Craig Groeschel - Escaping the Porn Trap
The first time I saw pornography, I was in the fifth grade. I was over at my buddy Steven's house, and he found his dad's stash of Playboy magazines, probably 75 or so of them in a big trunk. And Steven and I, in the fifth grade, memorized the pictures. The second time I saw pornography, I was in the seventh grade, and I was babysitting for a couple. And in the living room, this wasn't entirely unusual at the time, but in the living room, they had Playboy Magazine sitting out on the coffee table. And so in my rush of excitement as a seventh grader, I put the kids to bed at about 7:00 PM and I started memorizing those photos.
The third time I saw pornography, I was in the 10th grade, and I found two Penthouse magazines and kept them hidden for some time until the guilt kind of overcame me, and I threw them away. Was really, really hard to believe, as I remember three things. Number one, as a fifth grader, I remember the rush, the thrill, the excitement of seeing something that was forbidden, and yet something that I wanted to see. The second thing I remember, if I wanted to, and I don't want to, but over four decades later, if I tried, I could actually recall some of those images that I saw. The third thing is I remember the confusion. I remember the simultaneous excitement and shame and guilt that I felt as I looked.
Now, back then, pornography was really difficult to come by. Today, as you know, you give your 12-year-old a mobile device, and essentially you're giving your kid porn in their pocket. Why did I say a 12-year-old? Because according to Common Sense Media, 12 is the average age that a child will see pornography for the first time. And unfortunately, that problem sticks with a lot of people. If you're feeling a little bit uncomfortable now, going, "I should have skipped this week at church," you're not alone, because studies show about 69% of men and 40% of women will view porn this year in the US.
So the bad news is, chances are at some point you're gonna be tempted to look at someone, something lustfully, not if, but when. The good news is that our God is faithful. And no matter how you are tempted, our God will always give you a way out. I wanna show you the promise in His word. Scripture says, 1 Corinthians chapter 10:13, that, "There is no temptation that's overtaken you except what is common to mankind". So if you're tempted to look at something, think about something, the temptation is not actually a sin, it's what you do with the temptation. If you're tempted, even Jesus was tempted.
The Bible says there's no temptation that's overtaken except what's common to other people. But here's the good news, our God is faithful and this is His promise to you. He will not let you ever be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted to lust or in any way tempted to sin against God, scripture says He will also provide a way out so that you can endure it. I came to bring some good news that God is gonna give some of you a way out to find freedom by the power of Jesus. We're talking about quitting porn, and the title of today's message is "Escaping the Porn Trap". With that, I feel like we should pray. What do you say?
God, I thank you so much that you are a gracious God, that your son was tempted in every way that we are, yet He did not sin. And because of your grace, your power, your goodness, through Him, you always give us a way out. So God, I ask in the name that is above all names, the name of Jesus, that you would do a healing work, that you would set people free, that we would know the truth, because we know the truth sets us free. We pray this in the name of Jesus and everybody said amen. Amen. Amen.
Well, we are in a message series called "Think Ahead," based on an idea of a book that I recently published. All the content we're covering, and the weekends is different from what's in the book. And on the weekends we're looking at six different people from the Bible, and we're gonna see how they would think ahead and make some pre-decisions to decide ahead of time to do what's right to honor God. Today the person we're gonna look at is Job from the Old Testament. Now, whenever we think about Job, what do you tend to think about? You think about the guy that suffered, right? If you ever think about Job, you tend to think about, "Oh my gosh, he went through so much". And he did.
But there's a lot more to his story that you may not realize. He was a very, very successful man. He had integrity, he was God-honoring in so many different ways, and the devil got permission to attack him, and the devil did. The devil attacked his possessions, his family, and his health. And he has some friends that you don't want. You know, some of you got, you got friends that you're glad you have, and you got some other friends going, "I think I could upgrade you". He had some of the upgradeable ones. These friends said, "Hey, the reason why you're suffering, the reason why you're going through all this stuff is God's allowing it because you've been bad. You sinned and you brought this on yourself".
