After Watching Porn - 001

We too often allow unattainable ideas to dictate what we allow ourselves to say.

God can and does act in that moment of regret.

It is often in the moment after the act that Satan spins his most eloquent web: menacing thinking patterns, bargaining with a distant and disapproving God.... It is in this moment that Satan does his finest work. It is in this moment that we need God to do His finest saving.

1. Know your enemy. Godly grief produces repentance that leads to salvation without regret; but worldly grief produces death (2 Cor.7:10). Recognize that you have a powerful personal agent who is singularly focused on your destruction. Do not forget that Satan is at work. If you do, it is easier to believe hidden, subversive, subtle, destructive lies. Evil gains power when it is forgotten. Don't forget: After you indulge, you are still mid-battle with a tenacious, evil person bent on stealing your life, and he has not yet gotten it.
2. Fight self-hatred. Porn is the twisted manipulation of innocence for the raw crave of erotic appetite. To have a grieved conscience is a good thing... [but] wallowing in self-deprecation and feeling like paying penance to God for sin is a sad and ironclad torture. It is false, and it is a wicked oppression. Not surprisingly, suicide rates are high among porn users. 
• No wonder David uses such deeply physical metaphors when he pleads with God for grace over sexual sin: 
• Blot out my transgressions;
• Wash me;
• Cleanse me;
• Purge me;
• Blot out my iniquities;
• Create in me a clean heart
• Scream that, with David. Replace the groan of human self-hatred with an unbroken war cry of divine love.
• If you are tempted to wallow, don't let your (good) intuitive hatred of sin lead you to hate yourself. 
• Be patient with yourself, because God is patient. He is fighting for your life. He has not forgotten you. He has not left you. Keep fighting with him. Keep gasping for the air of divine life - the Life-Giving Spirit.
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