Speaker 1 (00:00:01) - So here's the million dollar question. How are men like us who work hard, have good motives and a God given purpose supposed to fulfill the calling on our lives and the dreams in our hearts, all while establishing sexual integrity, thriving relationships, and a meaningful connection with God. That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Sathiya Sam. Welcome to Unleash the Man Within. Yo, yo, What is up, my man? Welcome to Unleashed the man Within. Thank you so much for listening. I'm so glad you're here. And I am super excited. Oh, my gosh. We're going to talk about some important stuff today about does God punish you for having porn addiction? Really important thing to think about, important food for thought. And this is something that comes up very regularly in our communities, even from you guys. We're hearing that you have these kinds of questions. But honestly, beyond that, we also know that, you know, there is there's just this natural question of like, look, I have sin in my life.
Speaker 1 (00:01:10) - I've been consciously engaging in it for a long time. Do I really just get away scot free? And so that's kind of what we're going to talk about today. Now, before I jump any more any further rather into that, I want to make sure that those of you who are listening look, if you are looking for real help from porn, porn addiction, we have all kinds of resources. This podcast is really just the tip of the iceberg. We have a weekly newsletter. We have free resources on the website and obviously we have a coaching program that is wildly successful in helping men not just quit porn for a little bit, but actually stay free long term. And so if that's something that you're interested in, there's links in the show notes for you to go check all that stuff out. I highly recommend you do it. I just think, you know, when I struggled with porn and when I was addicted, there were not resources available to me. And so I'm trying to create the kinds of things that I wish I had when I was struggling.
Speaker 1 (00:02:03) - And so I hope you guys get some value from them. Highly recommend you go check it out. And that's everything for the shameless plug of the episode. So why don't we jump in? Let's, let's just tackle this thing head on. So look, you you know, the the thing is, you, you if you grew up like me, you maybe have a sense of right and wrong, a moral fabric that is more or less driven by scripture. So, you know, I was a pastor's kid, Christian school, all that stuff. It's not just that I know right and wrong. I think everybody grows up with that sense, that ethical kind of morality piece. But I'm talking about the Christian ethic now, like the morals around sex and handling money and treating one another, all those kinds of things. They're all important. So, look, I, I was keenly aware as a youth struggling with pornography that God hates pornography, that God hates sexual sin, and that God has some pretty strong things to say about those who do commit sexual sin and sexual immorality.
Speaker 1 (00:03:03) - So it begs the question, when you relapse, when you slip. What does God do? Have you ever wondered that? Have you ever thought about that? I think we all probably have, but maybe this is the first time somebody verbalized it. So what do you think God does like? I actually remember like, this is this was on the back half of my recovery. So I'm learning about intimacy with God. And part of that for me meant having conversations with him regularly, you know, dialogue, thanking him for just little things in my day, taking little moments to acknowledge him and to ask a question and listen back to that still small voice and see if he would speak. And, you know, having having this sort of back and forth dialogue, this was a huge part of me cultivating intimacy with God and cultivating intimacy with God was a huge part of me abstaining from pornography and sexual misbehavior altogether. So, you know, it was super important and I still had relapses. And I still remember even during some of my relapses being like, Dang, man, that same God I've been talking to all day is he didn't go anywhere.
Speaker 1 (00:04:05) - You know what I mean? He's he's right here. He's watching me do this. And I there were times where I would even try to invite him in like, God, I'm doing what I don't want to do. And I, you know, like trying to be transparent, but ultimately still succumbing and and sometimes feeling really awful in those moments, just feeling like, man, I failed. I failed him. And not only did I fail him, I acknowledged I was failing him and I still failed him anyway when I could have stopped it. You know what I mean? Like, that was really, really tough for me and I had to kind of wrestle with like, Well, what does God do? What does God do when he finds out that I slip and that I relapse? I know what I do. I can tell you what I do. I freak out. I panic. I ask for forgiveness. I make a promise. I'm never going to do it again. You know what I mean? Like, I know what I do.
Speaker 1 (00:04:53) - I'm pretty familiar with that. But what does God do? So I want to give you guys a couple of thoughts. Again, maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm the only one who asked these questions, but I'm going to guess that probably at least a couple of you have as well. So here's here's a couple of thoughts. If you're of a reformed background. And again, I don't want to paint anybody with a broad brushstroke. Generally in reformed circles, there's sort of this belief that if you have unconfessed sin before you die, you go to hell again. Not I'm not I don't want to over categorize people, but generally that's a thing. And so when reformed people pray, they will pray that God forgives them of their sins. Every single day they ask for forgiveness. I am more of the opinion myself that God has forgiven us past tense, because what was it that actually accounts for our forgiveness of sins? It was the shed blood of Jesus on the cross. So I believe that when Jesus died are our sins were forgiven.
Speaker 1 (00:05:52) - However, I do not believe that we actually receive that forgiveness until we accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior. So hopefully that makes sense. Okay. So I do not. I used to pray after I would slip, I would pray, God, please forgive me of my sins. And instead I once I started to kind of, I guess, adapt the theology, I just explained to you my prayers changed to God. I receive your forgiveness. I remind myself of your forgiveness of my sins. In other words, what I was doing is I was saying, you know what, God, if love keeps no records of wrongs like it says in First Corinthians 13. So therefore you don't keep record of wrongs because God is love God if you don't keep record of wrongs. I'm not going to either. So what does God do when when, when you slip? Well, he's not he's not making a note of it and keeping a record of it because love keeps no record of wrongs and because our sins have already been forgiven.