Job kind of listened to it for a while, but after a while I said, "You know what? You're just wrong". And in Job 31, he offered a very real defense against the accusations toward his character. And let me tell you a few of the things he said. Job said, "Hey, I don't lie. I haven't deceived people". He said, "I've been generous to the widows and the orphans". He said, "I've never turned away a stranger". And he goes through a long detailed list of all the things he's done right and the things that he did not do wrong. But the first thing that Job mentions is a promise that he made to God, a covenant to avoid temptation. And I wanna show you the very first promise he made in Job 31:1. The first thing he said is, "I made a covenant with my eyes not to look with lust at a young woman".
Now we can't be sure, but if he starts with lust, we might deduce that he could have been tempted to lust. Would you agree? Yes. I mean, what you lead with is often what's most important to you. For example, I have never said I made a covenant with God not to steal a car, because I've never been tempted to steal a car. But in the 10th grade when I threw those magazines away, I said, "God, please help me not look again". Because I was vulnerable to it. So Joe leads with this desire, this promise to God, not to look lustfully. And as you read his words, he is God-centered in all that he does. Because he knows he needs God, and he knows that God knows what he's going through. In fact, this is what he says about God. He said, "Doesn't God see everything I do and every step I take"?
In other words, Job knew what I hope you will know, and that is this, that you may be able to hide your lust from other people, but you can't hide your lust from God. He knows about it. He still loves you, and He promises to give you a way out. Now, some of you're thinking, "Okay, I'm in this church thing, and you got this guy up there talking about lust. Like, what's the big deal if I have some lustful thoughts? I mean, what's the big deal if I, like, look at something online? It is no big deal. I mean, I'm not hurting anyone, everyone else does. It's just kinda my one little thing. It keeps me from doing other things". And what I wanna do is I wanna show you in scripture, we can look at Job, but don't forget what Jesus said.
Jesus in the New Testament said, "If you look lustfully at a woman," you've already done what? He said, "You've already committed adultery in your heart". The standard is pretty high. Jesus said it, and Job said it this way. Job said, "For lust is a shameful sin, a crime that should be punished". Now watch what he says. "It's a fire that burns all the way to hell". And then Job says something very dramatic. He said, "If I gave into my lustful desires, it would wipe out everything that I own. It would wipe out everything that I own". He says, "If I just gave into this, it could completely ruin my life". So what did Job do? If let's say he probably was vulnerable to this, he decided to think ahead.
And I wanna encourage you for a moment to do the very same thing. Just think ahead and ask yourself the question. Left unchecked, what could your sexual sin cost you? If you give in and continue to let that fire burn out of control? What could your sexual sin, your sexual vulnerabilities, your sexual temptation, what could it cost you? I've thought about this, and it's important that I think about this. Because if I compromise my integrity in this way, it could cost me everything. What would I lose if I sinned sexually? I would lose your trust, which is very, very important to me. I would lose the right to be your pastor. If I sinned sexually, I would crush so many people. I would lose the respect of my children and my grandkids. And that's not even the worst part. The worst part is I would betray my vows to my very best friend, the most amazing woman in the world who's been faithful to me for 33, almost 34 years. And I would just crush her heart.
Literally five minutes of sexual sin could wreck a lifetime story of serving Jesus. And so I wanna ask you to think ahead. Left unchecked, what could your sexual vulnerabilities, your sexual sin cost you? Perhaps Job was a little bit vulnerable. He started with lust, which leads me to believe he was thinking ahead and predecided. And what I like about it is he was honest. He started there and he didn't hide it. He didn't say, "Ah, yeah, this isn't a problem for me". He didn't just say, "Yeah, I don't lie, I don't cheat. I've never wronged anyone". He said, "You know what? I'm just gonna call it what it is. I predecided, I chose to make a covenant with God not to look lust". Like he didn't hide it, he was honest about it, which is very, very important, because the devil has a strategy to take every single one of you down. And in this area, just the stats alone tell us that a lot of us are very vulnerable to this temptation.
I wanna show you what happens. I call it the devil's temptation cycle. The first thing that happens in some area of your life is you are triggered. You would see something that arouses you. It's an attractive person at the gym. Well, "Praise the Lord for his muscles". Or you, "Thank you for her yoga pants," or whatever. Do you see someone in the gym, you go, "Oh," and you're drawn to look at them, or you watch some raunchy show on HBO, or you see someone's sexy photo on Instagram. She's in her bikini saying, "#Blessed, God is so good". You know, and you're like, "Ah, no, no". Or you are reading some kind of a novel and you come to that steamy part in the novel where they do whatever they do and it gets you going. Or you are sad, one day you're home alone, you're angry and you're bored and your mind wanders and you're triggered.
