I had become confused and frustrated as I continually allowed myself to be tossed back and forth by a spirit of sin that I desperately wanted to send back to hell. This tormenting spirit had been eating away at my insides since at least 1974, and because I allowed it, it had gained a significant foothold in my heart. A tremendous amount of personal shame and embarrassment ate away at my insides day after day, year after year. This cloud of perversion, which grew more ominous, served to block out the life-giving light of God from my life. It gave rise to a spirit of depression that slowly led me down the path toward self-destruction. It didn’t happen overnight; it took years for the depression to gain a stranglehold. But once it gained the upper hand in my life, everything was downhill from there. The spirit of depression was joined by its comrade, the spirit of desperation. This intensified each time I failed to break free from sin’s tight hold on my soul. There were mitigating circumstances, i.e., Merrill Community Services, which overwhelmed me with work-place stressors that quickly became entangled with my personal life, bringing about an even more desperate and hopeless feeling in my already tormented life. Out of everything I was going through, there was one sure thingâ€"I was not proud of the deep dark secrets that cloaked my hidden life. Sin clung to me like a menacing shadow.

Wherever I went, sexual perversion was not far behind. Those who study human sexuality tell us that men are visual beings, meaning they need visual stimulus to get sexually excited. This hypothesis was true in my case, as I was definitely hooked on the need to view sexually-explicit material in order to gain sexual fulfillment.

My need for porn, and the desire to keep this unhealthy behavior under wraps, plunged me into an abyss of deception. My one sin led me to another and then to another. My secret life meant that I’d have to hide my desire for the darker side of sexual gratification from everyone around me, including Shelly. I understood enough to know that my secret rendezvous with sex videos would probably hurt Shelly more than anyone else in my life, and I kept everything undercover in an effort to spare her from personal devastation. I didn’t want her to find out that I had been emotionally and spiritually cheating on her by going to adult arcades. When a person views others having sex and uses that image to pleasure himself, then he is cheating on his spouse. How was I able to connect watching porn with cheating on my spouse? My connection between the two is based solely on the Scripture. In Matthew 5:28, Jesus told His followers that adultery is as much a mental/emotional sin as it is a physical sin. As only Jesus could, He connected lust of the heart with the actual act of adultery when he said: “whosoever looks on a woman with lust has already committed adultery.� If Jesus said it, that’s good enough for me. I’m certainly not going to argue with the Son of God. Any believer who is into viewing pornography needs to know that the focal point of pornography is definitely a form of visual lust. What else could it be? When I watch sexual acts between other people, then according to the Lord I have committed adultery in my heart. This becomes tantamount to cheating on my spouse. I fought the pornography temptations, losing more battles than I ever won.

I suspect that the main reason I fought so hard was to keep from being exposed. Simply put, I couldn’t let the truth about me come out. I feared that it would hurt those that I loved most, and maybe even cause them to stumble. Even though my affair with pornography wasn’t something I necessarily planned, covering it up was. It was never my intention to preach on Sunday morning, only to make a bee-line to the nearest adult bookstore on Monday. I was a spiritual degenerate. In fact, some may call me a pervert,and they’d get no argument from me. Along with the thrill of the moment came a mountain of guilt and shame. To this day, I still find it difficult to believe that I had sunk that low in my life. As a born-again believer addicted to porn, there was nothing in this world that I wouldn’t have done to get myself out of the lifestyle I had created for myself. I can’t imagine any believer wanting to continue to live a life of lies as I lived. I’m sure that anyone would choose to live a life of holiness, not a life of emptiness. Though it seemed as if I had no other choice but to continue to sink deeper into this pit of sexual oblivion, the truth is, I had choices. I was just too blinded by sin to recognize the options. Paul tells us that God always provides a way out of our temptations, a spiritual escape route away from the temptation and sin that tries to overtake us. However, I was ignorant of this truth in Scripture and fell for the lies of the Devil. I believed that I was stuck in the rut I was in, with no valid way out.

The pornography had made my life a living hell on earth. This living hell devoured and consumed everything around me. It was like an out-of-control fire storm, burning through my spiritual life. I allowed it to destroy my life, my joy, my peace, my fellowship and my ministry. I have slowly discovered over the years that sexual sin and lust within the church, and my own specifically, is something that no one wants to discuss honestly. The subject of sexual addiction is a forbidden topic of discussion in the majority of our churches, mostly because too many believers, like me, would rather live a covert life, praying that they’re never exposed. I’ve never heard a pastor devote an entire message, let alone a series of messages, to sexual sin and the exploitation of men and women through pornography. Furthermore, very few pastors will tell their followers that pornography is cheating with the heart, which is synonymous with committing adultery. If the church is really committed to helping the men and women of our society, then preachers will need to hitch their wagons to this Scripture (Matthew 5:28) and quit tiptoeing around it. I can’t help but believe that it is more important that we expose the lies of the Enemy who has infiltrated so many men within today’s church, then to remain politically correct in order to keep the pews filled. Recent scientific research has concluded that men are visual beings, especially when it comes to sexual stimulation. And apparently one of the major differences between men and women is the inability of men to function out of
both sides of their brain at the same time, like women do.

So when it comes to sex, and the morality of the situation around them, Satan has an inside track when it comes to tempting men through one-sided brain functions and the visual stimulation of that one side. With the advent of the web and its growing popularity, pornography is a simple tap of the key away from those who are internet savvy. As embarrassing and shameful as this sin is, pastors need to be concerned with the attempts of the wolf to gain entrance to the sheep pen (John 10:1â€"16). The church needs to teach holiness, and the need for each believer to walk and live a holy life. If the church fails to teach and challenge the men of the church to search themselves, then we have only ourselves to blame when we finally look up and see the destruction this epidemic of pornography causes. The blood of these believers will be on our hands as surely as this sin will be on their hands. Too many men in the church have already sold their souls to the Devil for fleeting moments of physical pleasure. I should know, because I was one of them.

In the midst of this major spiritual conflict, the Enemy (the Devil) has had no formal opposition from the church. If the church hopes to reach all of the men within the church, then it needs to address this problem in a full frontal assault. Teenage males are falling victim to sexual pornography. Recent surveys and reports show that teens are much more capable of accessing porn because of the internet. Should these statistics and reports be correct, then pornography is a more serious problem than any of us could begin to imagine.

This is part 1 of a 4 part series…check out part two next issue.

This series is taken from Rev. Zimmer's book Prodigal Daze. Buy the book here.

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