Struggling to overcome addiction to pornography is a tremendously difficult task. The addiction afflicts Christians and non-Christians alike. Many Christians believe they have the upper hand in overcoming pornography because they have prayer, they have God on their side, and yet many Christians struggle with their faith because they don't understand the relationship with God and why he allows them to fall into a pornography addiction. Many activists throw around the phrase, "you can't pray it away," and to one degree they are right, even if we hate to admit it.
Before diving into this topic of pornography addiction and prayer, we need to establish basic understanding. God does not will evil for evil's sake. God does not send or allow suffering for no reason. God is not a jerk. God does not will for us to look at pornography, but he allows it, because one can only choose to love him if one has the choice not to love him. There is nothing in your life that touches you that doesn't first pass through the hands of God. He examines it and determines it is necessary for your salvation, the salvation of others, or for his glory.
Regardless of how you begin in your addiction to pornography, you have it now. Chances are, if you're a Christian, you pray for God to take the addiction away. I'm willing to bet that hasn't worked. Why? Because a person in the throes of addiction desperately wants the addiction to stop, and loses sight of his place in the relationship with God. The prayer of "God, please take away this addiction," is fruitless largely because it is a form of spiritually acting out, and often a placing of ones self as God and God as the servant. It's an inversion of the 1st Commandment. Pride.
Why Would God Allow Me to Suffer This?
This is a difficult question, but I have some insight from my professional experience. First, pornography addiction is often the punishment for pride. Pride, meaning a lack of humility in the relationship with God, with parents, with others. The 4th Commandment is "honor your father and mother" that it may be well with you." Reverse engineer this and the implication arises that if you don't honor your father and mother, it may not go so well for you. Dishonoring or disrespecting your parents is digging a hole that hurts your relationship with them and with God. You love God by your actions, "If you love me, keep my commandments." God allows the pornography addiction because the only way out of that hole is humility, the healthy understanding of your proper place in the relationship, without pride, without shame.
It could be that God allows you to become addicted to pornography because of sense of pride, or because it is a generational habit and he knows that your experience with porn addiction will build in you the resolve to end the cycle of addiction in your family, protecting your own kids form the mistakes you made, your father made, your grandfather made.
What should I pray instead?
As John 15:5 says, "for without me you can do nothing." Make that your prayer: "God, I am incapable of stopping the addiction. I don't have what it takes. Please give me what I need to resist whatever temptation comes my way, for I have nothing of my own. Thank you God for loving me."
Another excellent prayer that many clients report great success with is this 4-part prayer:
Say aloud:
- I do not consent to this temptation
- God, if it is your will, sustain me with your grace.
- God, if it is your will, possess me as your instrument.
- Thank you, God, for this opportunity for grace.
Do you see the humble position? The prayer puts the user in the proper place in relation to God and accepts these trials as gifts, medicine.
One Last Thing
God is best experienced in a relationship. He created you to have a relationship with you. Think of your best friend, your wife, your favorite relative. How strong is your relationship if you don't spend any time with them? How strong is that relationship if the only time you see them is when you're asking them for something? How strong is the relationship if you meet with them begrudgingly, meet for an hour, then complain about it the whole car ride home? Not very strong at all.
God desperately and patiently waits to have a relationship with you. He's put the ball in your court. You have nothing that didn't originate with him, the breath in your lungs, the blood in your veins. The ball is in your court. Just start by sharing with him what you're going through, how hard it is, that you feel powerless. Thank him for loving you through it and staying faithful to you. Take time to build that relationship as you would anyone else in your world. That's the whole point why God lets you experience all of this, to get you to a place so you finally have a healthy relationship with him.