it's occurred to you, then you're tempted, you win a victory and then half an hour later you're fighting the battle again. That's okay. Keep it up. Eyes up! Don't get tired or weary of doing the right thing, "Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up." Galatians 6:9. There is a harvest for you. Start talking out loud asking God for His wisdom. Proverbs 2 talks about calling aloud for understanding and God will give it to you. That's what I need in that moment. A divine understanding beyond my own -- eyes up.
You have to believe you can stop masturbating. That's where I wrestle and sometimes still do. You have to believe you can do it. You can quit sinning.
This is what I'm hearing from you guys the most. This is why this blog gets a part two and three. You want to know how to believe. How to KNOW. How to stop without this plague of wondering how long it will take until you feel like a failure again.
Yeah -so I faced a heck lot of temptation recently (thank you hormones). I won a whole lot more battles than I lost. At one point I figured (at the very first thought like I've said), okay, this is where I run. Like Joseph, just get out of the house. Here, at the first thought, I should just run.
And then...
But you won't really. It's too dark. You know you won't really.
It's late, it's stormy, you know you won't actually fight so just let yourself stay. You'll probably do it, let yourself.
For half a second I believed that liar.
Then, "I can't, huh? To HELL I can't. Watch me." And I started walking.
I left the room, left my apartment, climbed the stairs, unlocked the backdoor. I opened the garage, put my shoes on, grabbed a jacket and ran. And I kept running.
Something in me expanded. I was there in the dark in the middle of winter because the enemy lied when he said I couldn't. I could. And I had. And the integrity of that thought (like we talked about in Part 2) that said I couldn't and that I would sin, the integrity of that thought was challenged and shaken. It wasn't a sound and true thought after all.
I went on a run at midnight. It was dark, stormy and wet but I didn't fall. "I am here because I CAN. Sarah Marie, you are here because you can."
Why on earth would we do this if it weren't for a love for God? We can do it to try to "clean up our act" for Him... I think that's what I've done in the past, trying to be better, but without a heart change I continued to just feel defeated. I had to believe that God loved me, that people loved me, and that I could change. It fills me and protects me (personally) when I speak to my mind, "No. I am loved. God loves me, God delights in me, God fights for me. He wins my victory!" Because maybe if I dissect this down, that's what this is really about.
Point being: It's not on our strength or it doesn't last, so how how how do we rely on God?
I'm going to share this story again. I asked a select group of girls to take turns calling to pray for me every night. (We were created for community and we need strong Believers around us.) We don't always do it, but often we do! One night my dear friend prayed, "Lord, I pray You'd help Sarah see how loved she is by others." That startled me. If you ask me, I'm good. I'm pulled together, fine, on it. But I had been praying God would identify, interrupt, intersect and uproot insecurities in my life. And so there He was doing it. It has always been an insecurity of mine to ask "am I loved, am I good enough" and God is constantly trying to tell me how loved I am. That I'm not good enough but He is and He fills me, I am His. I am loved.
Pause. And listen.
That night when temptation came around that prayer swirled around my mind like a blanket of protection. "I am loved." It seems so silly, but truly, that thought alone, spoken by someone who loves me, was stronger than any habit. I am loved. I don't need to do that, I don't have to (it's not just inevitable): I am loved.
That didn't just happen. God laid it on my heart to be serious about removing any foothold for sin. **Even proactively. I asked for help, it took us girls a little while to get serious about it. Ashlyn actually called, we actually showed up, and we were rewarded with fruit.
But it was God Who did the miracle. I didn't make that happen. God provided. But good disciplines give you good fruit. Set yourself up for success.
I'm about to take a turn that may not feel like it applies to you, but bare with my story. I believe I have an understanding of my audience (at least a little) and am speaking towards what I've learned. Apply what I'm saying wherever you will.