The second thing that happens is that your desire is awakened. You see something that excites you, and this trigger can cause a powerful physiological reaction in your body. There's this dopamine rush. And you think, "I wanna see it, I wanna grab it, I want to touch it". I dunno what to do with my hands. That was kind of weird, right? I'm like, I don't know what to do with my hands. I want to, I'm gonna, I'm not gonna do that either. "I'm gonna see it, I'm gonna grab it, I'm gonna touch it". Just put your hands behind your back, preacher, just leave them right there, right? You know, you're excited. You're triggered your desire.
And the third thing that happens then is that your brain attempts to rationalize your desire. You start to tell yourself something like, you know, "I've been working really, really hard and I deserve a little reward". Or you might say, "Well, my spouse has been inattentive and he's not, or she's not meeting my needs". Or you may say, "Hey, I'm single and I got my needs and I'm not hurting anyone, and nobody's gonna know". And you work to justify it. If you do not break the cycle, the next thing that happens is this. Trigger, desire, rationalize, you act out. If you don't intentionally stop the cycle, then you will act out. You'll click on the website, you'll watch the video, you'll ask her to send the nude photo, you'll masturbate. You'll act out.
And then once you do that, the next part of the cycle is you experience the wave of shame, especially if you're a Christian. Like, "I shouldn't have done that, and I feel so bad". Because what happens is, before you sin, the devil tries to minimize it and take, "It's not that big a deal, everybody else does it". But after you send the devil, maximize it, tells you, "God wouldn't love you, and you'll never have a good marriage, and you're pathetic and you're disgusting". And it can be rather confusing to you because there's a part of you that longs for it and enjoys it, and then there's another part that feels equally or even more ashamed and dirty and guilty.
Now, if you're a Christian, what do you do? Because what the devil will tell you is you can't tell anyone. You gotta keep this a secret. If they know, then they won't trust you and you can't be used by God. But this is a very big problem when you keep it a secret. Why? Because sin grows best in the dark. And so if you find yourself wanting to hide it, you think, "Well, I've gotta cover up my tracks". So maybe you delete your history and you erase whatever, and you try to come up with some kinda story. And then you're going through life with what some people have described to me as like a ball and chain. Like, you're trying to serve God and you're trying to have a good marriage and you're trying to live with purity, but there's this weight that holds you back and slows you down. And you're always gonna wonder, when is it gonna come out? When is it gonna cost me? When is it, as Job said, gonna wreck my entire life?
So for those of you that are Christians, what do you do? You promise God you're gonna stop. "I'm gonna stop. This is the last time I'm gonna do it". And then you ask God to help you. And you might actually stop for a little while. You might have a short period of what we might call sexual sobriety. You might go three days or a week or six weeks or nine months. And then at some point, you're triggered. And instead of walking away, you give in to the trigger, and you look once or you act out. And then what a lot of people do is they say, "Well, I screwed up once. I might as well just do it again". And then they binge on whatever sexual sin is before them.
If you're single, what you tend to think is, "I hope when I get married this is gonna go away. I'm gonna be married. I can, you know, you know, you know". Don't make me say it. You know, honeymoon for the next 73 years. You know. And you think when you get married, the temptation's gonna go away, and you get married, and it doesn't go away. Why? Because you don't just have a lust problem. You're stuck in the devil's cycle of sin. What do we do about it? Well, Job gives us a really good example, to think ahead. Job, you can almost hear his thought process. "If I'm going to be vulnerable to this, before I'm vulnerable, I'm gonna think ahead, and I'm gonna predecide to make a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully at a woman".
So I'm gonna encourage you to predecide your plan of escape. What is it gonna be? I'm gonna give you three thoughts. The first thing is I'm gonna encourage you, don't just fight temptation, but flee from it. Flee from it. Paul didn't say when it comes to sexual sin, he didn't say, "Fight against sexual temptation". He said this, he said, "Flee, run away, from sexual immorality". Don't just go like, "I'm not gonna look, I'm not gonna look". But instead, turn yourself and run, Forrest, run, right? Get away from it as fast as you can. Stay away. Shut the door. Shut the door, throw away the key, why? Because almost every time you sin, you sin through a door that you left open.
