NoFrennaq -- Being Set Free by the Holy Spirit

Note: When I use the acronym NT, I refer to 'New Testament'.

Growing up in the 60's, I was pretty typical of my peers with respect to sexual
desires. I learned that these desires seem to stay with us males all our lives,
unless we do something about it. My purpose in writing this essay is to tell
you that there is something very effective we can do about it.

I have always had a love-hate relationship with my sexual desires. It was fun
to fulfil them, but as a person of morals, I always considered sex outside of a
proper marriage to be sin. As a result, I often had a bad conscience about it.
So, of course, I hated my sexual desires for that reason alone, but also because
the desires themselves took up so much of my time and productivity.

One male sexual activity that's at least fast belongs to the 'M' word -- what I
refer to in my Christian fiction stories as 'frennaqing' (from the verb form
'to frennaq'). I prayed to God that I could get free of all sexuality, but it never
worked -- at least it never worked for very long. Becoming asexual has always
been a goal of mine.

I know now why I didn't achieve asexuality in Jesus when I first tried it.
It was because I was approaching Christianity all wrong. I can boil it
down to this simple dictum:

Christianity is not a religion to just believe in or give mental assent to;
one must also obey it, or, more precisely, obey the commandments of Jesus,
as a sincere follower of Jesus, not just a follower of a set of rules in a rule
book. Those are the All-In people who will get the deliverance they seek.
Just tacking on a little Christianity to your already self-absorbed and busy
life won't do it. Insincere Christianity is no Christianity at all.

Asexuality can be a choice -- but it will cost you

I have a memory of one late-night TV host of the 1990's interviewing a
young man who claimed to be asexual. After the man defined what he
meant by 'asexual', the host was near incredulous. Apparently, he had
never imagined that such a thing could be possible for a "normal man."
So, he commented something along this line: "Well, if that's true, young
man, then you had better do something good with it, like cure cancer."
The implication to me was that the host was implying that the typical man
is so burdened down by his sexual desires that he cannot accomplish great
things. To which I imagine I said to myself something like, "Boy, ain't
that the truth?!" Although the "great things" I'm thinking of are for
Jesus and humanity, not for oneself.

Anyway, I remained under the influence of my unwanted innate sexual
desires until, in 2008, I finally discovered the true biblical way to get free
of it -- once and for all. And from June 2008 to today (November 2022), I
have been free of it. In times past, I had referred to myself as everything
from (according to different periods of my life): heterosexual to bisexual to
homosexual (I lived for 22 years as an openly gay man from 1986-2008).
But now, I have been free of it since 20 June 2008 when I became a
true Christian. So, I have since then referred to myself as asexual, that
is, being without any strong sexual desires or conscious fulfillment of
sexual desires.

Now, this does not mean that I can no longer appreciate the beauty of a
person, but it does mean that I just don't have sufficient desire to have sex
at all, and I no longer frennaq at all, because I feel neither the need nor
desire to. Praise the Lord!

I imagine that some of my readers are saying to themselves, "Yeah, that's
great for you, but I would miss sex if I gave it up." To that I can reply,
"You won't miss sex if you no longer have any desire to engage in it."
Naturally, if you don't regard your own sexual desires as a burden, then
it's no wonder that you don't want to give them up. Think of something
that you really enjoyed as a child but now have no interest in at all. For
me, that's cotton candy. I don't miss having sexual fulfilment, just like I
don't miss having cotton candy.

I understand if you have cold feet about it, being under the fear of missing
out on something good. Well, none of us can partake in every experience and
adventure offered by life. We have to make hard choices. But God can give
you a new heart and a new mind, and then it will be easier to make good
choices and to stick with them. You will then not be overcome with regrets
for your pious choices in life. And this is true wisdom:

Wisdom is to make choices now that you will not regret in the long run.

You have only so many minutes in a day, and so many days in your life
to get something beneficial accomplished. Bad choices suck the life out
of good accomplishments.

By the way, there is an acronym for the fear of missing out: FOMO. Yes,
this is a real thing.

Not everyone defines asexuality the way I do. Some people define it as having
absolutely no sexual feelings towards others. For myself, I would say that it's
near zero and that for 14 years I haven't acted on it at all. Some people say
that one can admit to being asexual yet frennaq. Actually, I don't see how
that's consistent, unless the intentional ejaculation is for some purpose other
than to enjoy sexual climax.