Because hey, I see you. Our sin is often rooted in doubt, despair and fear. We desire so deeply to be known and loved, happy and unified, satisfied. Maybe you're single, maybe you're married. How did it started for you? How long has it been? What do your feelings tell you are truths? Maybe you do way *more*, or maybe you're relieved your "not as bad as Sarah" who needs prayer every night hahaha. But sin is all a problem. Maybe you feel so far removed from it that masturbation doesn't bother you much now. Maybe it just looks impossible to take your sin head-on. But for the Believer you have good hopes for the future and ministry set before you right now and there is a war going on. Ephesians 2:10, "For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them." And again in 6:12, "For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places." Wrestle against flesh and blood just took on a new perspective.
*Again, I don't like taking pieces of Scripture out of context, to go read it is better*
It is bigger than we think or see. It's a war for you. In some capacity, it's a war for you.
Have I lost you? Are you awake and aware still reading :) :) It's long, but focus in with me on the home stretch.
God wants every part of you. I've learned I personally have this nice little hole I created and had roped off with the reservation sign hanging on it called "husband". And God said, "I want that. I want that spot in your life."
Yeah, we all like to know close details about other people's love lives, don't we?
I was like.......
.........
.
And let me tell you this, let me tell you when it's EASY: It is so easy for me personally not to sin when I'm in the dating scene. I know there's someone who wants to know me, really, really know me. And that brings happiness and a measure of security. It's really easy for me and sin loses it's appeal when I have real attention. But life goes on as it does and not everyone stays. And (thus far) when relationships end you are left not only a little [or a lot] sad and heartbroken, but left to find that "happiness" again without *them*. Because you read it all wrong and got it all wrong yet again.
(Keep your heart tender, darling. Bless and do not curse. Trust and have grace to let go.)
God asked me to take a break from the dating/attention scene and let Him fill that role for me. Let Him bring me that kind of happiness.
I would have told you I was content. That God is absolutely first. That God has all of me. But *that kind* of over the moon, ya know? God wanted to bring that for me.
And it's not easy. I discovered wild insecurities going into and out of a "sort-of-relationship" this last year (haha I don't even know what to call it, how bizarre are the 20's??) that I had no clue I had. And God's like, let's drag those suckers out, they don't belong here. It was easy before and now it's hard. Because now I'm aware of the insecurities and Jesus is all I have, with no *boy* Ibuprofen to cover it up, just the real Surgeon saying it' time to fix and heal this.
It's even harder when the liar throws shade and says you're easily forgettable and have a hole. You begin to believe maybe you do have a hole, or maybe you create a nice little cut-out-space of a hole reserved for your future happiness.
God asked me to let His love fill that and I was like... "No. You're great and all God... but this is like, a physical, human role. You're... not the same. You're BETTER, I know, and You're first. But... You can't fill that. Right? That's... weird. Yeah. Nah."
But friend God didn't make you with holes.
You are complete.
You weren't made for a person.
You were made for the living God. And we get to be married for the Kingdom and team up and bring God glory, or we get to be single for the Kingdom and give it undivided attention with all we've got. Those are kinda the two options given. Be married and honor Him together and pursue the Kingdom together, or if you want to be (or God has you for a time) single, have an undivided heart for God and people.
God said, "I want that place. I want you to let Me love you."
I had a good dream. But God wanted me to give it to Him.
We can be told these things, but I had to live it to understand it.
It's taken me years to come to a place where I'd hear Him, and nearly another full year now to where I'd hear and then obey. Slow down to surrender and submit. Surrender: because He wants to love me perfectly. He created me for Himself, I am secure NOW, I am known NOW, I am unveiled and delighted in NOW, I am loved completely NOW. God redefines happy, not a significant other. God redefines purpose and fulfillment and satisfaction with it's truest intent. Submit: because I want to submit to His wisdom, not mine, submit to His call, not my plan, submit to His time, submit to His authority, servant's heart and sacrificial love. Submit to His hand wiping away insecurities.
Because if I walk into a marriage thinking I'm only worth being loved when I'm perfect...
