Taking the first Step
“A journey of a 1000 miles begins with a single step.”
I was around 10 years old when I took my first steps introducing myself to pornography. As a kid, I had a Nintendo DS, one of the original ones. It was red, bulky, but it had my favorite two games, Mario Kart and Pokémon. One feature that this device also had was access to the internet. With this access, I took advantage to search things I would never want anyone to know I was searching, and thus began my first steps to an addiction to porn.
They say that the younger you are exposed to a drug, alcohol, or an addiction like porn, the harder it is to break free from it. There is a reality to this metric, and it does seem to align somewhat that the younger you are exposed, the harder it will be to break free. I want to break this lie, that you are not a lost cause no matter how bad the addiction or how young you were exposed. God can and will do it if you trust Him and the process. For few, it happened overnight, for many of us, it will take months and years of continuous hard work. And guess what? After you become free, there is still a continuous battle, although the battle becomes easier overtime. Day 1 of being sober feels like you have a constant itch to go back to your old habits. Day 90 of being sober boosts your confidence, and you now feel like you have power to always say no. I am certain that as the days become months, and the months become years, that temptation will be easier to deal with. No longer are you itching, not even thinking about it, and now when tempted with the matter you just smile, because you know that that lifestyle if no longer for royalty like yourself.
My story has taken about 15 years to see any real freedom from porn. Within the past 3 years, I have made war with my addiction to porn, but not in the ways most people expect. The logical side in me says “to try harder” and to “white knuckle” my way through this. Set up the blockers, count the days, get accountability partners. So much of what I stated is very helpful, but for ultimate freedom that only Jesus can bring, it is a process of re-wiring and acquiring the mind of Christ and what He says over everything.
My goal with this blog is to give people a reason to fight. To give people tools free of charge so they too can also battle against the vices and sin of this world. While my struggle was with pornography, these series of blogs (and future videos) will serve as a guide to help with the patterns of any addiction. Now I am not saying that it will be exactly the same as something else like hard drugs or various addictions, but what I am saying is that there are parallels and patterns that the devil uses in every sin to entice us into following the path of defeat to never experiencing true freedom in Jesus Christ.
So what do you say? Do you believe it is possible for you? There was a day in my life when I thought about giving up. There was also a day that I believed that I could do it. Why not take you first steps towards freedom? Why not give it a go? Can you go for 1 minute? 5 minutes? How about 5 hours? A day would be nice? Every journey begins with a single step. Will you take it?
