But even as I considered this opportunity, there was a second, more powerful thought—I didn’t want to stop. I really didn’t want to see pornography. I had no interest in what they were selling in that store. Over the years of fighting, prayer, and accountability, God had been faithful and had truly changed my desires. Though I could have looked at all the porn I wanted to, I didn’t desire it any longer. I was free.
Being free does not mean being perfect. Over the years since that day, I have still needed to walk closely with the Lord, engage the fight early, repent from an impure heart, and be accountable to other men. I am not yet what I will be. But by God’s grace, I am not what I was. I write these words to you today as a man who does not look at pornography—and does not desire to. The reason is not that I am so wonderful, but that I have experienced the same grace of Christ I’m commending in this book.
I want you to know my story because I want you to be persuaded that the powerful grace I’m writing about is more than words on a page. The Bible is a living and active sword (Hebrews 4:12). Its message of grace is a powerful and vibrant message that God used to transform me. He will use it to transform you.
I don’t know if your struggle with pornography is more or less extreme than mine was. But it doesn’t matter. Whatever you perceive the degree of your struggle to be—whether minor or major—your sin is enough for a just and vengeful God to send you to hell forever. As true as that statement is, whether your struggle is major or minor, your sin is not nearly as strong as the grace of Jesus to transform you.
“Where sin increased, grace increased all the more” (Romans 5:20).
If you are trusting in Jesus, pornography will never have the final say in your life. Forty-five zillion years from now, pornography will be nowhere in your mind as you perpetually behold the beauty of the spotless Lamb who was slain for your sin and mine. There is a day coming—and it is not far away—when you will see Jesus himself. When you see him, he will change you into his perfect likeness.
The message of this book is that you do not have to wait until then to be free of pornography. The journey away from pornography can begin today as you walk the grace-filled path charted in these pages. Fellow child of God, I write these words with one final prayer—that you might know the hope that, in Christ, you can be finally free from pornography. The grace of Jesus guarantees it.
APPENDIX
Help for Families and Friends of Men Struggling with Pornography
Many lives are touched when pornography is uncovered in a man’s life. Wives feel the pain and betrayal most acutely, so I want to speak to them primarily. I also want to help if you are the fiancée, daughter, son, mother, father, friend, or fellow church member of a man who is struggling. I want you to see that Scripture speaks to your pain in straightforward and practical ways.
Discovering that a loved one is struggling with pornography is always painful. You have likely experienced an explosion of emotions, including betrayal, anger, sorrow, disgust, fear, and compassion, along with deep worry that your relationship may never be restored. In this book I have labored to point men to the grace of Christ that is available to them in their struggle to be forgiven and changed. Here I want to share with you a particular grace of Jesus that is available as you respond to the sin of someone else as it deeply affects you.
As you read, I want you to understand that I have helped many people in your position. I have seen the pain and devastation that floods out of the lives of those men who indulge in pornography. You very likely feel overwhelmed, enraged, and profoundly troubled by what your loved one has been doing behind your back. You may be feeling like you are alone in your experience of shock and pain. If you do, I want to encourage you that you are not alone. Consider the strong words of the author of Hebrews:
Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.
Hebrews 4:14–16
This passage explodes with relevance for you. At least three helpful truths are presented here to minister to you in your pain.
First, these verses promise that mercy and grace are available to you in your time of need. When despair overwhelms you and fury overtakes you, it can be tempting, in the flood of emotion, to believe that no help is available. You need to believe the promise of God that his mercy and grace are available to you. God loves you and will help you.
Second, Jesus sympathizes with you in your weaknesses and temptations and shows you how to respond without sinning. Jesus was betrayed by a man who was very close to him. He knows what it’s like to be in relationship with a person whose behavior behind one’s back is the opposite of what it is to one’s face. Jesus responded to these trials without sinning. Jesus is our example who shows us it is possible, with his help, to respond to suffering in ways that are righteous and loving.
Third, you receive mercy and grace from Jesus himself when you draw near to him. The author of Hebrews promises that we find mercy and grace to help when we approach God’s throne of grace. You will know the overflowing care and comfort of Christ when you draw near to him in prayer. Oh, how I pray for you to do this as I write these words! When you feel frustrated, sorrowful, angry, and betrayed, don’t let those distressing thoughts merely run through your head. Instead, direct them to God. When you experience these strong emotions, remember to talk to the Lord about them. Approach the throne of grace and tell God how you feel. Ask him for this promised help to know how to respond. Plead with him to care for you in the midst of this extreme difficulty. When you draw near to him in faith, he will never turn you away but will help you as he provides you his grace and mercy. If you have never prayed about this situation, then stop reading right now and talk to Jesus about your emotions, ask him for his grace to help, and believe that he will give it to you.