If I walk into a relationship unwilling to slow down and bend my knee to God's will...
If I don't let Him have every single aspect of my life, if I don't let Him take His time to wash away my insecurities...
I'm going to get hurt and be frustrated and have a rough time while dragging someone else's heart into all that. We don't have to be perfect before we can be in relationships. But if you're FRUSTRATED...
I don't know - If you seem to be up against Heaven itself wanting a relationship that you aren't sure will ever actually happen.
If you're wrestling with your sin unsure if there's ever a day of purity, joy and freedom ahead.
Then maybe consider how loved you are by God. How protected. How held. You are not up against Heaven, that's not true, and I needed to reframe that thought to: GOD is for me. Speak the truth and preach the one true Gospel to yourself often. Get on your knees and worship God amidst the questions. Submit to a good Creator, Father and Friend.
This is all in here because masturbation is physical, emotional and mental and so much deeper than just a surface act. And all I have to offer is my story. It won't look like yours. But maybe there are some similarities where we can empathize with each other. Maybe it looks very different for you: your triggers, your story, whatever. I am no counselor, but it is much deeper than just the act, for all of us. It is multifaceted. Sin always leads you somewhere you didn't want to be. It must be dealt with. Shame and defeat have no place in your life, Christian friend and soldier.
I heard in a sermon that willful sin [masturbation] is proclaiming your doubt. In it's essence. **We talk about if it's sin in part one. And it's time to let victory reign. To let faith be stronger. To choose strength. To fix your eyes on what matters. Jesus, the Author and perfecter of our faith is growing us in maturity every day to look more like Him. Be washed in His Word, throw off the sin that so easily entangles us and trust Him to win the victory that we can't. The Battle Belongs to God. When we see ashes, He sees beauty (He delights in you). When we see mountains, He sees mountains moved. He uses the weak and broken to prove His strength. We need Him. He does impossible things all the time. Water in the desert, food from nowhere. Miracles with the staff in your hand, the bread and fish on your person, the jars that are all you have. He doesn't ask us to have much. Just to have hearts that are strong and courageous to follow Him.
He won't leave you. And He won't leave you here. Eyes up.
And be reminded as I was gently reminded, it is here in the pressing He is making pure oil. We are all tempted, we are all pressed. Jesus is a High Priest Who can empathize with our human nature (only He did not sin). But He can empathize, friend; we have all been tempted and all humans fall short. We all go through the pressing. But Jesus ... the pressing process, this process of fighting for freedom... it does not mean you are losing something. Being pressed does not mean you are losing. It means God is doing what He does in typical fashion. He is creating. He is creating purity in the pressing. How backwards. But how beautiful. If you fall get back up. Keep going, soldier, you'll be okay. He creates purity here when He is our active Savior.
This is your call to action. Do not be hearers of the word only, but doers. That is, the Word of God. He has called you to leave your life of sin and live for Him. So what can you do to tell the enemy he's no longer welcome to reign? 1) It's Jesus job. But do as He says. Jesus does the miracle, the servants fill the jars, spread the loaves and fish, whatever the faith action is. Jesus answers the door and sees the enemy out, you live by faith. 2) Confess. I mean it. Don't let your heart be troubled! I was told recently when I confessed in a small group that "nothing I could say would surprise them". It proved true. I asked for prayer, was anointed and fought for. 3) I want you to read your Bible. 4) I want you to get specific prayer naming your sin. I want you to expose the dark and realize the light isn't scary: it's free. I want you to lay down your pride and fear and shame and realize Jesus changes everything and you and I need Him desperately. That He still changes lives completely. And that it's all for Him. Share it with someone, share it with others.
"But you, dear friends: build each other up on the foundation of your most holy faith, pray in the Holy Spirit, keep each other in the love of God, wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who will give you eternal life." Jude 1:20-21
Get up.
Eyes up.
Love,
Sarah
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