Rapper Jaylafé recently wrote an article on overcoming the sin of pornography. Check it out:

TALK

If you struggle with sexual immorality, talk about it. Do not keep a sin problem, an addiction, to yourself. Ever. Silence empowers addiction. Let your friends, ministry leaders, someone you trust, know about your struggle.  Ask for prayer. Whatever you do, don’t hold it in. A problem shared is a problem divided. If it's hard for you to tell someone about your struggle and ask for help, you're not only struggling with porn, you're also struggling with pride. You don’t want to look bad.  Well, guess what: no one is without sin (Romans 3:23). It’s better to deal with your sin now than to have your secret sins exposed before everyone on Judgment Day (1 Corinthians 4:5). Which is better: to have a problem with porn along with a pride and appearance issue, or to be free from both of them?

Sure, it might hurt to feel embarrassed.  But it’ll hurt a lot more if you never deal with your sin. Most people who struggle with porn learn to get good at hiding it.  They get good at creating a good image, acting like someone much holier than they really are. If you're one of those people, give it up immediately, because the God Who will one day judge you for what you're doing can see right through you now. Be honest with yourself and get out of the Hellhole that's eating you alive. The longer you stay in it, the worse damage you're going to do to your sexuality. Tell somebody. Also, if someone comes to you and tells you about a problem he or she has with porn, affirm them in what they’re doing. Encourage them. Be there for them. Don't let yourself feel superior or talk down to them. 

GET EMOTIONAL

This might sound strange, but honestly, a gentle rebuke doesn't always do it for some people. Yes, we should always speak the truth in love (Eph. 4:15), but love does not always have to be gentle and calm. Let me explain: If you're in your front yard walking toward a road where a truck is coming at you at 50 miles an hour and you don’t notice, someone might gently call out to you to stop. However, if you're already in the road and the truck is seconds from hitting you, someone needs to come at you with much more than a gentle word of caution.

Porn is like that; some people are dabbling in light sexual immorality, while some have gone way beyond dabbling and are into serious addiction. If you’re in a position to rebuke another brother or sister about sexual sin, let the intensity of your response match the severity of their sin.  Porn is like a drug: you can get deeply entangled in it, get into more and more evil material, and not even know it.  Intervention has to be made, and sometimes it needs to be pretty intense if you want any hope of getting free.  Get emotional about sin.  Sometimes, anger is the missing ingredient to fighting sin. 

Let’s be honest here. Be honest with life because life is honest with you. How often is it that guys (and girls!) gather together in accountability groups and quietly and calmly discuss their porn problems, calmly reassure each other, calmly commit to not doing it again, calmly pray, then get right back on the porn sites and feed their addiction that same night? If a gentle approach isn't working, move on up the intensity ladder.  Think of it this way: it takes a firm tug with a hammer to get a nail out of a stubborn piece of wood.   If your "accountability partners" aren't helping you with their gentle correction, maybe you need some passionate, firm and angry correction.  Now, am I advocating for mindless screaming and rage and sinful anger?  Absolutely not.

I'm advocating for an emotional response appropriate to the severity of one’s pornography addiction, in particular for those who don’t see it as a big deal or feel that they can get away with porn or try to cover it up.  Most people rarely experience the level of grief or disgust or passion against their sin they should experience.  So, do the hard work of getting angry at your sin out of a desire to be holy (1 Peter 1:16).  Cry out to God.  Punch a pillow.  Write your sin on a paper and burn it. 

Whatever works for you; just do something to get angry and stay angry at your sin because you will never escape sin if you're not angry with it. Now, to be sure, emotions alone will not ultimately break the bondage to sin (only the Holy Spirit, only God, can do that: 1 Cor. 10:13; Romans 5:5, 8:14; Ephesians 3:16). However, intense emotions are usually very impactful in the work of freedom from sin. Porn will absolutely destroy you. Don't be gentle with it any more than you'd be gentle with a man who would try to rape your daughter. Porn is trying to rape your brain, is it not? It is doubtless a tool of Satan to destroy you. Is it not urgent?  Get emotional.

PRAY

Only God can truly change a person’s heart to make them desire Him (Ezekiel 36:26-27) and turn from sin. If you struggle with porn, pray deeply and passionately for yourself. If you know someone who's struggling, pray deeply and passionately for him, for he is corroding his spirit and deteriorating his stand before God at the final judgment (1 Cor. 3:13). Remember, we are not justified (made right with God) by our works (Ephesians 2:8-9), but we WILL be judged by them (2 Cor. 5:10). We will receive differing degrees of Heavenly reward according to how we live on earth (Matt. 6:20). 

The Bible is not very explicit about the nature of the Heavenly rewards Christians will experience, but it does imply (ala 1 Cor. 10:13) that they are contingent upon our lifestyle, our "works." So, if you struggle or know someone who's struggling, pray deeply, because porn will grossly deteriorate a Christian's life on earth as well as his or her reward in Heaven. Pray for increased Spiritual conviction against sin, that you or another person will not resist the Holy Spirit (1 Thess. 5:19; Acts 7:51) and be corroded.  

Wage war against the sinful desires of the flesh (1 Peter 2:11), for your soul is in a dangerous world. God hates our sin more than we do, and He is more powerful than we are to help us escape it. Pray.

FLEE

If you were standing at the edge of a volcano getting ready to explode, what would you do?  You would run for your life.  This is how we need to treat sexual sin: flee! (1 Corinthians 6:18).  Run away from temptation as fast as you can.  Don’t fight with it or mess with it; it will beat you every time.  Run, run, run to Jesus’ arms, and anticipate the marriage bed, the true place of sexual fulfillment God’s way (Hebrews 13:4).  Don’t play, run away.  

Talk. Get emotional. Pray. Flee.  Our lives are meant for so much more than drowning in a cesspool pit of porn. Fight for your purity, for a dying world is deeply in need of it. We need the saving Gospel of Jesus Christ, and we need to be clear, clean, and ready to deliver it.

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