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So what can you do to counter the four stages of the pornography cycle?

Step 1 – Viewing pornography

Here you put in place all those strategies for preventing yourself from viewing pornography. Things such as putting your computer in a public place, installing filter software, throwing out your collection of pornography, perhaps even disconnecting your internet to your home. Do whatever it takes.

Step 2 – Masturbation and orgasm

You need to know how the pornography cycle works – and particularly that if you masturbate and have an orgasm, you are actually further reinforcing your pornography addiction. And so if you do find that yourself viewing pornography again, then OK, you’ve viewed it – but you must avoid masturbating to it, because that will provide your body with a chemical reward that behaviour (adrenaline, endorphins … and that other chemical I mentioned), further trapping you in that cycle!

Step 3 – Guilt

Instead of wallowing in secret guilt, as a Christian you need to give thanks that the blood of Jesus cleanses you from every sin – even things like lust and addiction to pornography. Boldly grab hold of the freedom that sinners have been graciously given in the gospel! If you wallow in guilt, you will only create a stronger need to feel good again.

Step 4 – Need to feel good

And most importantly, as a Christian, you also need to keep feeding your delight in God. Most readers may not immediately understand the power of this, but this is by far the most important step of the four. Around Feb-Mar of this year I wrote some posts about the place of the affections in the Christian life, and the talks from our leaders’ retreat this year were about this as well (links to them here). I have found that few Christians understand this, so I refer you to them for more information.

But basically, the more you are amazed and captivated by God in all of his glory and grace, the less you will find yourself being attracted to sin. And so you must urgently and fervently feed your delight in God by seeking out and meditating on passages where the Bible tells us of the awesomeness of God’s glory and grace.

Pornography recovery programs sometimes tell you to go and do physical exercise – and the reason being this is that physical exercise generates endorphins in our body, making us feel good, hence negating a need for pornography in the first place. But the contentment and delight in God that Christians can have is far more powerful – it has even emboldened Christians to welcome their own martyrdom.

People often enter the pornography cycle at step 4, for one of two reasons. Either they will have had a tough, stressful day (maybe a bad day at work), and they will therefore feel the need to distract themselves and feel good – and pornography affords an easy answer. Or the exact opposite: they will have nothing much to do, and in their boredom they seek out something to excite and stimulate them – and again pornography affords an easy answer. As an answer, pornography is tragically deceptive – it leads to lasting guilt, and locks you into the pornography cycle!

But this is how you can get out of it.

[ PS: there were lots of hits for the previous post! ]