To me, these are three deal breakers for the claim of asexuality:
1) Having strong sexual desires.
2) Voluntarily having sex.
3) Frennaqing for sexual pleasure.
No person who engages in any one of these is a true asexual person. Now, it's
important for me to clarify that these are activities that manifest (or not) in
a person who is awake. I believe that most true asexual people have mostly
asexual dreams, but some might not. They well might have very sexual dreams,
and might even experience nocturnal emissions. It's been my experience that
my sleeping mind is a bit more sexually-free than my awake mind. But,
fortunately, such dreams have been few and far between since my conversion.

What about the case of a person who has strong sexual desires, but does not
yield to them? Just as there are functioning alcoholics, there could be
functioning asexuals.

I have been watching the 'coming out' videos of young people regarding
their innate asexuality. Some of them seem to have been as intimidated
revealing their total lack of sexual desires as homosexuals might be to
reveal their homosexual desires. This must be a sign of the times. I
suppose that these days, it's so normal for young people to engage in
casual sex (fornication) that the modern 'sexual weirdo' is no longer the gay
guy, but the asexual guy. I suppose that half a century ago when I was a
teenager that if I had come out to my friends as asexual (of course, I wasn't)
they would have just shrugged their shoulders and left it at that. It wouldn't
have been a big deal. So, it's ironic that the overall greater sexual freedom
people have in modern culture the more alienated some asexual people feel
from this culture.

One guy, age 19, claimed that he is asexual and had never masturbated
in his life. He also claimed to have read somewhere that 100% of guys
masturbate and therefore he felt invalidated as a human male, I guess.
Well, I say, more power to the guy! Don't masturbate just to fit in or to
accommodate some claimed statistic. If you have a backbone, make your
own decisions. On the contrary, being asexual is a wonderful gift! Use that
gift for doing good.

Nofapp

So, what's all this hype about 'fap' and 'nofapp'? Well, fap refers to male
frennaqing and nofapp refers to either the withdrawal from frennaqing by an
individual, or it refers to the 'movement' for males to voluntarily cease from
frennaqing. Well, full transparency, I stopped fapping long before I ever
heard of this 'nofapp' movement. In fact, it was years before the movement
was even founded.

Contrary to my description of nofapp above, the Nofap website
(https://nofap.com/about) claims to a much more restrictive definition of
the term:

NoFap is a comprehensive community-based porn recovery website....
"NoFap" is neither a verb nor a principle. It's the name of an organization
and its associated website, tools, and services.

Okay, I'm sympathetic to this organization wanting to keep this word from
being drug through the vernacular gutter, but we're a long time beyond that
by now. Anyway, I'm trying to help out by intentionally misspelling the word.

I find it interesting that this organization claims that it was formally founded
on 20 June 2011, because I have long ago settled on the day of my freedom from
all forms of sexuality (including frennaqing) to be on 20 June 2008, the day
I became a true Christian. (Stupid me, that I didn't record the day that I got my
freedom, but I knew it was mid-June, so I just picked the twentieth of June to
celebrate as that day. And I did so by 2009, IIRC.) Anyway, it's an interesting
coincidence to me.

Nofapp Motivations and Methodologies

Before I present my version of how to get free of unwanted sexual desires
and porn, I'll present a brief overview of what the people of the Nofapp
community say about it, most of it being unofficial advice that's not from
the main website.

The first thing they present is motivation to quit, which is logical. For me,
it's freedom from a bad conscience and the desire to free-up time to do
better things. For me, it was my response to the biblical promise:

This I say then, Walk in the Spirit and ye shall not fulfil the
lust of the flesh. (Galatians 5:16 KJV)

The motivation can be anything from overcoming the issues I already stated
to issues relating to masculinity. For instance, does fapping make a guy less
masculine? Does going nofapp make a guy more masculine and more attractive
to females? Well, you can decide that for yourself by anecdotal stories or by
promoted theories based on human evolution of the male-female dynamic.
(However, this kind of naturalistic theory doesn't seem to address unwanted
homosexual desires at all.) I've seen both of them on the Internet. I don't know
either way, as I am not a part of that scene anymore, and haven't been for
fourteen years. Some guys talk about 'semen retention', while other guys say
that that's not the issue. I'm not going to take sides on any of that.

I also don't talk about the relevancy of 'sex hormones' to the issue of male
sexual desires. One reason I don't is that I question whether they are important
at all in the discussion. After all, I felt sexual attraction long before my own
puberty. And even if hormones do play a role in sexual desires, apparently
Jesus can deal with them as well. After all, Galatians 5:16 does not say

Walk in the Spirit, and treat your hormone imbalance, and ye shall not
fulfil the lust of the flesh.

The NT word 'lust' is a broad term to cover all human desires that go against
the fulfilling of God's will in our lives. These lusts are not just sexual, but
include greed, selfishness, entitlements, and all things that lead one to unholy
actions or addictions, and the like. Just how God delivers us of these lusts when
we obey Him and 'walk in the Spirit', I don't know, but He is well able to do it.

Establishment reaction to Nofapp methods and claims

By 'Establishment' I mean medical and/or psychological establishment. No
doubt they have a right to give their side on the issue. The Establishment
tends to denigrate some of the claimed benefits of Nofapp, but not all of them.
I won't give details. One thing the Establishment seems keen on ridiculing
is the shaming of what it perceives as 'normal, healthy sexuality in males'.
In the final section of this essay, I will address the moral aspect of frennaqing
and porn use and fornication generally, but for now I just want to address
practical issues concerning 'addiction' to frennaqing and porn use. And I
speak as one who used to be there, but is no more.

It's almost as if the anti-Nofapp people can see no harm from frennaqing to
porn, regardless of how often one does it in a day. Is this even sensible? I
don't think so. To illustrate: Take your right hand and rub it against your
left forearm in one spot and continue to do so for about ten minutes at a time,
four times a day for 30 days. I can pretty much guarantee that the area being
rubbed will have a breakdown in the integrity of the skin and some kind
of infection will occur, being either bacterial, fungal, or both. Well, if you
wouldn't invite that consequence there, don't invite it on any other part of
your skin, please. So, yes, fapping can be excessive for this reason alone,
and especially when lotion is also used.

We are informed that the psychologic and psychiatric communities don't
regard 'sex addiction' in any form to be a real thing. Apparently, according
to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), one
can have a gambling addiction, but not a porn/frennaqing addiction. Really?
It seems that addiction to gambling is the only form of addiction to a behavior
that the psychiatric community admits to. For what I want to promote as a
fix for sex addiction, that works out just fine. So, it seems that if you have
a 'sex addiction' that the psychiatric community considers you to be on your
own. But you're not, because God is willing to step up and help you get free
of it -- totally free of it.

If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed. -- John 8:36

But there's a catch. You have to do your part of the deliverance, and you have
to do it God's way. My failing to do that in the first place, was why my effort
did not at first succeed. The Bible verses that told me how to do it were there
all along -- but 'hidden' in plain sight.

According to
https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/addiction-substance-use-disorders
/what-is-a-substance-use-disorder:

"Addiction is a complex, but treatable, disease that affects brain
function and behavior."

Well, if we're going to insist that addictions are diseases of or affecting the brain,
then I suppose that one cannot have a fapping/porn addiction by mere definition.
But I do not limit my notion of addiction that much. So, what I need is an
alternative definition. That is, an NCA definition of addiction: "Non-Clinical
Addiction":

An addiction is an ongoing urge or desire to engage in an activity or
activities, mental or physical or both, that one does not want to engage in,
but one finds oneself too weak to consistently resist engaging in that behavior.
The prolonged desire to engage in the addicting activity can be as distracting
and detrimental to one's concentration and mental acuity as is giving in to
the activity itself.

It seems clear enough to me that resisting an urge that will not go away until
the 'urge is yielded to', can cause the lack of adequate sleep, resulting in
poor performance in school or work. And if one decides to go on an addictive
binge, that could consume an entire night of needed sleep.

I can relate to NCAs in at least two different forms: One form would consist of
a prolonged desire to engage in some activity that you'd prefer not to engage in
even once, for reasons of morality, or financial cost, or harm to one's reputation,
or for some form of fidelity to a promise or expectation (like not committing
adultery). The other form is an addiction to an activity, which if participated in
in moderation would be all right, but the desire to participate is so strong and
prolonged that one's participation becomes excessive. Now, since what the
individual considers 'excessive' is subjective, then the individual will have to
self-assess if he or she is addicted in the NCA sense.

Examples of the latter include eating, sleeping, or procrastinating. Each of these
can be done either in moderation or in excess. Other examples include viewing
social media or on-line gaming. Laziness is an addiction to an unproductive or
physically inactive lifestyle, often leading to financial problems or degradation
of physical health.

What follows is the Merriam-Webster definition of Addiction:

-- a compulsive, chronic, physiological or psychological need for a
habit-forming substance, behavior, or activity having harmful physical,
psychological, or social effects and typically causing well-defined symptoms
(such as anxiety, irritability, tremors, or nausea) upon withdrawal or
abstinence : the state of being addicted.

Okay, that doesn't seem to be all that different from my own NCA definition,
especially as neither requires a diagnosed disease mechanism to be present.

Negative reactions to the Nofapp community

Let's begin with Wikipedia, which appears biased against the Nofapp community,
from what I can gather from its webpage. It claims that the NoFapp community
may be affected by antisemites, rightwing supporters, misogynists, and supporters
of D. T. Well, I have no idea if any of this is true or not. All I can say is that I am
none of those things. In particular, I am not anti-porn, per se. What I am is pro
people getting their sexual selves in order so that they no longer feel the desire to
frennaq or to look at porn. The one thing I do support full-on is Jesus and His
Gospel that delivers.

As for my claim of a bias on the part of Wikipedia, I offer the fact that its
webpage on it seems to offer very little positive about it. Virtually everything
Wiki reports about Nofapp on its page is negative about the organization and
about its followers/proponents. Yes, I'd say that some of the claims of nofapp
adherents are hyped, but surely there must be something positive to say about
the movement. And associating the movement with the so-called Manosphere
seems to me to be a form of guilt by association. On Wiki's Manosphere page
it says:

Communities within the manosphere include men's rights activists, incels
(involuntary celibates), Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW), pick-up
artists (PUA), and fathers' rights groups.

Now, I don't know whom to go to, to get the 'official' list of legitimate Manosphere
groups, but of the list provided by Wiki, I would include only men's rights activists
(which would include fathers' rights) and MGTOW, both of which I define as
regarding the rights and protections of men in the public arena, and that's all. I
do not think of the Manosphere as the 'set of all issues of particular interest to
men', which Wiki seems to adhere to, and certainly they aren't alone. But from
the logical point of view, if you define the term too broadly, then it can't really
stand for anything definite, and so the term becomes meaningless.

Wiki goes on to associate nofappers with the "American doctor Benjamin Rush,
who claimed that masturbation caused blindness." But this association makes no
sense unless modern-day nofappers hold to the same claim, but I don't think that
they do, so what's the point? It then states that the movement has as its legacy
"W.K. Kellogg, who developed corn flakes as part of his anti-masturbation efforts."
All right, then, at least something good has come out of all of this, hasn't it? Don't
we all love cornflakes? Synchronicity: I just watched an old Connections program
(Connections 3, Part 1: Feedback), in which James Burke claimed that the whole
world is in debt to Kellogg for his invention of Corn Flakes: See the final minute
of the show. (Mere coincidence? Who knows.) But isn't this a connection worthy
to contemplate?

Other websites discourage NoFapp as either misguided or unnecessary.

My relationship to the Nofapp community

Well, that's not easy for me to say. Yes, I am a member of the 'don't frennaq
community' as well as the 'don't commit fornication or adultery community',
and I do share some common goals with that NoFapp community. But I do not
specifically say that I am 'NoFapp', because that community seems to
believe in a lot of things that I do not believe in. For example, I do not talk
about 'dopamine rush' or 'dopamine reset' or 'semen retention' or 'Nofapp
Depression', or 'epididymal hypertension' or 'testosterone building up'. What I
do talk about is Victory in Jesus. Jesus said:

And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. -- John 8:32

I testify that that is a promise that works -- but only if we do it correctly.
The good news is that the New Testament tells us how to do it correctly. What
I learned from my decades-long effort to get the victory over my lusts but having
only total failure until the morning I had success in June 2008 was that I had
in those previous decades ignored, twisted, and denigrated important verses in
the New Testament that I needed to get my victory. The Bible does not say that
as soon as one becomes a Christian that all his or her strong sexual urges will
just permanently melt away, without making a further investment into one's own
sanctification. Although it may happen that a new convert will have a sort of
'grace period' of lower sexual interest, this will almost certainly not last forever
unless the convert quickly begins the process of learning how to 'walk in the
Spirit' to get that victory. I'll present these verses soon.

My fictional character Ilfinor is fond of saying: You either get control of
your lusts and feelings of entitlements, or they will get control of you.

Who shouldn't quit frennaqing?

Hopefully, in time, everyone should quit frennaqing. But if you are a person with
a sexual addiction that you are trying to control by frennaqing, but you are not
willing to let Jesus Christ help you over your addiction, then maybe you should
continue to frennaq until you are ready to let God deliver you to sexual freedom.

Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being
made perfect by the flesh? -- Galatians 3:3

This verse in the letter to the Galatians has a rather specific context, but I am
here broadening it. The NoFapp community is attempting to use fleshly, or
worldly, methods to combat unwanted sexual desires, especially those that lead
to porn and frennaqing. What is started in the Spirit of God must be brought to
fruition in the Spirit of God. If you are trying to study or concentrate or relax but
someone is playing loud music in your vicinity, you are subject to its constant
annoying and distracting effects on you. But if you can turn the volume on that
music way down, it can still be present but not distract you anymore. I liken
sexual desires as having a volume knob of its own. So, when we are obedient to
Walk in the Spirit, the Spirit turns down that volume knob on sexual desires so
much that we become effectively free of the temptations to sexual activities of
all kinds.

A moment to promote my fantasy Christian
fiction about Ilfinor and Tristan

The reason I want to promote my fantasy Christian fiction stories is because
within them I have placed everything I know about how to 'walk in the Spirit'
and get the victory in Jesus over sexual desires and sins that I have learned
over the last fourteen years.

I was raised a Christian in a denominational church, but that didn't give me
the victory over sexual desires. In the mid-1970s, I joined a non-denominational
church that emphasized the charismatic gifts, but that also didn't help me get
the victory over my sexual desires. I wanted to marry as my means of dealing
with them, but that was attempted and failed.

By 1986, feeling like a hopeless hypocrite, I left the church altogether, but in the
hope of returning to it (that is, to Jesus) when I could get the victory. In about
2005, I began to write a fiction about this guy named Ilfinor, a sort of super-hero.
After I finally got for-real saved in June 2008, I revamped the secular story of
Ilfinor into a Christian story about him and then added a second story line about
the young gay man named Tristan, who eventually gets saved and becomes a
traveling Christian preacher. By the way, to make things really interesting (and
poignant) about this character, I made him the certifiably most beautiful man
on earth since Adam.

Again, my purpose in writing both of these fictional series is to use them as
a means to explain how to get really saved in Jesus and how to get the victory
over whatever lusts that beset us. But be forewarned if you download these
books, because they are manifestly Christian, quoting chapter and verse from
the King James Bible. As a bonus, I think that the stories are entertaining, but
they weren't written primarily as mere entertainment. By the way, the stories
are free and in PDF form (and under copyright provisions). But they are
upgraded occasionally as I find errors in them or feel the need to enhance the
text somewhere.

My Christian Fiction Home page.

Currently, I have published 5 novels about Ilfinor and his life and times, and only
one Tristan novel. But there are more novels in the works on both of these fellas.
The point of each of these novels is to teach one how to be really saved and how
to overcome the sinful desires of the flesh nature.

From nominal Christian to backslidden to real Christian

By 2007, I had been backslidden from Jesus for 21 years, but actively working
on my fiction novels about Ilfinor and Tristan. One of the things I emphasized
in the stories in those days was my great antipathy for Moralism in the political
Right. I still feel the same way. Anyway, to prepare to show the Bible's contempt
for the Moralism of the Right [1 Corinthians 5:12-13], I started to read the Bible
again in earnest for the first time since 1986. (Although, between 1976 and 1986,
I had been a regular reader of the Bible.)

But this time, I was reading the New Testament (NT) with unprejudiced eyes,
being 21 years beyond the dogma I learned in my earlier years as a Christian.
And I saw something with my new eyes that startled me. The key to the
deliverance over my sexual desires that I had sought for since I was ten years
old was sitting right there in plain sight in the NT. I present those verses that
I 'discovered' in the link below.

How to Walk in the Spirit and get your promised deliverance!

So, as 2007 turned to 2008, I was getting more and more convinced to try
Jesus one more time. Though to me it seemed a huge risk. What if I tried
and failed again? But I figured that it was worth the risk.

But as June 2008 approached, it became clear that the verses showing the
way to victory were neither subtle nor few. But, unfortunately, they were
verses that in the years prior to then, I had ignored, twisted, or minimized
their importance.

Being really saved

After 22 years away from Jesus, I had preset the day that I would try to make
a go at being a real Christian one more time. I'm calling that day 20 June 2008.
The night before I had destroyed the rest of my porn collection and any other
items that I thought Jesus would have me get rid of. This just had to work,
because I had read an article on-line that supposedly June is purity month. (Just
a joke.)

So, after waking up, I set about to test whether I was delivered or not. I brought
forth an image in my mind that should have triggered the usual lust in me -- but
nothing lustful happened. It was amazing! Not only did I not feel any sexual lust
as I normally would have, I also had an intuition that I would never again feel
sexual lust so long as I would 'walk in the Spirit'. That intuition from God has
proven true over these fourteen years. It was a form of knowing in advance.
However, that doesn't qualify me as a prophet, for this knowledge was for
personal use only. In fact, I am not a prophet, nor a preacher, nor an evangelist.
I'm just a Christian who wants to share with others how to get the victory in Jesus.

Can a person have evidence of being 'really saved'? Yes, but often it comes in
subtle forms that may be clear to you but not to anyone else.

