First of all, you need to understand that the fleshly and spiritual battle of this porn addiction you find yourself in holding you back from living and addiction free life is being waged chiefly against your soul based on this following verse.
Beloved, I exhort you as aliens and sojourners, to abstain from fleshly desires, which wage war against the soul (1 Peter 2:11).
It’s a soul battle where your soul is being constantly overrun by fleshly thoughts and desires.
Therefore, it’s imperative that you accentuate on that.
There is a strong bond that usually occurs between your mind and that rebellious intent being stuck in it when going through temptation.
Your Soul Isn’t Bound By Space, Time, And Matter
One of the main factors that makes the influence of that vice so powerful on your mind has to do with the fact that your mind isn’t bound by the constraint of time, space and matter, so is sin and your porn addiction.
Have you ever thought about that?
What I’ve said in this statement plays a major role in the process of falling back.
Think about that for a while!
Even though you’ve not even acted physically yet on the intent based on reviewing a particular porn scene filling up the screen of your mind, but the reality is that there’s a part of yourself that has already been hooked up to the very act of indulgence of actually seeing it physically that you are contemplating at the present moment.
That part of you is viewing that scene from a mental level; in other words, that scene is being played repeatedly in your mind before you can actually watch it.
That’s your soul.
You see, your soul has already grounded itself firmly within the reality of the intent dominating your mind lying on the other side of obedience to God through your own imagination.
That’s where it’s anchored solidly.
In other words, your soul by means of your own imagination has already crossed the spiritual boundaries that God has set by establishing itself within the sinful reality of indulgence lying outside God’s will seducing you.
The Real You Is Not There
Mentally speaking, it’s as though you are no longer in the present reality that falls within being willing to dwell in the realm of God’s will having to do with the actual moment you are in before acting out on such intent.
Why?
The real you isn’t truly there.
That’s the reason why you are having such a hard time trying to concentrate on God in the present moment because your soul has already been deeply preoccupied by the memories of past indulgences in porn along with planning about future indulgences.
The real you is trapped instead in these following realities that fall outside of God’s will having to do with indulgence:
- The very porn scene dominating your mind that you’re planning to rewatch
- The very upcoming scene that you are eagerly anticipating to watch after watching the trailer that sends a wave of excitement down your spine
- The very timeframe that you’ve set to do all you have to do to soak up as much pleasures as you can before making a quitting decision
These are the key elements that empower this vice to continue to take more and more of your time, particularly the expectation of the release of an upcoming scene.
The Dominating Power Of Cravings
To demonstrate what I mean concerning the statement that the real you isn’t there, I’ll use what you usually experience when going through a moment of craving.
When a craving hits you while working, you become apathetic on the job since you cannot wait to get home.
Making money to support the work of God and to pay the bills is no longer relevant to you at this moment.
Because your real self is no longer on the job.
It’s venturing out in the dark reality of the intent going through your thinking and the reality of that secret place at home you normally go and watch porn.
That’s where your flesh wants to be.
Consequently, you simply find yourself being unable to pull back your soul out of such sinful reality.
Every time you try to steer your mind away from such reality to refocus on something godly, your thought process either bumps or reverts to the concern that you just can’t afford not to see it.
It becomes like an insurmountable barrier that literally blocks your mind from considering the option of letting go.
You just feel that you cannot lose what your mind has already been set on.
That concern freezes your thinking. You then find yourself being unable to move past it.
The Power Of Regretful Thoughts
The unwillingness to lose what we will get has an intrusive regret component that comes with it.
We tend to have the impression that our mind will be troubled by deep regrets in the sense of what we will be missing out on.
Generally, regret is a feeling of sadness we experience over something that has happened or been done.
But we get to experience such feeling of despair before we even get to the setting through which we’ll actually feel it.
Therefore, we perceive it as a reality that we want to avoid since we don’t want our mind to become bogged down by regretful thoughts about what we’ll miss if we were to choose to honor God by remaining obedient to Him in a given situation.
Beloved, these are the obstacles that have been holding you back.
Your Body Will End Up Acting Accordingly
The bottom line is that if you cannot detach your soul from such reality, what is inevitably going to happen is that your own physical body will end up following suit.
Although it takes a decision or an act of the will to get the body moving to indulge in this habit, but we still find it very challenging to restrain our body to resist the intent of indulgence we have in mind.
We still do it no matter what due to our inability to physically hold back against the urge.
Because there’s a degree of attachment that our soul has already had to something in the area of how we think, our physical body is going to move accordingly.
As you can see, your soul has become trapped into the scheme that you have to give in since you cannot afford not to do so.
The main reason that your system is more attuned toward caving in is that it provides you precisely what your system desperately wants.
You are not going to find a reason on the side of abstinence that can stimulate you as indulgence does because abstinence is grounded on sacrificing the very elements by which you are being enticed.
In other words, abstinence is about sacrificing instant gratification for a greater purpose, which goes counter to what your flesh desires.
Final Thoughts
The good news is that it’s not necessary for you to act upon such evil intent regardless of how you may feel in light of your thought processes revolving around what you will get.
You will eventually reach a point where viewing that porn scene at the root of the intent to indulge in will start losing its influential effect on your mind when you choose to let go by being willing to lose whatever this habit has to offer you.
Helpful resources: