I greet you all again, brothers in Christ and pray that His love for you this week will lead you to enjoy victory and freedom. My road to freedom from this addiction did not come without a fight. For God has given us the power to overcome. My fight started when I was twenty eight coming back from the UK. After working in Cape Town for six months an opportunity arose to go to Johannesburg for a film project. I got invited to attend a church in Johannesburg which became a support structure for me. It was during that time that I started to learn what a faith walk meant with a few key things about fighting an addiction. God will come through in ways that will blow your mind. He truly knows what is best for you. I will share with you in the weeks to come what those key things are and I hope it helps you to walk in victory as God intended.
John 16:7-9
Nevertheless I tell you the truth, it is expedient for you that I depart, for if I do not depart, the Helper will not come to you. But whenever I go, I will send Him to you. And having come, that will convict the world about sin, and about justice, and about judgment. About sin because they truly did not believe in Me.
So let us begin to talk about freedom and what the first step is in the right direction. If you ask any true believer in Jesus how to recognise the work of the Spirit, one gets multiple answers. I spoke in a heavenly language, I felt joy or peace or both, I was set free etc. Looking at this scripture we see Jesus explaining a work of the Spirit that does not comfort us or make us feel all warm and fuzzy. It churns your stomach, or at least mine, just thinking about it. One can easily read over such a scripture. This begs the question: What sin is Jesus talking about and why is the word used as “sin” and not sins?
God tells us in His word that His thoughts are not our thoughts and His ways are not our ways. (See Isaiah 55:8) If you look closely at John 16, Jesus is calling unbelief a sin. “...they truly did not believe in Me.” Wow Jozua, a sin? “Come on man, I was not born with a state of believing”, or “ I wish I could believe?” We start rationalising it in what ever way, we were not given a portion of faith or it's not my gift. A very hard truth to face is that according to Hebrews 11:6, God says it is impossible to please Him without faith. What we are unaware of as children of our heavenly Father is that unbelief speaks to very the core of overcoming our addiction as well as other sins. By unbelief we make null and void the work of the cross, the work of salvation and the call to holy living. Yes brothers, we are called to live a holy life. (See 1 Pet 1:15) A very key factor to the first step to freedom is faith. Believing that God has not come to reject you, but rather heal and deliver you. Freedom is our inheritance, the right we fight to have. A freedom you will have to take. That fleshly pleasure will not make you whole. It will satisfy the flesh only for a brief moment but your soul will die along with your spirit. You see, if we do not believe that Jesus can set us free from bondage, then you will never be free of porn or any other addiction for that matter. Yes, unbelief is a sin as we read in the above scripture. With unbelief I reject the ability of Jesus to handle this problem in my life. I am rejecting Him as the Lord of life. Jesus claimed to be our Saviour, the Saviour of the world , He claimed he can save us from any problem, bondage and sin. By rationalising your unbelief with whatever excuses, you are calling Jesus a liar, a fake. When I follow the enemy's distorted and false advice I reveal the root of my sin nature, unbelief. We only think of sin as rules we are breaking, but sin in its very nature, is to be bound to something that makes you a slave in plain terms, doing an action more than once eventually not having the ability to refuse it anymore. God did set His word in place for our freedom, but without the spirit to help us walk there in, it becomes legalism. A right action without the Holy Spirit. Walking in the Word, in holiness, is preceded by the conviction that sin is bondage. For when we look upon the acts we do as God robbing us of pleasure and we just have appease this God to reap blessing, we are been drawn into a different kind of bondage. We as children of God must ask for understating of what bondage is to truly realise why we need to be freed from it. When I gave myself to God as a sinner, no empty promise of not to look again, no magic words that conjure some power from God to release me from bondage. Rather a broken man deep in bondage and in such need of saving, the saving came, my freedom was bestowed up me. This process of deliverance might be experienced uniquely for each us, but it starts with faith. Believing that Jesus has the capacity, the wisdom, the know how to save you. Your very freedom depends upon it.
The truth is that you cannot walk with God chained to unbelief let alone be an overcomer All sin is rooted in unbelief, even sexual sin like porn addiction. However you started with it, it starts as a substitute for something. Sadly a very poor substitute that will leave you in a terrible state. Satan asked Adam and Eve, “did God really say?”, sowing seeds of unbelief. Till this very day Satan is chained to unbelief. Somewhere he made a choice not to believe in what God says anymore, which made the way for pride thinking he can do it better. Are you truly going to believe God? Satan is a living breathing example of what unbelief does to you. The sad part of it is unbelief should rather be stated as not putting your trust in God, but in something else. All the world believes, but not all people believe in God. As children of God we can exercise our faith in the negative by not taking God by His word. Your unbelief is belief in the negative. I tried every trick in the book, out of myself to rid myself of this thing. When I came to the realisation that I can be free and only free through the work of Jesus, He did it. That choice caused my actions to be led by the spirit and not of the flesh. Believe He can, He did it for me. He can and wants to do it for you. He wants you to be set free. In saying that, by no means are other tactics made useless, like prayer, accountability, support, determination etc. But if not established by faith in the foundation of Jesus, your efforts become very counter productive, not to mention that you are sadly just busy with dead works.
I end this week in summary: Until you start to believe that Jesus, through the power of the Holy Spirit can make you free of pornography, you will not be free. Like so many others you will try out of the flesh to make it work, failing miserably. Every willful sin as children of God, is our faith in our flesh or the false advice from the enemy that our Heavenly Father's ways is not perfect. In the time that lies ahead, pray and repent of your unbelief asking God to enlist you in the school of believers. Yes a school, because we need to be taught by God afresh and anew what a faith walk is, and rightly so a walk. The process begins with making the choice to take God at His word, at face value, practicing to do it everyday until it becomes a natural thing which develops into fruit. Be blessed in this week, my brothers. May God strengthen you in this season and in your faith in Him.
Encouragement: 2 Cor 1:20 (God's promises are true)
Shalom
17 November 2010
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