For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. -- Colossians 3:3

Thus, these are evidences that are personal between the believer and Jesus. But,
make no mistake, Jesus claimed that He would manifest Himself to His
true followers.

He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that
loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and
I will love him, and will manifest myself to him. -- John 14:21

However, these manifestations aren't likely to be like lightning going
across the night sky for all to see. They're more likely to be subtle, such as
chance encounters, highly improbable coincidences, or something you need
right now coming to your aid when it seems impossible to happen. But
manifestations in some form must come if you are a true believer.

I would add this. To be a true Christian, you should feel different on the inside
than before you were a believer. I did that morning of the 20th of June, 2008.

For those of you who have seen the Tolkien movie the 'Lord of the Rings', the
last movie of the trilogy, 'Return of the King', I have an analogy to give you.
After Frodo was free of the One Ring and he and Sam found their way outside
the cave in Mount Doom, he found a spot of temporary safety in the midst of the
chaos and then he took stock of his inner demons, one might say. And as soon as
he did, he could tell that the influence of Sauron over his life was over. He smiled
and quietly said, "It's gone." That's exactly how I felt that morning when I
knew that I also was free of a previous dominating evil power. If you want to see
this scene, you can find it here at

LOTR The Return of the King - The End of All Things
Look particularly from time indices :29-:32.

The Three Steps to Salvation and Deliverance

Salvation and deliverance are contingent on us doing our part,

Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him,
If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed;
And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
-- John 8:31-32

Being a true Christian is a commitment one must make to obey Jesus every
minute of the rest of one's life. Before one becomes a Christian, one should
know what's really involved in it. Then, one is ready either to reject being
a believer or else to make a commitment to Jesus as a follower. In my fiction
stories, I refer to this part of the process as the Brenjah-dar (the 'spirit battle')
in which one seeks to give to Jesus every part of one's life, holding back nothing.
If one makes that commitment, that's not the end of it, no not by a long shot.
One has to followup by doing it, day in and day out.

It's quite similar to the process of becoming a medical doctor while still in
college. One prepares by taking prerequisite classes. Then, before entering
medical school, one must commit to the program. And then, after graduating
with an M.D., one has to follow that up with further medical training and
service. So, in analogy to this, becoming a Christian should follow these
three stages:

1. Preparation
2. Commitment
3. Follow-Through

Now, I want to make a suggestion that might be controversial among
believers. If you are under the care of a medical person for some
addictive/lustful behavior, don't drop that treatment to become a
believer, thinking that to do so would be demonstrating faith, and not
to do so would be demonstrating lack of faith. First, take your step
of faith according as the scriptures reveal, get your victory, and then
decide what and how to proceed with your medical care. If nothing
else, doing it this way will give God the glory when you do get
your victory.

Why do I think that this would work for you at all? First, because
the Bible says so. Second, because it apparently worked for the
first-century believers. Third, because it worked for me, and I
am no one special.

Dealing with the 'marriage verse'

The NT says this:

But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is
better to marry than to burn. -- 1 Corinthians 7:9

Is this really a good strategy for dealing with sexual temptation?
Well, it's a strategy, anyway. But it's a strategy born of desperation.
This advice came from the Apostle Paul, who claimed that he was
writing to carnal believers. We already know what Paul's ultimate
advice is: It is to walk in the Spirit. But that's advice that can only
be given to mature believers or to new converts who have resolved
that come hell or high waters, they will keep the commitments they
make to Jesus about personal holiness and the maintenance of good
works. Paul had lower expectations of the carnal Corinthians:

And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but
as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ. I have fed you with
milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it,
neither yet now are ye able. For ye are yet carnal: for whereas
there is among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not
carnal, and walk as men? -- 1 Corinthians 3:1-3

So, back to the question: Is this really a good strategy for dealing
with sexual temptation? I'm going to look at this question from the
man's point of view. Would a modern woman want to be a man's
wife for this primary reason? Probably not. In many cases, even a
willing wife might not want to keep up with her husband's (hyper-)
sexuality. And what if she's frigid and doesn't like or want sex?
These reasons are why I call marrying for this cause an act of
desperation. God has a better plan for us.

Contrary to the 'marriage verse' is the 'nonmarriage verse'

But I would have you without carefulness. He that is unmarried
careth for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may
please the Lord: -- 1 Corinthians 7:32

So, here Paul is encouraging believers to remain unmarried so that
they may have more time to serve Jesus and His kingdom goals on
earth now. I don't know how Paul could have made this recommendation
unless he believed that by walking in the Spirit the sincere believer
would be able to attain and maintain asexuality.

Once again: Walk in the Spirit to silence those lustful sexual desires,
envyings, and feelings of entitlements.

