Victory Over Pornography English
PART III: The Strategy That Works
Confess And Repent
We will now go through each of the steps of the strategy in detail. The strategy is to be used at the moment you realize you are experiencing a temptation to engage in sinful behavior. Please read the explanation of each step and pray about the step, asking God the Holy Spirit to show you the truth of the verses quoted. Only God the Holy Spirit can convict you of your sins and bring you into all the truth He wants you to know for your life.
Realize just how sinful your sins really are in the eyes of an infinitely holy God -- your sins are an abomination in front of Him. Holy means perfect in goodness and righteousness; God has always been that way, and He will always be that way, for evermore. When you admit and repent of your sinfulness, God will allow you to experience a greater love for Him, your relationship with Him will be deeper because you will better understand His great love for you since He has forgiven your great sinfulness; Jesus explains this point:
Luke 7:47 “For this reason I say to you, her sins, which are many, have been forgiven, for she loved much; but he who is forgiven little, loves little.”
How Much Repentance Is Enough? What does repentance mean?
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/repentance
The Cambridge Dictionary defines repentance as follows:
The fact of showing that you are very sorry for something bad you have done in the past, and wish that you had not done it.
Essentially, repentance means you turn away from your sin and agree with God regarding your sin. You agree that your sin is an offense against the one true Holy God. I have repented enough when my love for God has exceeded my love for my sin. At the point, I no longer love sin, I no longer like my sin, in fact, I disliked it and very quickly I came to despise my sin. It is at that point that I have repented enough; and through the self-control of God’s Spirit, I maintain that position regarding my sin; I despise it.
I still repent over the sins I commit; I am merely explaining at what point you have repented enough to reach the point of being in complete agreement with God regarding your sin. When have I repented enough regarding viewing pornography? When the repentance outweighs the pleasure I get from viewing pornography. When you compare how little the pleasure is compared to how sinful the behavior is before God then that helps the repentance exceed the pleasure. This is the renewing of your mind God’s word tells us about:
Romans 12:1–2 1 Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. 2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.
Presenting yourself as a living sacrifice is your reasonable service in response to the salvation God has given you. It is letting Jesus Christ live through you. My repentance has risen to a sufficient level only when my love for God exceeds my love for sin. Victory over pornography will be slow until you deeply repent after each time you view pornography. If you feel stress and you are turning to pornography to relieve that stress, then pornography is an idol in your life; you are turning to something other than God in your time of need.
Step 1:
Confess to Holy God that what you have been doing is sinful and repent of the behavior.