I’m sure we all agree that pornography is a major struggle in the lives of many believers today. Perhaps in your own life, or people you know. Many people, even though they love Jesus and desire to live pure, find themselves in the middle of a war zone, with battles often lost. Falling again and again brings despair, frustration, confusion and a loss of hope and confidence to live boldly for Christ. The idea of giving up the fight against pornography is an appealing temptation that grows stronger when hope grows weaker. So is there hope for people who are struggling? Is it even possible to walk in victory over pornography? Yes it absolutely is! It is possible to win the war over pornography. Many people are, and this article contains what you need to know to set yourself up for success.

Firstly, we need to realise and accept that there is no “one magic secret” that will cause us to instantly overcome pornography and never struggle with it again. There is no miracle pill or one off prayer that’s going to “fix” you and make everything suddenly better. Perhaps there are some believers who have experienced that, but it’s not the experience for most people who have a struggle.

I believe that victory over pornography is not a one off event in our life but a daily lifestyle that incorporates eight important things. If you practise these then the walk of victory will increasingly be your walk.

8 things that will increase your ability to overcome pornography.

  1. Live an emotionally fulfilled life.

Most people don’t even realise that this is probably the area that is causing them most of their struggles in life. Often people’s struggle with pornography is not actually a lust issue, it’s an emotional need that is not being fulfilled properly, for which pornography promises to instantly fulfil. As humans we have spiritual, emotional and physical needs that if not filled the right way, we’ll be tempted to fulfil them the wrong way. We all have a need to be loved, to be desired, to feel important, to feel pleasure, to feel powerful and to have purpose. It’s God who ultimately fulfils these things in us, however, He has also designed that we must get these things from people in a healthy and wholesome way. People such as fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, spouses, children, friends and communities. When our emotional needs are not being met through wholesome relationships with God and people, and through healthy activities, then we’ll be driven to satisfy them through unhealthy relationships and activities. It’s amazing how much pornography actually appeals to these emotional needs in us. It too promises to instantly give us love, make us feel desired, important, powerful and to make life fun. When a man is not having fun, feels unpowerful, demeaned or disrespected, feels no purpose and importance in life then pornography becomes a tempting quick fix to those things he is needing emotionally.

Often it’s not even a pornography problem that men have, it’s a fun problem, a power problem, a respect problem or a need to be wanted problem. If your life is stressful and you don’t have a healthy outlet for that stress, pornography becomes a source of instant stress relief and fun. When you’re feeling unpowerful, disrespected or demeaned pornography is right there and promises to  make you instantly feel powerful, in control and someone to be respected. You don’t feel loved or desired and pornography promises to give you that instantly. The problem is it doesn’t actually satisfy those needs in the long run but makes them worse. It robs from you all the things it promises to give. It makes you feel guilty, weak, less respectable, less important and basically a loser, which then makes you crave those emotional things even more and the cycle repeats itself and gets worse. If we can meet our greatest needs in wholesome ways we will break the cycle and the “lust issue” will dramatically diminish.

So many people are trying to overcome a lust issue not realising it’s actually an emotional issue. They could spend the rest of their lives trying to overcome their “lust issue”, and not tending to their emotional issue, and wonder why they’re not succeeding. If they were to deal with their emotional issue, they would be surprised at how the lust issue would begin to just fade away. If you can identify the emotional needs that are lacking in your life that pornography is fulfilling, and replace them with healthy and wholesome relationships and activities, you’ll be surprised at how dramatically pornography falls away from your life.

  1. Acknowledge pornography is a sin, and make a stand against it.

If you don’t believe that pornography is a sin, you will never stand against it. If anything inside of you believes it’s okay and not really that bad then you won’t resist it but always be struggling with it. Your first step to overcoming starts with acknowledging it’s wrong. Pornography is not God’s desire or will for your life. It’s a perversion of what God has made pure. It’s dishonouring to your spouse or your future spouse. It’s dishonouring, disrespecting and demeaning of people who are created in the image of God, even if they don’t believe that.

  • Matthew 5:28 Jesus said, “But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”
  • 1 Corinthians 6:18 “Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body.”
  • Ephesians 5:3 “But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people.”

We must not accept pornography as okay or believe that it’s not a sin. It’s a terrible sin that wants to take you where you don’t want to go and keep you longer than you want to stay! It wants to distract you and destroy you and detain you in a prison.

Acknowledge that it is wrong, and make a decisive stand against it today.

  1. Put sexual fantasies to death, immediately.

Colossians 3:5 “Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed…”

You will give yourself such an advantage if you practise this one thing! Men often don’t put a restraint on their sexual fantasies and end up enflamed with lust and doing things they regret. If they just blew out that initial small flame of the beginning of a sexual fantasy they wouldn’t have to deal with a raging out of control forest fire of lust later on.

