Page 15 - Overcoming Addiction

Chapter 2 - Separated by Sin

have met a large number of men in recent years through my association with a
Irescue mission who have been struggling with addiction. It has been my
experience that the majority of them have little problem confessing that they have
a problem with evil desires that reside within them. Most will also freely confess
that they have tried many times unsuccessfully to overcome their addiction. I
believe that men who have been held captive by cravings for alcohol and drugs
are quicker to recognize and acknowledge their captivity to sin than those who
have never struggled with these issues.
It is more difficult to bring men who are not enslaved by some sin that
society finds abhorrent to admit that they too have a sin problem. Yet all men
suffer from the same problem. We are all the offspring of Adam. We are all born
in the condition where no good thing dwells in our flesh. As mentioned earlier,
some men simply channel their selfish desires and fleshly appetites into some
form that society does not condemn. Many give themselves to the pursuit of
material gain, or to a pursuit of entertainment and a life of ease and pleasure. In
God’s sight all of these things constitute sin.
Some men also have become ensnared to addictions that are more easily
hidden from society than alcoholism and drug addiction. A vast number of men
are enslaved to an appetite for sexual stimulation. This is an area that was once a
source of great shame and frustration in my own life.
As a young boy around the age of thirteen I had my first encounter with
pornography. I had gone over to a friend’s house. This friend had older brothers,
and he took me into a room in the house that his brothers used to hang out. On
the walls were pictures of naked women taken from the pages of some
pornographic magazine. My flesh was immediately enticed. I did not ask for these
desires to be present within me. They were simply there.
Having once experienced the physical stimulation of viewing such pictures,
my body and mind desired to repeat the experience. I knew that doing so was sin,
for I had for many years been raised in church, and I had a sincere conversion
experience when I was ten years old, followed by the act of baptism in the church
my family attended.
Becoming a Christian, however, does not mean that the sinful desires of the
flesh go away. These appetites will be present with us for as long as we inhabit
these bodies of flesh, but we can come to a place where they no longer rule over
us. We can enter into a place of victory over the flesh, its passions and desires.
As a young man growing up in the church there were many things that the
ministers and teachers of the church failed to teach me. I believe this was largely
due to their own lack of understanding of the dynamics of spiritual warfare, and
the absence of a clear conception of the process of ruling over the flesh. I heard
many things that were contradictory and confusing.
Some ministers proclaim the false message that when a person becomes a
Christian they will no longer sin, or even desire to do so. They usually build such
a doctrine upon one or two isolated Scriptures pulled out of their proper context,
and entirely misunderstood. Following is one such verse.