Resisting backsliding

There are so many reasons why believers backslide to become only
lukewarm believers or to renounce Jesus altogether (what atheists
call 'deconstructing the faith'). One way this can happen is to think
you are saved but not really be saved. It's very dangerous to believe
that you are saved on the basis that you are at least as 'spiritual'
as the people you attend church with. God says that people look on
the outward man but He looks on the heart. If the people you are
comparing yourself to are not themselves actually saved, then being
at least as good as them may not be near virtuous enough in the
eyes of Jesus.

That's why I believe that most of the people who claim to have
once been saved and have fallen away, were actually never saved
at all.

Let me suggest a simple test for you to judge if you are
truly not saved. If you believe that at some time of your
life that you had the exact same sexual desires and envyings
and feelings of entitlements as the unsaved people you knew,
then you were almost certainly not saved at that time.

Modern Christianity is extremely insincere about following Jesus.
True Christianity is neither a social club nor a political action
group. Jesus warned us that we need to be careful about whom we
commit to among all the people in our lives, saying,

How can ye believe, which receive honour one of another,
and seek not the honour that cometh from God only? -- John 5:44

So I ask you, you folks who claimed to have been a 'real Christian'
but eventually deconstructed your faith, were you really of a
mindset all along to please Jesus before pleasing any other person
in your life? (Be honest!) Were you from the beginning of a mindset
to never tell any lie at all? Were you given to acts of kindness to
the needy people in your church, your city, your planet? I could go
on and on.

Jesus warned us that hard times will come into every believer's life
to test our sincerity in being one of His true followers. Be ready
for them. Resolve in your mind ahead of time that whatever comes
against you will not cause you to fall away. Failure of a new believer
to make this kind of informed commitment from the start is one
of the worst things he or she can do.

Jesus told of the parable of the Sower and the Seed. It can be found
in Matthew 13. It's a bit long, so I will just present its upshot:

But he that received the seed into stony places, the same
is he that heareth the word, and anon with joy receiveth it;
Yet hath he not root in himself, but dureth for a while: for
when tribulation or persecution ariseth because of the
word, by and by he is offended. He also that received seed
among the thorns is he that heareth the word; and the care
of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, choke the
word, and he becometh unfruitful. -- Matthew 13:20-22

To put it simply, there are just a lot of ways that we can let the
cares of this world and its alluring enticements to cause us to
stop looking to Jesus for ultimate salvation and to replace true
Christianity with false Christianity and cause us to fail the
grace of God.

One last thought here on honoring God before honoring someone
else. Where are you going to get your basic theory of the nature of
sexual desires and sexual lust? Are you going to get it from a
secular, humanistic, evolutionary viewpoint, or from a scriptural
viewpoint? It's an important decision.

Celebrate Recovery

Sometime after I got saved in June 2008, I started to look around for
a decent church to attend. I went back to one of the last churches I
had attended before I left going to church in 1986. That church was
on Rose Ln and Central. However, I was not happy with it at all.
It had changed a lot in the interim. I refuse to attend just any church,
because the church that isn't building my up in the faith is bringing
me down.

Anyway, I went church hopping until I found a church that appealed
to me at first. So, I started to attend it often but not exclusively.
It had a Celebrate Recovery meeting that I attended, being eager to
see how it was run and join in for a while.

Celebrate Recovery was founded in 1991 along the lines of Alcoholics
Anonymous, except that it is a Christian ministry. It has a 12-point
plan of attack that I find generally correct. It says stuff like:

Step One
We admitted we were powerless over our addictions and compulsive
behaviors, that our lives had become unmanageable.

Step Two
We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could
restore us to sanity.

and so on. See

https://www.celebraterecovery.ca/12-step-program/

Now, I don't have much against these 12-points. They're basically
scriptural. But on the one hand, they go too far, but on the other
hand, they don't go far enough. Let me explain. If you're an alcoholic
-- assuming you're not a 'functioning alcoholic' -- then your life
probably has become unmanageable. But if you're a Christian male
with a 'minor' sexual sin to overcome, your life is probably not
unmanageable, yet you might want to join Celebrate Recovery
to get that extra help you need to get closer to perfect purity. We
definitely shouldn't wait until our lives have become 'unmanageable'
before we start to seek deliverance from the sin that so easily besets
us [Hebrews 12:1].

As for not going far enough, the organization does not preach in
their 12-points that their members should actively obey Jesus by
maintaining good works, as even the few biblical quotes that I have
presented here have also confirmed. It's the doer who gets
the deliverance.