When I was a kid, my friends and I found a box of matches one day, whilst walking through a big dry bushland area near our suburb. Like little boys who don’t think much about the consequences of their actions we decided to make a “controlled” fire. The intention was to make a small fire and when it started to get out of control we would throw sand on it to put it out. We were in control so how could this ever end in disaster right? Well as the fire got bigger so did our excitement. My brother tried throwing sand on it and might have succeeded if it weren’t for my friend and I who were continually throwing large piles of dry grass and sticks on it! I remember it reaching a point where we suddenly realised it was completely out of our control and we had done something really bad. We turn and ran for our lives, back to my friends house nearby, looking back over our shoulders half way there only to see large sections of trees utterly engulfed in raging flames as the fire swiftly spread with vicious intent. It took the fire brigade a long time to put out the flames but great damage had already been done.

The point is quite simple, it’s much easier to blow out a match than a forest fire! If every time a sexual fantasy began in your mind and you just put a stop to it and said, “No!”, you would never have to deal with an out of control forest fire of lust later on that wants to spread through your life with vicious intent. When a sexual fantasy begins, just say no and force yourself to quickly think of something else!

Just becoming aware that you can put a stop to sexual fantasies at their beginning stage is going to help you. Now if you start to practise this you’ll be amazed at how it becomes second nature. After awhile you won’t have to do it consciously, your mind will do it for you because it’s a new pattern of thinking you’ve trained it to do!

  1. Limit your access.

A lot more people are struggling with pornography today than before the internet, simply because it’s so accessible now. The downside of this amazing technologically era we are in is that we can now access pornography anytime, anywhere. It’s in our pocket, next to our bed, on our desk, our TV, at work, everywhere! It’s become almost impossible to get away from it. Imagine trying to beat a heroin addiction if free heroin was available and accessible to you all day everyday. If it literally followed you around everywhere all the time. You wouldn’t have a chance of beating it until your access to it was limited or cut off completely. If we even want the chance of overcome pornography then we need to limit our access to the internet or even cut it off completely for awhile.

Temptation decreases the more your access decreases. If you had zero access to pornography you would never look at it. So if you were to at least limit it in your life you would actually give yourself a good chance of getting in control over it.

My advice is don’t have lots of devices with open access to the internet. Have one or two and put some parental controls on them like Net Nanny. Then let your spouse or friend or parents or someone else have the password and set it up for you. If you need to make changes to it, get them to do it.

Do you even need a smart phone? The world tells you that you do but the truth is you would survive if you didn’t have one. All of humanity that existed before 1994 survived without a smartphone. Even Jesus survived without a smartphone! I personally will not have one. I use a disposable phone and it does me just fine. Sure it’s a little inconvenient at times, but the upside is that no matter where I am that little phone can never tempt me. My wife has a smartphone so if we’re out and need internet she can help.

If I travel by myself and stay in hotels, I never take a smart device or a computer. Yes it’s super inconvenient but I never find myself alone in a hotel room trying to resist their temptation. If I’m by myself, I unplug the TV, put the remote in a draw and never turn the thing on. I don’t want to know what could be lurking amongst the channels waiting for me to “accidentally” come across.

My point is that if you struggle with pornography, then identify your points of temptation and severely limit your access to them or perhaps even cut them off altogether. Do something radical if you need to. Limiting your access won’t win the battle for you but it will give you a fighting chance of walking into increasing victory especially if you are doing the other things in this article.

  1. Talk about sex in an open and healthy way.

The world talks about sex all the time while the Church barely mentions it and we wonder why people grow up with distorted views. Parents should feel comfortable to talk to their growing adolescents about sex. Children should feel free to ask their parents questions about it. There should never be shame in it. You should feel free to talk to your close Christian friends about sex. God created sex. It’s normal! It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Talk about your temptations and struggles. They’re probably quite normal and most believers face the same thing that you do. We need to remove the shame in the Church about sex. We need to stop treating people like they’re evil because they want to have sex and think about sex a lot. It’s pretty normal to have a sex drive. God gave it to us when He said, “Be fruitful and multiply”. It makes people want to have sex. That shouldn’t be such a shock to us, yet the Church often treats that as an evil and shameful thing. But it’s not, it’s normal. God gave it to us. Now of course if we just followed all the desires of our sex drive we would end up in trouble. God obviously wants us to manage our sex drive in an appropriate, biblical and healthy way. But who’s going to teach people how to do that if the Church doesn’t. The world will teach them, and it will teach them that it’s okay to do whatever you want when it comes to sex. And that kind of advice has been destroying lives and marriages and families for a long time and is about to get exponentially worse in this progressively liberal age.

