Have you ever received an apology note or letter from someone? How did it make you feel? Was it easier to extend that person forgiveness and grace because you recognized the effort they took in writing that letter?
Of course we shouldn’t decide whom we extend grace to based upon effort. After all, that’s not true grace. True grace is given regardless of merit. However, if we are to be honest with ourselves, it certainly is easier to restore relationships with people who show a true spirit of repentance than people who seem to be indifferent about things.
In my experience, I have seen that one of the hardest things for a porn addict to do is show themselves some grace. Rather than admit their failings, repenting, and moving forward they often feel like they have to carry around a ton of guilt and shame after the fact.
Here’s the thing. If you want to have victory in your life, especially in the are of purity, you need to show yourself some grace (Tweet This).
Understand, this doesn’t mean giving yourself a “get out of jail free” card so you can do whatever you want online (or offline) without consequence. It simply means that when you are truly seeking recovery or sexual sobriety you need to know that there are times you have to show yourself some grace and forgiveness.
We have a section of the website called letters. If you aren’t familiar with the Letters project you can read more about it here. The idea is that you (the person struggling with sexual addiction) write yourself two letters. The first one is from you to your sexual addiction and the other is from your sexual addiction to you. It may sound strange, but putting these thoughts down on paper is a very powerful exercise that will help you see yourself and your addiction more clearly.
What I want to do today is to encourage you to write yourself a letter. In that letter address what you are doing and what you intend to do to stop. Also, be sure to include a resolution that you will show yourself some grace for your failings. Ask yourself for some forgiveness and then give it.
Addiction thrives on shame. Give yourself some grace and drive that shame away.
Give Yourself Grace by XXXchurch.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.