Prodigal Daze Preview Page:
Chapter 7
(pages 155-158)
If any good came out of my sexual involvement with porn and the prostitutes at the massage parlors, it was the time spent on my knees before God in prayer and repentance. However, I was confident that God was weary of the same old confessions and promises that followed each session of repentance. I was weary of my continued faltering and giving in to the lust of my heart, however, once I crossed that line of immorality, and found out that heaven hadn't struck me dead with lightning or swallow me up in the San Andreas Fault, sexual sin grew easier and easier to commit.
In looking back at those days I realize that one of the contributing factors that caused me to stray were increasing insecurities regarding my attractiveness to females. My alter ego had to prove that I could still attract a woman even if I had to pay her to be with me. In my case, Satan knew what buttons to push, and paying for sex was a quick fix for my damaged sexual ego. Sin was sin, no matter what the root cause may be, and what I discovered early on in my walk with the flesh was that once I started feeding my hunger for pornography and massage-parlor sex, I was unable to overcome the lustful passions and consequential deceit that followed.
In a moment of spiritual candor, the apostle Paul wrote: “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do, but what I hate, I do.” Every time I read this chapter, especially these few verses, I can’t help but identify with what Paul was probably going through. I’ve heard this text preached many times, and many times those expounding on this particular verse stated that Paul wasn’t speaking personally but allegorically. To me it doesn’t matter if Paul was speaking allegorically or literally I believe that he was putting his readers on notice that he was having a problem doing what was always right according to God. Because of my literal understanding of these verses, Paul is that much more credible to me as a born-again man struggling to separate the spirit man from the flesh. If his statements are literal--as I believe them to be--then Paul was not a superhuman saint but rather an individual struggling with the same daily battles as ours. He was than directing his candor to those of us who are also struggling to define our role now that Christ lives within us. Paul seems to be telling us that he understands how hard it is to lay the flesh aside and walk in complete holiness 24/7.
There have been many times that even though I knew what was right, I’d do just the opposite. In truth, there will more than likely be other times that this exact same scenario attempts to repeats itself as I continue to struggle to maintain the holiness He has called me to. Holiness is a work in progress. At times we will stumble and fall, and need strength and courage to get back up on our feet and finish the race before us. This struggle to do what is right has never been more evident to me than in my battle against that from which I was once delivered.
The struggle to remain victorious over the temptations of sexual immorality is not easy. I understood that sexual sin, fornication, and adultery is a sin that God loathes. But, for whatever reasons, I’d find myself meandering down the wrong path time after time. Each time I gave in to the flesh, it was just that much easier to give in the next time. Though I felt tremendous guilt and shame, my ability to resist sin became more and more difficult to overcome. My spiritual immune system was so overloaded from placing myself in the presence of sexual sin that within time immunity was non-existent. Though the majority of my sexual sin was spent in adult video parlors, pleasuring myself, I never once denied that it wasn’t a form of cheating on my spouse. Jesus clearly taught that meditating and acting out on one’s thoughts was no different than cheating in the flesh. My eyes were being used to join my spirit, body, and soul to the persons on the video screen. Regardless of my spiritual explanations and excuses, there was no way to rationalize away my actions. What I was doing, and why I thought it was okay to do it, didn’t make it any less sinful in the eyes of God.
As I frequented adult bookstores and viewed the pornography, I was acting out of lust. and each time I crossed that line in the sand, it became much more difficult to return to God’s forgiving grace. Repeated sin made me more and more numb and spiritually callous to the nudging of the Holy Ghost, and prior to my guilt ridden suicide attempt suicide in April 1987, it had become painfully clear that I had reached the point where I could blank out the convicting voice of the Holy Ghost. The longer I walked hand in hand with sin, the more I became a willing victim of the natural progression of sin. Eventually I wanted to do more than just watch someone on a video screen having sex. My sin caused me to lust and desire to engage in the actual act of sex, and in the mid 1970’s I progressed from video booths to paid sexual relations at the massage parlors.