Oh, it's so quiet in here. So if you're one of the percentage that's vulnerable, don't feel bad, you're human, but let's be smart. Let's be smart enough to think ahead. And I wanna encourage you, if you're vulnerable, to be honest about how and when you're vulnerable, and close the door. Because you're only as strong as you are honest. And Job, I like the guy. He was honest enough to start there. The first thing he said is, "Hey, if you think I'm lustful, no, I made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully".
So can you handle me being transparent? Yes. Back in the old days, it was really good when you say stuff and it wasn't online forever. I'm gonna go ahead and take a risk. This surprises a lot of people, and it will shock some of you. But long before I was a pastor, I used to be a man. That's a little joke, #sarcasm, okay? I'm still a man. And there was a time, Amy would remember this. I was in my early 30's, and we had our first kinda home computer, and it was when the AOL came out. How many of you're old enough to remember AOL? Raise your hands? Online, type in the comment section. "I remember AOL". just type that in the comment section. Now, do you remember the sound? Yes. The sound was like the devil in your ears, right?
And so Amy and I had logged on to AOL, and they would send you all sorts of weird random emails. And back then, we didn't know any better. But they would send, I guess it was like bait emails and would have you look at stuff that maybe wasn't appropriate. So I'd never seen that before. Amy had never seen it before. We were sitting there right by side by side, and we clicked on the email, and it took us to a pornographic site. And I remember sitting there right by, I mean, we're like trying to turn it off and pull the plug out and kill the noise, you know, whatever it was. And I remember just this horrified feeling of like, "Oh, that's in my house now". Like, that's like right there on the computer.
And so, I mean, I hate to say it, but kinda like Job, I thought, well, if I could be vulnerable, and I could be vulnerable, then I probably wanna close that door. And so I went to work talking to people that were smarter than I was and said, "What do we do to help me close this door"? And I very quickly found some software that you could put on your computer that would block everything and send reports to everybody important. And so I did that. And then as technology evolved, so did my systems of protection. And so now I just have everything as locked down as it possibly can be. Amy has access to all my texts, all my emails. My whole office team, they can see everything. Kind of embarrassed, I have almost no privacy whatsoever, but they can see my texts and my emails. If you text me something personal, they can actually see it. My iPad, my iPhones, I call it locked down.
And by locked down I have adult content blocked. And I don't even have the ability to download apps. To the best of my technological ability, I can't see anything that I wouldn't wanna see. And so some of you're like probably really disappointed right now, going, "Craig, do you really need all that protection"? The answer is like, honestly, now, no, I really honestly don't. But what do I have to lose by being careful? The answer is nothing. What do I have to lose by not being careful? The answer is a lot. And so I'm gonna say to somebody here, don't just fight it. You've been fighting it, that hadn't worked. Flee from it. Do whatever it takes. Whatever it takes. Whatever it takes. You gotta go back to a dumb phone? I'd rather have a dumb phone than end up divorced. Do whatever it takes. Don't just fight it, flee from it.
The second thing is, ask God to renew your mind and to heal your heart. Like, pray about it. Like, "God, I need your help. Would you just renew the brokenness of my mind? God, just heal my heart from this hurt". 'Cause here's what happened to most of you somewhere along the way. Most of you, at some point, Satan robbed you of your innocence. What happened? I don't know your story, but at some version of this, you probably saw something you shouldn't see. You maybe touched something you shouldn't touch. You read something that you shouldn't have read. Tragically, some of you, you were touched by someone in an inappropriate way, or someone pushed you sexually when you were young and dating them. Whatever it is, somewhere along the way, most of us, I would call it like a sexual wound. We were hurt. We saw something, we were hurt, and it gave us a distorted view of God's gift of sexuality.
