The Beginning of the End of Lust’s Reign in My Life

By the summer of 1998, I had been in recovery programs and counseling for seven years, yet was still in bondage to lust. God set the stage for the ultimate breakthrough I would encounter a year later in several ways. 

He began by hitting me with holy fear.
Alone on a business trip to Europe, I masturbated to porn in a hotel in...

In June of 1991, I was a mess.

I had barely been married a year and a half, and was binging on porn and masturbation at least once a day. Like most naïve young men I had thought that getting married would solve my lust problem, but the opposite happened. Six months after our wedding day, I fell off the cliff again.

The guilt and shame from being a married Christian and binging on porn got to...

This can be a lonely time of the year. 

Perhaps you’re single, and all the Valentine’s Day festivities rub salt in the wound. Or maybe you’re married, and your relationship with your wife is on the rocks; some of the loneliest people in the world are married. When you’re miles apart from your spouse it’s easy to withdraw into isolation… that steamy, dark place with the manure smell where lust...

Genesis 39 provides what has always been an incredible story of victory over sexual temptation to me. Potiphar’s wife grabs Joseph and demands that he has sex with her; without hesitation, he bolts out of the room. This act of integrity costs him; enraged, Potiphar’s wife lies to her husband and accuses Joseph of a crime he didn’t commit, and Joseph ends up in prison for two years.

If I would...

“Here, take a look at this,” whispers Satan to a teenaged boy. “It’s only the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue... it isn’t going to hurt you.” The young man drinks in the images, and wants more… with less clothing involved… so he “stumbles” onto soft-core porn. Perhaps he’s exposed to it in an R-rated movie that he watches with Mom and Dad (Chip Ingram recently said that around 70% of...

He will speak out against the Most High and wear down the saints of the Highest One…
                                                                                                                                  Daniel 7:25

Some temptations are like butterflies; we swat them and they flutter off. But others are so intense it seems the army of hell is advancing upon us. I used to travel a...

Dan came to our support group for the first time after his wife demanded a divorce due to his porn use. He had spent years in ministry, having taught seminars, adult classes, Bible studies, and more. Dan was bitter that his wife was divorcing him “just because of porn;” when we gently pointed out that he was so focused on how “good he was” that he couldn’t see how he deeply he had hurt his...

“You blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel!” - Matthew 23:24 

I groan when I read this verse; it drudges up memories of my gnat-straining moments. One of sexual sin’s insidious effects is that it makes a man empty, miserable, critical, and bitter. Such a man is prone to lashing out at others to avoid feeling and facing his inner condition, especially those closest to...

July, 1991. I had been married for two years and was on the first of a three week business trip. Like most naïve young men, I thought that getting married would solve my lust problem, but it only made it worse. Six months after getting married I was binging on porn and masturbation daily again.

Now, alone in a hotel room in Ohio, porn was no longer enough; I wanted something more. After...

Porn paints a picture of the perfect woman who always smiles, is always ready for sex, never complains, and never has menstrual cycles or bad days. She’ll perform any sexual act a man wants her to, when he wants it. This shadow woman is all about satisfying his every want.

Enter reality.

Our wives are everything porn is not. They have bad days, menstrual cycles, complain occasionally, and...