[Note: Originally written for /r/NoFapChristians - this draft is unedited. Yeah, it's re-hashing old material for this crowd, but still a useful reminder.]

I've been clean from a history of what many would call porn addiction for years now. I've since discipled a number of men through the issue and found immense success with helping these men find the same victory I did. Over the years, some have suggested I post here and I was just recently reminded, so here goes. My posts tend to be long-winded, so I'll give the abbreviated version, given how late it is.

FIRST: Embrace the Limitations of Human Methods

  • "Are you so foolish? After beginning by the Spirit, are you now trying to be made perfect by human effort?" Galatians 3:3

When I first got started, I tried it all - accountability partners, post-it notes, verses left around my computer desk, leaving a Bible next to the monitor. I tried the "when you're tempted" strategies of "stop and read the Bible first," "pray in the moment," or "quote verses you've memorized. I even contemplated tattooing a cross on my "special hand," as if the guilt it would create could somehow save me from ... well, becoming guilty.

These things helped on occasion. But I found the results to be very inconsistent. I was left longing for a reliable method. I found that anything that required "human effort" ultimately failed me at some point or other, never producing divine permanence.

SECOND: Understand Reproductive Compulsion

  • "Did he not make them [husband and wife] one, with a portion of the Spirit in their union? And what was the one God seeking? Godly offspring." Malachi 2:15

One of the most illuminating things for me was when I saw in Scripture the parallels God was drawing between physical relationships and spiritual ones. Most notably: the Church is often referenced as Christ's bride (or even the Father's bride, in Isaiah). I discovered in my marriage that the sexual frustrations I experienced with my wife were highly correlated with the ways I was interacting with God. In the days when my wife had no spontaneous desire for physically reproductive acts as a one-flesh relationship, I also was expressing no spontaneous desire for spiritual reproduction through the oneness bond I have with the Spirit who lives in me.

The Bible constantly talks about how the physical things of this earth are (in Hebrews 8-9 terminology) "copies" and "shadows" of the truer heavenly things. In this sense, I found that my desire for physically reproductive acts (birth control notwithstanding) were little more than a roadmap to help me get to the end-destination of spiritual reproductivity. That is: evangelism/discipleship was the spiritual fulfillment of the physical drive I had for sex.

THIRD: Understand Biblical Indwelling

  • "They shall become one flesh" Genesis 2:24

The Bible was (presumably with some exception) written in a time when there was virtually no real form of birth control. Sex produced babies. When a man physically indwells a woman, that's the expected result. So, I started looking at what the Bible says about a spiritual indwelling. I found that there are only three good things (i.e. not demons, sin, etc.) that can indwell us: (1) God's Word, (2) Jesus, and (3) the Holy Spirit - not unsurprisingly, these are all representative of the three aspects of the trinity (God's Word, as referenced by Jesus, being OT Scripture, thus the Father - not the "Word" in the John 1:1 sense). Fascinating to me was that all these references to God indwelling us shared a common trait:

  • God's Word: "The sower sows the word ... those that were sown on the good soil are the ones who hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold."

  • Jesus: "I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me." John 17:23 (see also John 15, where this is spelled out in much greater detail)

  • Holy Spirit: "You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth." Acts 1:8

When God - any person of the trinity - enters into and indwells us, the result is spiritual reproduction. Someone else just posted a CS Lewis quote about our desire for physical sexuality not being too much, but too little - that God has so much greater in store. I have found this to be quite true in the form of evangelism and discipleship - that, to be crude, it "scratches that itch" in a way that I never would have expected.

FOURTH: Pruning

  • "Every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit" John 15:2

Jesus as much as gives the answer to all sin problems, and it's not "try really hard to stop!" He says first that any branch that fails to produce good fruit "withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned" (John 15:6). Yikes! If you are fruitless, God won't prune away your sin. He lops you off from the vine entirely. See also the parable of the talents/minas - the one who kept his coin didn't lose it. He still had it. But he didn't produce with it, but that was enough for the master to cast him out "where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth" (Matthew 25:30) - the same description Jesus gives for hell in Luke 13:28 (not at all surprisingly: the same chapter where Jesus preaches the parable of the fig tree, once again affirming that fruitlessness = cut down, per v7, 9).

But if we want to know how to get rid of our sin, Jesus talks about "pruning." Who gets to be pruned? "[E]very branch that does bear fruit he prunes" (John 15:2). That's right: if you want your sin pruned away, you must bear fruit. And what is the goal of the pruning? "... that it may bear more fruit."

