Question by Oddbill: What can I do differently to live free from the sin of addiction?
I’m so tired of living like a hypocrite.

I am a pornography addict. I have been for probably a decade and a half. On and off of course. The longest I’ve been free is just over three years.

I hate living like this. I know what the Bible says about lust after someone other than your spouse – and I believe it. I have read the entire Bible, searching for answers to this issue, but even when I think I’ve found the answers I fail anyways and fall back into the same old sin. I’ve prayed, sought God, stuck with it, done everything I know to. Every time I think something is changing, it doesn’t.

I have tried asking for help. Nearly a year ago I confessed my sins almost publicly. I told my wife, my pastor, and my friends. I knew I needed help. The next several weeks were some of the most painful of my life – but my wife eventually came around. She showed me some understanding, but made it clear I could never backslide into this again. I had been clean since I confessed, and I was so disgusted with myself I was certain that wouldn’t be a problem. Was I ever wrong.

My friends barely offered a word of help. My pastor pointed me to an unreasonablly expensive program called Pure Life Ministries that would have drained our savings to nothing, temporarily removed me from my functions at the time, and virtually let it go. I never took the program because I couldn’t afford it.

I did well for about three or four months – I can’t remember now how long – and then I just fell back in. I don’t know why. And I have never made it more than a week or so free since.

I don’t know where to turn or what to do. I can’t tell my wife again after how it went last time. She was supportive only to the degree that she thought I wouldn’t do it again. And I guess I don’t blame her – she deserves better than this. I have betrayed her trust, and I can’t stand myself for it.

We have changed churches, and I really don’t think I could go to my current Pastor about this either. There are no “Christian Therapists” worth their salt in my area – I live in a rural community, and circumstances would make commuting to another area difficult.

I have prayed myself blue in the face. I have tried isolating myself from tempting influences, which is actually near impossible as I’ve found, at least without withdrawing from society into a near monastic existence, which isn’t an option (though if it were, it would be better than this). I have continued to study scripture. I have produced all sorts of studies, in depth, coherant studies that should help me to overcome this addiction. Then I fall flat on my face anyways. I have confessed my sin to God, asked him to wash it away, asked him to change me, acknowledged Jesus for who he is and what he did, and have earnestly desired to know him and walk with him. And I find myself growing more and more distant from him.

I feel defeated. I feel exhausted. On one hand, God has without a doubt gone out of his way to keep me from destroying myself in my stupidity. He has delivered me out of alot of bad situations of my own making. And that just points to the core of the problem – I hate most of all that I am dishonoring him after all he has done for me. It turns my stomach. And yet, I seem to do it anyways.

I will confess that part of me wants it. But I hate that too. And I don’t know how to change it. And even when it seems like all of me has come into a position where it hates that sin, something happens and I find myself back in it again.

I cannot bear for this to go on any longer. I probably would have ended my life already if I wasn’t convinced of where I would end up going that route. This is not a life worth living – and yet I seem to have no choice. Or if I do, I don’t know how to make it.

How can I get out of this? How can I break free? What am I missing? What am I doing wrong? How can I do it right? I’m desperate for a real answer – something that tells me something I don’t already know. Because with everything I know I’m still a prisoner to this. So I must be missing something.
I know that God forgives sin. I know that he forgives mine. And I know that, until Jesus returns, I will never be perfect. There is one itty bitty problem though:

Galatians 5:19-21
Now the works of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity, depravity, idolatry, sorcery, hostilities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish rivalries, dissensions, factions, envying, murder, drunkenness, carousing, and similar things. I am warning you, as I had warned you before: Those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God!

Note that last sentince. (see also 1 Cor. 6:9-10)

Salvation is by grace through faith, not by works – but genuine salvation produces works as “fruit”. This doesn’t mean perfection – but it should mean that I’m not living like the description above (see Gal. 5:24). There is a big difference between being imperfect and wallowing in all-out sin. It is not tolerable in God’s eyes according to these passages. And it cannot continue any longer.

Best answer:

Answer by Kryten
http://verydemotivational.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/129046544509030726.jpg

There is NO SUCH THING as sin.

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