Praying in this way is something you must continue to do over the long haul as you walk with your loved one on his path toward change. I want to point you to practical steps you need to take as you seek to act with wisdom as you recover from the pain you are experiencing. First, however, I want to tell you a story that can help answer a question you may have.
Men and Pornography
Stephanie didn’t believe a word Chad said. After several years of marriage, Stephanie discovered that Chad was secretly indulging in pornography. She woke up one night and discovered him at the computer in his home office. As she quietly approached from behind, she was completely horror-struck by the images playing on the screen. In the days that followed, Stephanie shed tears of anger and sorrow as Chad responded to her questions with answers she wanted but hated hearing. Chad’s answers to one of her questions left her in a state of total disbelief.
Stephanie was convinced that Chad must believe she was ugly or he wouldn’t be looking at other women for sexual satisfaction. Stephanie was concerned about baby weight she was carrying and was sure this was the reason Chad had turned to pornography. Chad insisted, “Stephanie, I think you’re beautiful. This has nothing to do with you.” Stephanie found this impossible to believe.
Stephanie’s disbelief was understandable because Chad’s answer was a half-truth. On the one hand, Chad said his sin had nothing to do with Stephanie. He meant that he loved his wife and thought she was pretty, but it was going too far to say that his sin had nothing to do with her. Chad had compromised his marriage vows, betrayed Stephanie’s trust, and brought severe damage into their life. His sin had everything to do with Stephanie, and he needed to learn to quit saying such things.
On the other hand, Chad sincerely believed his wife was attractive. Stephanie needed a lot of help understanding how Chad could sincerely think that and still look at pornogr
aphy. If you’re in the same situation as Stephanie, perhaps you have a similar concern. Your husband’s struggle may have made you self-conscious about your physical appearance, and you may believe that if you were more attractive, your husband wouldn’t have looked at pornography.
If this is your concern, then you need to know that your husband’s problem with pornography has nothing to do with your appearance—no matter what you look like or what you think you look like. You can lose weight, gain weight, change your hair and make-up, or undergo plastic surgery, and it would not fix his problem. Nothing you do to your appearance will solve the problem because pornography is your husband’s sin, not yours. Two realities demonstrate this truth.
First, God commands men to be satisfied with the physical appearance of their wives (Proverbs 5:19). God gives no ideal body weight, eye color, height, or hairstyle that is to be desired. He commands men to desire their wives. Whatever you look like should be your husband’s ideal. Your physical appearance is what he is called to desire. If there’s a breakdown here, it’s his failure to desire what God calls him to desire, not your failure to look a certain way.
The second issue has to do with the logic of lust. Lust, by definition, wants what it does not have. Lust always looks past what it possesses to the object it lacks. This is why Chad’s statement about his wife is quite true in a sense. Chad’s lust for pornography is not about Stephanie’s looks; it is about wanting a woman he doesn’t have, regardless of Stephanie’s appearance. Stephanie could change her entire appearance and it wouldn’t fix her husband’s lust. Chad needs Jesus to cure his lust by giving him a heart full of grateful contentment rather than a heart that desires a woman who is not his wife.
Walking the Path to Restoration
The bottom line is that pornography is your husband’s sin. It is not yours. As you walk the difficult path to restoration with your husband, you must avoid making your appearance responsible for your husband’s sin. Here are five practical things you can do as you seek to help your husband and move forward in a growing, vibrant, and happy marriage.
1. Don’t Struggle Alone—Get Help
In addition to calling out to the Lord for his mercy and grace in time of need, you must seek the aid of wise Christians. Your situation will be filled with dozens of particulars that need specific wisdom beyond the generalities of any book. You will need others to help sort through them. The idea of reaching out to others for help may make you nervous. You may think you can handle this alone, or you may feel too embarrassed to tell a pastor or close female friend. I urge you to think about this a bit more.
The Bible encourages us to live our lives together with other Christians. The apostle Paul writes, “Encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing” (1 Thessalonians 5:11). The writer of Hebrews states, “Let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching” (Hebrews 10:24–25). Christians need other Christians for mutual encouragement and for support in becoming people who are devoted to love and good deeds.
As you move toward reconciliation, there will be times when you are discouraged, angry, and drawn toward being unkind. You need people in the fight who will spur you toward right responses. One of the most important things you can do after you talk to God is to talk to a pastor or close female friend. Ask for their wisdom and prayers. Make sure someone is available who will reach out to you and will let you reach out to them when you’re struggling.