And so now, because we've been wounded, whenever something triggers us, we wanna remember. If you wanna act out, you wanna look, you wanna do, well, whatever with your girlfriend, remind yourself that sex, it is a gift from God. It is a gift between one man and one woman in the covenant of marriage. And every gift from God has a corresponding counterfeit. Sexual lust is a counterfeit to the gift of lovemaking in the covenant of marriage. And that's why I wanna remind you that there is no image, no person, no sexual high, that will satisfy your inner longings, because you are made to crave love, and you desire intimacy, and you long to belong. What are you doing? You're searching for love. Don't settle for lust. Don't settle for something that is a counterfeit from the devil that will never, ever, ever fill that void. It will only leave you hurting and wanting for more.
So what do we do? Some of you, you're gonna get serious, and you're gonna try to fight your way out. And what I wanna do is I wanna show you from research what's gonna happen to your body over the next few weeks if you're trying to free yourself from the the burden and bondage and of pornography. Based on a lot of research, here's a quick summary of what you can expect. The first week without porn, your dopamine's gonna take a nose dive. You're gonna experience dramatic mood swings and increased anxiety. Most likely you'll experience hypersensitivity to lustful thoughts. Then one to three weeks without porn, your motivation and your energy plummets. Your body isn't used to the dopamine high and you have little to no sexual urges if you're married because you've only been aroused by something illegitimate and sinful.
Then what happens is four to eight weeks without porn, you're probably gonna experience a rollercoaster of emotions. Your energy starts to return, followed by sluggishness or depression, 'cause your body hasn't normalized yet, and you might battle sudden bursts of temptation. This is where relapse is most common. If you do give in one time, don't give in two. A relapse might be a part of your healing. You never want to give yourself permission for it, but if you do it, don't stay in it. Then the good news is beyond three months, your emotions stabilize. Three months.
This isn't a one and done, you're better by Tuesday. This is you over, this is God renewing your mind and healing your heart. Your emotion stabilizes. Your sex drive starts to return to normal. Your spiritual confidence soars because you're intimate with God. You're walking empowered by the spirit. You're not being drained by that weight that's holding you back. Your relational intimacy grows. You can look at your spouse if you're married and you can say, "I love you with integrity". And you can want each other in an intimate way with integrity. And you feel at peace, you feel whole, and you feel alive again. And somebody can clap right there because that's really good news. God, heal my mind and heal my heart.
And that's why Paul told us in Romans 12:2, "Do not conform to the pattern of this world". Would you agree that lust is normal in this world? Sex before marriage is normal in this world. Sex outside of marriage is normal. Funky sex is normal. Do not be like that. You don't want normal. Normal is divorced. Normal is broken. Normal is guilt, normal is shame. You gotta be different from this world if you want something better. "Do not conform to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind". God's gonna take those images and that perversion and renew it with the truth of God's Word. And then as He does it, you'll be able to test and approve what God's will is, His good, His pleasing, and His perfect will. What are we gonna do? We're not just gonna fight against it. You've done that. You're gonna flee from it. Close the door, whatever it takes. Let God renew your mind.
And the third thing is the part that's really, really fun. Don't just flee from temptation, but pursue a life with Jesus. Pursue a life with Jesus. And so what you're doing is you're not like just trying to fight lust away, and you're not trying to just empty lust out of your life, but you're filling your life so full of Jesus and the presence of God and the word of God and the power of God and the calling of God that you don't have time or you don't have room for the lower stuff of this world that's been holding you back.
In fact, I read this article, and it wasn't a Christian article, but it made me think of something that's powerful. The article said that most people, especially men, not everybody, and certainly women too, but especially men tend to look at porn when they're bored. When they're a little bit empty. When they're under-challenged. When they're lacking something. And so this non-Christian article said that you don't just try to remove the lustful desires, but you need to have risk, excitement, and thrill. And I read that and I thought, "Yes, yes". I don't have nearly the temptation as years ago because I've got a lot of risk and excitement and thrill. Do you know why? Because there is nothing more risky, exciting, or thrilling than living daily for Jesus.
When you are living for Jesus, you know what happens, is God prompts you to pray for someone. And God prompts you to give to someone. And then when you're a witness, sometimes you get persecuted, and then sometimes people make fun of you. And that may be difficult, but you know what? You show back up and you keep praying and you keep believing and you keep loving and you keep giving and you keep walking in the spirit and not by the flesh. And that's risky and that's exciting and that's thrilling. And so it's not just that you're getting rid of lust, but you're getting so full of Jesus, you don't even have room for lust.
