Last updated on January 2, 2021
Question:
Hello,
Thank you for this web site; it’s such a blessing!
I’m in need of some spiritual advice. I really haven’t told anyone this but I need help. I’m 18, and I’m trying to devote my life to God, but I’m messing up over and over and over again. For the past seven years, I’ve struggled with many sins. I was a very disobedient child, lazy, mean and hateful and full of rage, and sexually immoral.
Lately, I’ve been able to get my act together. I obey my parents, I have a job and I try to control my anger, but I struggle with masturbation. I find it disgusting, very disgusting, but I can’t stop. Each time I say it will be my last, but I continue to do it. I’ll go for about three weeks and then I slip up again. I used to feel guilty, I would cry, but now it’s as if I don’t care. I don’t care or have any more guilt. I’m pretty sure I’m spiritually dead. I don’t want to be like this but I don’t know what to do. I’ve tried, but I keep failing.
I hate how I’m being disobedient to God. I know without a doubt that I’m disgusting. God hates the wicked and I know I’m wicked, so God hates me. I’ve repented over the same sin repeatedly. I pray every day, but now I feel as if I can’t. I feel as it’s just completely disrespectful for me to sin like this and think I can just ask for forgiveness and get off the hook.
Also, I always get these blasphemous thoughts all day long. I pray and ask for forgiveness but they won’t go away. I just feel pathetic, and I feel as if I don’t deserve any blessings from God. Everything that I’ve done has been horrible.
I really want to change and would love more than anything to have a relationship with God. But after I’ve sinned willfully, knowing that God hates sin, that Christ paid the price for sin, and sin grieves the Holy Spirit, I still choose to continue to be sexually immoral. I really feel like I don’t deserve it nor will God allow it.
Could you please help me! I need advice. I really don’t know what to do. I keep going in circles over and over again. Please, please help!
Thank you!
Answer:
Sin is described as slavery. It is a trap that you can’t get out of on your own. “Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one’s slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness?” (Romans 6:16). Satan uses a number of tricks to get a person caught and not try to seek a way out. I think one of the most devious is when he manages to convince a person that something from normal everyday life is somehow sinful.
You can see it with girls suffering from anorexia. They are convinced that they are fat, no matter how skinny they are, and that all eating is bad. Of course, the body has to have food, so eventually, they give in an eat, but because it has been so long since they have eaten, they overeat. Then they beat themselves up because of their lack of self-control and decide they were right, eating is bad. Thus an endless cycle of self-abuse is established.
You’ve done the same thing to yourself. You are male and the male body produces semen constantly. Eventually, the seminal vesicles where the semen is produced and stored get full and you have to ejaculate to get rid of the excess. But you’ve decided that ejaculating is a sin and you try to prevent it. Eventually, something has to give — that is why you can only last three weeks. Eventually, your body decides enough is enough and instinct takes over. It badly needs to ejaculate and masturbation is the quickest way to relief. Then you beat yourself up because you decided you’ve sinned. Thus, an endless cycle of self-condemnation is established.
But you missed an important point along the way. You don’t get to decide what is sinful or not. Sin is the breaking of God’s laws. “Whoever commits sin also commits lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness” (I John 3:4). What you’ve skipped over is showing from the Bible that the act of masturbating, by itself, is sinful. I would like you to read through the following and look up all the passages and read them for yourself:
- Is masturbation sinful or not?
- I’m still confused about masturbation. Is it right or wrong? What are your thoughts about it?
What you should have learned is that masturbation can be used in sinful ways, just as eating can be used sinfully (gluttony) or drinking can be used sinfully (drunkenness). But the act, by itself, is neither right nor wrong, it is merely a bodily function. What can make masturbation sinful is when a man uses pornography or thoughts of immoral sex to stimulate himself so that he can ejaculate. “For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you should abstain from sexual immorality; that each of you should know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor, not in passion of lust, like the Gentiles who do not know God” (I Thessalonians 4:3-5). But it doesn’t mean that you can’t masturbate without these evil thoughts. To prove my point, think back to the first time you masturbated. For most boys, it was something that felt good, but they had no particular thoughts of sex until they got a reaction they weren’t expecting. It doesn’t take long to realize that ejaculation and sex go together. But for the moment my point is that you are able to achieve ejaculation without pornography or lustful thoughts.
Response:
Thank you so much for your response! Your web site is such a blessing!