But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving
your own selves. -- James 1:22

God is probably not going to reach down from heaven into our souls
and fix our inner faults just from prayer alone. For decades this was
my misconception that hindered me from me getting the victory I
sought. I give just one verse (I could give many) that shows that Jesus
never intended us to get His victory based only on prayer.

But rather give alms of such things as ye have; and, behold,
all things are clean unto you. -- Luke 11:41

Have you ever heard a sermon based on this verse?

This is what this verse means to me. If we give alms to the poor,
out of a pure heart (pure motives), our godly love is perfected
and the Holy Spirit is more effective in us in turning down the
volume on our inner lusts. Thus, this is just one example of what
it means to 'walk in the Spirit', which is a call to godly action
(and I don't mean to politics). Yes, by all means do pray, but add
to that good works out of a pure heart.

Anyway, back to that recovery group I joined in 2009 (somewhere
in that period). Although I no longer thought of myself as in a state
of vulnerable 'recovery', the other members (about ten of them at
the time I left the group) apparently did. They still identified with
their addictions. Some members would say, "My name is [first name]
and I am an alcoholic." Well, if that's true, that seems to be an 'only
partway victory' in Jesus and 'only partway deliverance' from
alcoholism.

Okay, I get it why unsaved people in Alcoholics Anonymous would
make that profession -- to get oneself out of the mindset of denial
of their addiction so that they can begin to get help. But there should
be a point in the Brenjah-dar of the believer that he or she gets
to the place that they know in their intuition that they are free of
it, and that they should stop identifying with their former addiction.

So, I was the odd-guy-out among them in many respects. They
confessed to substance abuse. One claimed alcohol. Another claimed
meth. And the rest in like manner. They were there to deal with some
chemical addiction. My former demons were about sexual desires.

The best they seemed to think was available to them was to exist
in a state of perpetual 'recovery', which I understand as being
constantly aware they could fall back into the behavior by the
slightest slip-up. My problem with that was that I didn't feel that
way -- my intuition from the Holy Spirit seemingly siding with my
view. I felt I had found in Jesus a secure foundation in sexual purity.
(Though I'm not saying that I can get cocky and test the limits of
that foundation, for to do so is to not walk in the Spirit.)

I wanted them to give a greater glory to Jesus by them pushing
themselves to go from mere recovery to victory. I wanted them to
be able to say with Frodo, "It's gone!"

I suppose I lasted with the group for about two months. Although
I greatly disliked the group philosophy to identify yourself with
your addiction (i.e., confessing to being a 'recovering' this or that,
or 'I am an alcoholic'), I think I could have put up with that. But
what I couldn't put up with is the group's reading of the 12-points
as we started the meetings. We would all take one point of the 12 points
to read as the session started. Now, on the face of it, this is a perfectly
reasonable thing to do. But, as I said, I didn't agree with some of the
wordings of some of the 12-points, so I didn't want to confess to them
as being true for me.

So, I had two choices. I could leave the group or openly fight the
group on how the meetings should be run. I chose to leave the group.
If you want to attain and keep your victory in Jesus, there are
somethings you can't just ignore or overlook. You have to draw the
line somewhere and hold to it. Being a successful believer is very
much about having and keeping personal convictions.

Purity verses Sin for a Christian

The Apostle Paul told us to assist the Spirit of God in our self-holiness:

But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the
flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof. -- Romans 13:14

The believer has to use common sense to keep pure. The true believer
has to be both active in looking away from enticing things, and proactive
to not place himself in that jeopardy in the first place. There are places
in the world and on the Internet that you cannot go, if you are to be
serious about purity. I shouldn't have to spell out what common sense
dictates. If you maintain friendships with salacious people in lustful
places, you are setting yourself up for failure.

Hast thou faith? have it to thyself before God. Happy is he that
condemneth not himself in that thing which he alloweth. -- Romans 14:22

Jesus told us about this in the Sermon on the Mount.

The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy
whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole
body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee
be darkness, how great is that darkness! -- Matthew 6:22-23

The NT condemns adultery, which is cheating on your spouse.
It condemns fornication which is 'free sex' outside of marriage. And
it condemns uncleanness, which I include frennaqing (fapping)
within that domain. If you are not a Christian and don't care to
become one, then, no doubt, none of this is of interest to you.

It goes without saying that sexual lust is strongly influenced by what
one places one's eyes upon. The Bible claims this:

Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world.
If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust
of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is
of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof:
but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever. -- 1 John 2:15-17

If you are a believer or wish to become one and to get your sexual
act in order, then may I again recommend that you read my essays
on Walking in the Spirit or else read the Ilfinor and Tristan novels.

God bless.

Patrick