There are numbers of reasons why we’re afraid to talk about sex. Perhaps we’re trying to hide our own shame or weakness. Perhaps we had a bad example from our parents where they ascribed shame to our private parts and the whole idea of sex was bad to talk about and something to be embarrassed of. Perhaps we had a bad example from Church that just made it all about sin and wickedness. Perhaps we just don’t know how God thinks about it and are afraid of getting it wrong. Whatever it is, it’s time to break the bad communication cycle and start a new healthy cycle. One where we talk about sex in a totally normal and healthy way.

If you set an example of vulnerability others will follow! Create an atmosphere where people feel safe to talk about it. The more we talk about it in a normal way, the more we will break the “spell” of shame that keeps people in darkness. When this happens people can discuss their struggles and get support and prayer from other people through it.

  1. Be accountable to someone.

Find someone you can be totally honest with. Who won’t judge you, condemn you or disqualify you. Sin grows in darkness. Bring it to the light and walk in the light and sin will have less opportunity and influence in your life. This is why people like seeing a therapist. It’s all confidential with no judgment and they can be totally honest. It’s why people use a personal diary. We all need some outlet where we can be absolutely honest with what we’re struggling with and ask for support and advice. It’s good to have someone ask you from time to time how you’re going in that area, not to make you feel ashamed but to continually bring things to the light which always makes it harder for sin to operate.

  1. Walk in the Spirit.

Galatians 5:16 “I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh.”

It’s just a fact that the more you walk in the Spirit the harder it is to sin. So the more we learn to walk in the Spirit the less we will sin. Here are three ways to walk in the Spirit.

Walk in the spirit covenant, grace: So that if you fall, you fall forward. Hebrews 4:16 tells us to approach the “throne of grace” with confidence to find mercy in our time of need. God’s throne is a throne of grace not judgment, and we can approach it “in our time of need”. Thank God for grace if we sin but even better to get grace before we sin to help us overcome sin. There is something about being in the presence of God that empowers us with God’s ability to overcome every temptation in our life. Law will make us flesh conscious and sin conscious which drives us away from God to where it’s easier to sin. Grace makes us Christ conscious which draws us closer to God where it’s easier to overcome sin.

Walk from your reborn spirit: Our Spirit has been born again and has become part of the new creation (2 Cor 5:17). God has put His nature inside of us which is perfect in His holiness and righteousness (Eph 4:23,24). Our spirit is perfectly complete in Christ and full of God’s nature. Our spirit doesn’t want to sin. It wants to live perfectly righteous, obedient and in the perfect will of God. Our spirit cannot be tempted to sin. It’s our mind and body that are tempted to sin because they are still part of the old creation. If we learn to live and walk and make decisions from our reborn spirit rather than our body and mind then we will overcome sin and walk in victory. However, walking from our reborn spirit is not automatic. We have to intentionally get in the spirit on a daily basis. That involves spending time with God, worshipping, praying, fellowshipping, meditating on the Word and fixing our eyes and thoughts on heavenly things not earthly things.

Walk in fellowship with the Holy Spirit. We need to first be filled with the Holy Spirit (John 14:15,16. Acts 1:8, Acts 8:14-17). Then we need to get to know the person and ministry of the Holy Spirit. Not just theologically but also relationally. The more we walk on a daily basis with the Holy Spirit as our closest friend we will find there is a supernatural power that increases in our life to overcome every temptation.

  1. Know the truth about your dominion over sin.

Romans 6:6-14 says it all!

“…knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. 7 For he who has died has been freed from sin. 8 Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, 9 knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over Him. 10 For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. 11 Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. 13 And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. 14 For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace.”

We have been set free from the penalty, presence and power of sin. We are no longer slaves to sin and controlled by it. We no longer have a sinful nature driving us, we now have a new nature compelling us. The more we learn to walk from this nature the more we will walk in dominion. The wonderful truth is that we have dominion over sin and can say no to it. The only reason we sin is because we say yes to sin. But no one can force us to sin. We decide to sin. So if we were to increasingly walk in a revelation of our victory in Christ and exercise dominion over temptation then we would actually overcome every sin in our life.

Final thought:

I want to encourage you to go over these things again and again. Practise them. Let them become values that you live by and cultures that become second nature to you. You’re only defeated if you surrender, so don’t surrender. Why not try these things for the next 21 days, and if you fall along the way, fall forward into grace and keep going! Many people believe it takes 21 days to develop a new habit. So be vigilant. You are a child of God and more than a conqueror in Christ Jesus. I believe you can do it!

God bless you, and may His peace fill you in every way.

Ryan Rufus.

Other resources you may find helpful:

How to develop a plan for purity in 2019
Breaking the spirit of discouragement.
If people could see my thoughts. (Keeping a healthy psychology.)
5 reasons why frustration is a good thing.
How to build spiritual momentum.

Walking in the Spirit Covenant. (Audio)
Walking by your reborn spirit. (Audio)
Walking in fellowship with the Holy Spirit. (Audio)

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