2. Deal with Your Emotions Biblically
If you’re like most people, you’ve been overwhelmed by a flood of emotion in the aftermath of your discovery. The emotions you’re experiencing are most likely some kind of anger or sadness. When you think of the betrayal you have experienced and the shock you have endured, you may even be dismayed by the depth of these feelings. There is a ton to say about understanding and dealing with these emotions from a biblical perspective, but I’ll mention two points for now.
If you are angry and sad that your husband viewed pornography, your feelings are appropriate. It may surprise you to hear this from me, but it is true. God’s response to sin is not neutral, and yours shouldn’t be either. God gets angry and sad over sin (see Hebrews 3:17). When we share these emotions, we show that our affections are in line with God’s. In fact, it would be a mark of wickedness for you to respond to sin with neutrality or happiness. In the midst of such a difficult situation, it is important that you understand the legitimacy of the strong emotions you’re experiencing, lest you place undue guilt on yourself for your appropriate response to the sin of your loved one.
There’s more to say about this issue, however. It is legitimate to be angry and sad over sin, but this reality does not give you a blank check to respond any way you want. Though God responds to wickedness with anger and sorrow, he never sins. Your emotions will be like God’s when your anger and sorrow toward your husband are free from sin (see Ephesians 4:26). Two principles can help ensure that your anger and sadness are righteous, thereby avoiding sin.
First, your anger and sorrow are sinful when they are unrestrained, so you must fight for self-control when you experience these emotions. If you’ve responded to your husband with screaming fits, cussing rants, spiteful threats to expose him to those he respects, physical violence of any kind, or intimations that you will keep him from his children, then you are sinning in your response to your husband. If you have been guilty of such reactions, you need to pursue the forgiving and transforming grace of Christ. If you know Christ, you are not a slave to your emotions. Christ himself can give you the grace to have righteous anger and virtuous sorrow when you ask him for these things in faith.
Second, your anger and sorrow are sinful when they keep you from being restored to your husband. Though God is angry and sad over sin, he seeks resolution. God moves to deal with his displeasure over sin through the atoning work of Jesus Christ. In a similar way, your strong emotions should lead you toward reconciliation and restoration rather than away from it. If your reaction has led you to avoid your husband for a prolonged period of time, then you need to begin to pursue the forgiving and transforming grace of Christ. You may feel as though restoration is a million miles away, but Jesus has power to get you there when you believe in him. It’s essential that you fight for restoration in your relationship with your husband.
3. Fight to Forgive
The call to move toward reconciliation leads to a critical step that you must take. Ultimately, you must forgive your husband for his sin. The apostle Paul writes, “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you” (Ephesians 4:32). For those who have been sinned against in dramatic fashion, this passage can seem like one of the most controversial in the Bible. The call on your life to forgive may seem overwhelming—even impossible. How can you forgive in the face of such pain? How can you pardon in the midst of such betrayal? You must forgive the way you have been forgiven in Christ. The Bible grounds the command to forgive in the forgiveness we have received from Christ.
We are to forgive others precisely because God has forgiven us. Sometimes it’s possible to believe that a refusal to forgive is a statement about the seriousness of the sin committed against you and is a holy intolerance of it. Though this can seem true, it really isn’t. Ephesians 4:32 teaches that no matter how terribly you have been sinned against, an ultimate failure to forgive is a failure to consider how much you have been forgiven. Show me someone who refuses to forgive others, and I’ll show you someone arrogantly refusing to consider the number of sins for which God has forgiven them.
For many of you, the problem is not that you don’t want to forgive, but that you don’t know how to forgive. Paul is helpful in dealing with this issue as well. He tells us we are to forgive the way we have been forgiven in Christ. Jeremiah 31:34 describes how we’ve been forgiven. In t
he context of this passage, the prophet Jeremiah is anticipating the work that Jesus will come to do. In unpacking this work, Jeremiah mentions an amazing benefit of the coming of the Messiah, quoting God himself as declaring that in Christ he will no longer remember our sins: “I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”
It is critical to understand what this does not mean. God does not mean he forgets about our sin as though he develops some sort of divine amnesia. God has perfect knowledge of all things—past, present, and future. He knows the end from the beginning. When God says he doesn’t remember our sins, he’s not limiting his perfect knowledge. Instead he means he doesn’t remember our sins against us. God knows we sinned, but he does not allow that sin to impact his relationship with us.
Your forgiveness of your husband will be like God’s forgiveness of you when you extend grace to him and have a relationship with him that does not hold his sin against him. As your husband is fighting for grace-empowered change, you need to commit to moving toward a restored relationship in every area of your marriage. This restoration will not be immediate. The important thing at first is to be committed to getting there. After that, you need to work closely with the person helping you to plan a wise path forward with your husband as a married couple walking in forgiveness.
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