In the decades of helping people experience freedom by getting to the heart of our struggles, pornography addiction is certainly at the top of the list of bondage people face today. They live in a secret prison of shame while they struggle to overcome. Ponrography addiction strikes at people from all different walks of life. In fact, what used to be considered a struggle that mostly men face is also becoming a deep battle for many women.
The common pattern I noticed with people who battle porn addiction is they attempt every tactic available to get free, often with little long term success. Most will get free for a couple weeks. Maybe a guy gets caught by his wife, so out of fear he doesn’t engage porn; until weeks later, he falls into it again.
While it often takes time, investment and work to overcome pornogaphy addiction, I am not sure we are getting to the heart of the battle–the root issues that drives the strruggle to begin with.
What’s at the Heart of Pornography Addiction?
It is very important to know that all sexual addictions, including pornography are rooted in a deep and excessive need for love. The person’s heart issue is that they are empty of love. They also have a struggle to receive love in a way that it calms, nurtures and fulfill their hearts. Trauma and childhood neglect contribute to this inability to receive love. They may have love come their way, but they do not know how to actively recieve it.
Therefore, they are left empty and do not know how to process their emotions. Addictions numb us out to the point that we become disconnected to the pain and emptiness going on in the heart.
The Root of Rejection
Wherever we struggle to be loved and live in love, those places in our heart become captured by a Rejection Mindset.
Rejection is a way of thinking and living that happens when we have not been loved and affirmed in who we are. This breeds an unmet void that can only be filled with the love of God. Rejection turns your eyes to a counterfeit fix–usually beginning with performance driven living and then eventually some form of addiction to medicate the emptiness of our hearts.
We all know that porn does not satisfy the hearr’s need for love. When addiction kicks in, we become conditioned to follow a counterfeit rush, which is very different from the stabilizing and grounding work of true love.
This rejection root arises out of a person’s lack of feeling loved, accepted and valued. Rejection thrives off of people who struggle with identity and have little love and value for themselves. This rejection usually comes into a person’s life through lack of a father’s love being established in the heart. When love has not been formed properly in someone’s life, rejection trains a person to live in a performance driven lifestyle, a way of living that leaves people empty at the end of the day.
Empty and broken places of our heart that are left unaddressed with look some kind of fix or rush to fill the void.
Healing the Root of Rejection
Rejection messes with your desires, making you a slave to lust. When the rejection root is recognized and cleansed more and more out of a person’s life, it can lead you to learning what true love is and what it means to let the Father’s love satisfy your heart.
Becoming delivered from sexual sin issues is not about chaining yourself down, but by actually filling your heart with what one really longs for—love, acceptance and identity. Rejection has taught people to look for a fix, because it breeds the lie that you are unloved and disconnected from love.
The Problem is a Lack of Love
Uprooting rejection will over time detox the drive of searching for a rush to heal your heart. When the love of God comes to satisfy a person’s heart, they experience the relief that the sanctifying power of God provides in our life. It’s not about just running from the lust, it’s about facing it and allowing love to replace it.
But you will also need to learn what it is like to actually receive love and learn to be loved.
We have to get to the heart and not just chase symptoms.
I have witnessed men try to add web filters or take all their pornography and throw it in the dumpster, only later to find the person uninstalling the filter and the other guy hanging over the dumpster getting his magazines back. When the addiction urge engages, the person will do anything it takes to find that sexual fix.
We cannot defeat this stronghold with pure will and self-help. We must fight lust with what rejection has stolen—a revelation of the love of God in the form of acceptance, validation and approval.
Healing Desire
When rejection is removed and God’s love comes in, desire begins to slowly change. A longing for the purity of God becomes established in a person’s heart. Instead of just spending your life running from pornography, God can come and shift the desires in your heart, so that you no longer long for it.
This is what deliverance from rejection does, it allows you to love yourself and take your peace in the love of God. When I help people with sexual addiction, I don’t even address lust in the beginning. We are going to face their rejection issues. Cut the root system and the desire for porn will slowly lose its hold.
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