Our goal in avoiding sin is usually because we want to feel less guilty. Or sometimes it's this vague concept of "being more like Christ" by being sinless. How many people do you know who struggle with porn who, when asked why they want to quit, the answer is: "So I can be better at making disciples?" Some people might get that somewhere on their list if you asked them to give a top-10 for why they want to quit, but it's rare to find anyone who has that as their instinctive response. Yet that's God's #1 reason for pruning away your sin. If he's not going to get that result - as evidence by the fact that you're not producing disciples yet already - then why would he bother pruning you? Better to lop off the unfruitful branch. But if you are producing disciples - if you are fruitful - then he has every reason to prune you to make you even more fruitful.

No, I don't mean to degrade this into a conversation on whether or not "bearing fruit" is what saves us (it's not). But I do want to take Jesus as seriously on this subject as his words portray, not undermining the significance of the weight he places on the concept simply because I prefer to cling to a "not by works" mantra that makes me feel good about ignoring any actual spiritual obligation that comes with my salvation.

FIVE: Make Disciples

  • "Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations ... teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you." Matthew 28:19-20

Jesus opened his earthly ministry: "Come, follow me and I will make you fishers of men." He was clear up-front that the end-product he would be creating in his disciples would be that they become discipler-makers too (no that's not a typo). When he prays during his final meal with them, after teaching them everything he could and showing them through the model of his own life how he discipled them, he says to God: "I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word" (John 15:20). He was thinking toward future generations that would flow from them - that crop "30, 60 or 100 times what was sown." In his ascent, his final words are for them to "Go and make disciples." This singular mission is literally the focus of everything Jesus passed on to the 12 - and it's the reason God saves us. This is among the "good works prepared in advance for us to do," as Paul references as being the reason God saved us by grace through faith (Ephesians 2:8-10).

When Jesus said to "make disciples," he didn't say those words in a vacuum. He didn't mean to make "converts" or to "get people to attend a Sunday service" or "have them say a prayer." He's saying, "What I just did for you all for the last few years - now go do that for everyone else on the planet." Both Jesus and Paul understood and preached that this would happen through spiritual generations - the fruit of our oneness bond with Christ, just as physical children are the fruit of a one-flesh bond between spouses. Disciples are ones who follow to become like their master. And if people don't know what Jesus looks like, we reflect Christ to them living in such a way that we can profess boldly as Paul did: "Follow me as I follow Christ" (1 Cor. 11:1).

Pink Elephants

While this is a poor reflection of the spiritual dynamic at work in the oneness bond we have with God and the spiritual reproduction that can ensue from that, it at least conveys one aspect of mental remapping that has helped some.

Have you ever tried to stop thinking of a pink elephant? The more you or someone else chants: "Stop thinking of pink elephants!" the more you keep thinking of them. What's the answer to the riddle? How can you possibly stop thinking about them when the harder you meditate on that command the harder it becomes? The answer, as every child knows, is to go do something else.

The more you try and try and try to stop thinking about porn, the more you keep making it the center of your thoughts and attention. Jesus says, "I have better things in store for you. Will you join me? If you will, I will make you a fisher of men. Will you actually start fishing for men?" On that journey is when sanctification happens - not by you turning away from sin, but by turning toward Christ and becoming what he is molding you into: a fisher of men.

CONCLUSION: Sanctified Framework

In my journey, I've found that when I am spiritually satisfied by my oneness with Christ (which has the result of producing disciples/fruit), my compulsion toward physical gratification is equally satisfied.

I also find that the more I become like Christ - not in what I avoid, but in what I DO: make disciples - the more my way of thinking conforms to his. How could it not? If I want to make disciples like he did, I need to study his life and the example he gave. I need to live like he did. I need to pass on my lifestyle like he did. I need to embrace Philippians 3:17 - that Jesus was the model for the apostles, who set a model for others, and that others were instructed to follow that model, and so on down the spiritual-generational line. And in doing this, just as a physical child receives my physical DNA and becomes like me when it observes me and how I model life for him - so also do our spiritual children inherit our spiritual DNA, and we are raised to be like our spiritual parents. And in this process, with Jesus being the patriarch over all spiritual generational lineages - the more we become like Christ, the more we have the mind like Christ (Romans 12:1-2).

Was Jesus tempted as we are? Absolutely. And those temptations will still come, no doubt. I am still tempted. But it is never anything more than that: a temptation. Just as Jesus had a mental framework of understanding and saying no to temptation because he had more important things to focus on (like bearing fruit - making disciples), so also do I develop a mental framework of understanding and saying no to porn (and this applies to all other sins as well) because I have more important things to focus on: making disciples.