What did Job do? The very first thing he said, this righteous, godly man. He must have been vulnerable because he said, "I predecided, I made a covenant not to look lustfully". And then even though he was living a righteous life, the devil attacked him and robbed him and stole from him. And the good news is God restored all he'd lost and more. Whatever the devil has taken from you, God wants to restore what you've lost and wants to give you more. Yes. Don't let the devil rob you. I'm gonna ask you again, left unchecked, what could your sexual sin cost you?
Be honest. Close the door. Let God renew your mind and heal your heart. God made you for love, His love, human love. Not just marital love, but human love, in the body of Christ. He made you for love. Don't settle for lust. Because either in this way or some way, you will be tempted. And the good news is God will always give you a way out. Job predecided. "I made a covenant with my God". No matter what you're facing, Jesus is the truth. And the truth will set you free. May you be free. The bad news is we're all gonna be tempted in some way. The good news is our God, He is so good, and He is always faithful and our God will give you a way out.
So Father, we ask that by the power of your Spirit, you'd work today, all of our churches, nobody looking around.
I'm gonna keep this kind of broad at first. I'm gonna ask, how many of you would like to honor God with, I'll call it sexual integrity or purity, purity of the heart, purity of the mind, purity of the body. I hope that's all of you, and so we're gonna start there. How many of you wanna honor God with sexual integrity and purity? Would you lift up your hands? Online, type in the comment section, "I wanna honor God with purity". Leave your hands up for just a moment.
Father, I pray that your Holy Spirit would hear the cries of our hearts and honor our desires to follow you. Now, God, do whatever it takes. God, give us the courage to do whatever it takes to step away. God, I thank you for some they'll be instantly healed. God, for many, it may be a process. It may be a process of counseling, it may be going to a sexual addiction class or even going away for a while. It may be being very extreme. God, for marriages that will endure this together, I pray for grace to receive a confession. That God, a receiving spouse who hears about a confession would not feel as betrayed, but would feel loved by someone who wants to honor him or her in purity. I pray for protection for marriages. I pray for, God, I pray that you would show us the way out. Give us the courage to do what it takes. We believe this will happen in Jesus' name.
As you keep praying, nobody looking around, there are those of you today that it may be this issue, it may be a million other things, but you feel trapped in your sin. You feel guilty for your sin. Let me tell you about the goodness of God. Our God, listen to me, He loves you. He loves you so much. Scripture says, "For God so loved the world that He sent His one and only son, Jesus. That whosoever," and this includes you. "Whosoever believes in Him would not perish but would have eternal life". Today, right now, there are many of you that you feel guilty for something you did. This was me years ago. I tried so hard not to sin. I tried not to do wrong. I felt so guilty that I couldn't overcome my sin.
The reason is I didn't have the power to. But when I heard about Jesus and I read that we could be saved, forgiven, not by our own good works, but by the grace of Jesus when we put our faith in Him. There are those of you today. Your life is about to change. You're not here by accident. You need His grace, you need His love. All we're gonna do is we're gonna step away from our sin. We're gonna step into His grace. We're gonna become followers of Jesus. He will hear your prayer, He will forgive your sin, and you'll never be the same.
Today, all of our churches, those who say, "Yes, that's me. I need his forgiveness, I need his grace. I step away from my sin. Today by faith, I give my life to Jesus". That's your prayer. Lift your hands high right now. All over the place, lift them up and say yes. Right back over here. Come on somebody, right back over there. Praise God for you. Others today, put them up right now and say, "Yes, Jesus, I need you. I surrender my life". You, others of you today, say, "I need his grace. I need his mercy". Those of you online, just type in the comment section. "I'm surrendering my life to Jesus". Just type that in the comment section. "I'm surrendering to Jesus". And we all pray together, pray aloud. Pray:
Heavenly Father. Forgive all of my sins. Save me. Jesus, be the Lord of my life. Fill me with your Holy Spirit. To give me the power, to do your will, to overcome temptation, and to honor you and all that I do. My life is not my own. I give it to you. In Jesus' name, I pray.