Question:
Hello,
I am a Christian who constantly struggles with masturbation daily when I’m stressed out or when I’m bored or even when I feel like I need to get some sleep. I really want to try to overcome it and quit cold turkey. I also want to quit all kinds of porn related to sex. Any good Christian, godly advice to help me overcome this ordeal would be truly and greatly appreciated.
God bless.
Answer:
What needs to be tackled is root sin, which is pornography. The Bible doesn’t list masturbation as a sin, though it can be used sinfully. (See: I’ve sin constantly by masturbating. How can I change?) What you are doing is using pornography to get yourself sexually excited so that you can ejaculate. The after-effect of ejaculating is a release of hormones that causes you to relax, which you are using to get temporary relief from stress or to cause you to fall asleep more easily. You are also using pornography to entertain yourself when you are bored.
However, pornography is categorized as a sin. It is strongly desiring having sex outside of marriage. One of the side effects of watching pornography is that arousal speeds up your body’s production of semen. When your seminal vesicles get full, you are more easily aroused and have a strong urge to ejaculate. Unfortunately, you seek out pornography to ejaculate and continue this spiral.
“For this is the will of God, your sanctification; that is, that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each of you know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor, not in lustful passion, like the Gentiles who do not know God” (I Thessalonians 4:3-5).
God wants you to be set apart as someone special and dedicated to God. That is what “sanctification” means. When people are involved in acts of sex with people they are not married to (fornication or “sexual immorality”), they are no longer sanctified. They now are just like the rest of the world — given over to sin. They are not special; they are common. How does a person stay out of sexual sins? God wants people to practice self-control. They can’t let their physical desires control their decisions. Since fornication is wrong, then the things that lead to a loss of self-control and fornication are just as wrong. Thus, passionate things (like pornography) that arouse the desire for sex outside of marriage are also wrong.
Therefore, we will help you break this cycle by ending the sin that is fueling it. I’m not going to tell you to stop masturbating because you are going to find your body will still push you to masturbate to get relief. However, when you stop looking at pornography, you will notice that your sex drive will slow down. It will still build up, but not as quickly, so you won’t be ejaculating as often.
Another problem you are going to face is that it is hard to control your thoughts when you are highly aroused. For the moment, we are going to put off that issue. It does need to be addressed, but it will be easier to deal with when you’ve slowed down your sex drive.
I can’t make you quit pornography. I can encourage you to do so, but I can’t monitor you. You have to put in the effort, and there will be days when it will be a struggle to resist the urge. You might slip occasionally, but despite any slip-up, you must be determined to continue fighting it.
Thus, the goal today is not to watch any pornography. Tomorrow’s goal is the same. Continue to the point where you have not watched pornography in over a month, and write again. We will discuss what to do next to tame your thoughts.