Speaker 1 (00:06:49) - Again, you might disagree with me theologically, but I think we can agree that forgiveness is available for sins. That's. That's the beauty of Christ on the cross. Now, the other thing that's interesting, and this was big to me, I'm the high achiever type. I like to I like to kind of aim for the top and and yeah, I like to I like to just achieve at a high level. And one thing I used to always think about was like, I know God has these promises on my life. That was something that was always very important to me when I was young and I would think about them a lot and I would pray over them a lot. And I would I would be looking for insights and prophetic words and whatever I could to to try to better understand the potential that God saw in me and to better understand the calling that he had on my life. And one of my fears was that if I continued to struggle, that God would basically say, Oh, you know what, Sathya? You were going to be this world renowned speaker and communicator and you were going to go international and you were going to be a best seller, a best selling author and all that stuff.
Speaker 1 (00:07:52) - But unfortunately, because of your thing, like a vacuum, like we're going to suck it all back. And you know what? I'm going to give these opportunities to someone else. And I used to I used to really be afraid of that. Now, here's an interesting thing. Okay? We might perceive that as punishment. Like, Oh, God's punishing me for, you know, for my sin. Here's the reality. If you want blessings, you want increase, you want providence and great things in your life. Nothing sustains the blessing of God better than righteousness. So when we lack righteousness, we reveal our inability to not only receive, but to sustain the blessing of the Lord. And God cares too much about his blessing to simply give it away frivolously. Now, this is not a perfect science because you will see people in today's day and age and people of old have been tremendously blessed by God and they have all kinds of sexual immorality in their lives. But I personally, when I was struggling with sexual immorality, I actually began to pray God, keep those good things from me because I need to get my life together.
Speaker 1 (00:09:03) - I want to be a vessel that can not just receive blessing. Anyone can do that. God, I want to be able to steward it well long term. And to do that, you and I have to. We have to mature. We have to eliminate habitual sin. So this is not punishment. This is actually fatherhood. Right. The same way that a father for his child would only want the best and would not would not give him too much opportunity or too much goodness too early before he could handle it. You know, you don't give a three year old child their their inheritance because they don't know how to take care of their money. Right. It wouldn't make sense. You wouldn't even give an 18 year old their inheritance if you're still alive. Because, again, it's kind of the same idea. Right. And so so we want to we want to bear that in mind that sometimes God holds good things from us because he knows that it would actually do more harm than good if we were to receive it in our state where we are mired in sin.
Speaker 1 (00:09:56) - All right. And the third thing is that sin has natural consequences. So with porn addiction, it'd be things like disconnection, shame, limited energy, poor relationships, sexual dysfunction, the list goes on. So does God punish us? Well, I don't think he punishes us as much as he allows for these natural consequences to take place. So to summarize, God forgives you or has forgiven you depending on your theology. God withholds good things with your best interests in mind and God allows natural consequences to happen. Now, the real question for you guys as we close here. How are you going to respond to your sin? Are you going to be like a dog returning to its vomit or are you going to turn away and you're going to actually properly repent? I can't answer these questions for you, but these are the questions we really need to ask ourselves if you are still struggling with porn addiction. So I want to encourage you guys, freedom is available. Trust me, if God feels this way about our shortcomings, how much more excited do you think he is about our rising up, our overcoming sin? Are walking in righteousness and holiness and the precepts of His word.
Speaker 1 (00:11:06) - Those things get God absolutely fired up. And if you make a decision in that direction, know that that God is not saying, well, you know, it's not like arms crossed. Let's see if he figures it out. God's like, you did it. That's amazing. What can I do to help you? He is there wanting to support you, wanting to lead you and wanting to guide you. And trust me, he will do exactly that if you let him. So thanks so much for listening, guys. Make sure you get your hands on some resources. Okay. Links are in the show notes. If you want to book a call with their team and look at the program or you want to try out a book or a one pager, all the links are there. Go check them out. In the meantime, I'll talk to you guys soon. Stay clean. Bye bye. Hey, everybody, it's Lithia again. Thanks for listening to Unleash the Man Within. I wanted to take a quick moment to let you know about a free e-book that I wrote for you called The Ultimate Guide to Porn Recovery.
Speaker 1 (00:11:55) - It provides a basic framework for the recovery process. And a few of my top tips completely free of charge. You can get it now at WW W ultimate recovery guide.com that's www.Waltmanrecoveryguide. Com. Now if you've been impacted by the podcast and you want to show some support in less than 60s, there are three ways you can do that. First, you can leave a rating or review on your podcast platform. This lets people like you know that the content here is valuable. Secondly, you can share this episode with someone in your life that might benefit from the content. If you're passionate about helping other people experience freedom and success in their lives, this is one of the easiest ways to do that. And lastly, you can subscribe. I personally only listen to the podcast that I subscribe to. If you're seeking daily encouragement, guidance and insight in your recovery journey, I highly recommend subscribing to Unleash the Man Within. Thanks for listening. I look forward to connecting with you very, very soon.
Speaker 2 (00:12:55) - The information, opinions and recommendations presented in this podcast by Sathiya Sam and his guests are for general information only and should not be considered medical, clinical or any other form of professional advice. Any reliance on the information provided is done at your own risk.
