Last updated on August 31, 2020
Question:
I am desperate for your help, I feel like I am dying inside.
I am 16 years old. I found your web site and I thank God for it. My parents are both pastors and I am a pastor’s son. But as a pastor’s son, I feel I have no one to talk to because everyone expects me to be a perfect angel. They think I never had a temptation, and my life is perfect. Even the leaders of the church. It kills me inside. When I have struggles, I have to fight them on my own. I need help. I feel like trash.
I know that God has a big plan and purpose for me, and he told me that. I have had many prophesies that. I need to pray about my purpose because I might miss it because it’s coming. I am struggling with something and I feel that it’s in the way of me fulfilling my calling. I feel that I am literally hanging on by a thread inside. I am only alive by God’s grace. Thank you so much for your web site; it’s like my only hope left.
Since about 7 years old, I started masturbating. I didn’t know what it was, No one taught me anything. Ever since then it grew and got worse. I stopped masturbating for about a year already, but this is what is killing me inside. I stopped doing it, but at the same time, it’s such a struggle every day not to sin. I just feel I’m about to go crazy. When I get a temptation to do it, I try not to touch it or anything but sometimes I will rub it try to make it go away or something. I sit there going crazy sometimes to the point where I ejaculate. I feel so horrible.
All I want is to be free. All I want is just to be with God. But it’s always in the way. It’s been about ten years now. Please help me. I don’t even know what. If you can please pray for me. I beg you, please, I cannot live like this anymore. I am dying inside, I need your help. I do not want to miss God’s calling. Please help me, you are my only hope left. Please, if you don’t help me, no one will.
Thank you for your time.
Answer:
People have a tendency to make up rules for themselves. Rules that God never made, but people think are needed to be righteous. Then they get really upset when they discover they can’t keep their own rules. But rarely do they consider that the problem is in their made-up rules; instead, they blame themselves as not being good enough.
“Therefore, if you died with Christ from the basic principles of the world, why, as though living in the world, do you subject yourselves to regulations — “Do not touch, do not taste, do not handle,” which all concern things which perish with the using — according to the commandments and doctrines of men? These things indeed have an appearance of wisdom in self-imposed religion, false humility, and neglect of the body, but are of no value against the indulgence of the flesh” (Colossians 2:20-23).
This was one of the flaws of the Pharisees (Mark 7:1-13).
God is the one who defines right and wrong. He wrote it fully down in His book.
“Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust” (II Peter 1:2-4).
Notice that Peter said that God has given us all things pertaining to life and godliness. That doesn’t leave much out, does it? It is very easy to assume that because playing with your penis feels good and that ejaculating feels even better that there must be something wrong with it. Feeling good doesn’t automatically make something good or bad. If I haven’t eaten all day, a meal tastes really good, but it isn’t wrong to eat. Therefore, we need to go to God’s teachings to find out whether masturbation is right or wrong. Rather than repeat myself, I want you to pause and read the following: I’m still confused about masturbation. Is it right or wrong? Read all the passages cited and it also links to other articles. Follow those links and read that material as well because I want you to fully learn the topic.
Now, let’s discuss the physical aspect of the issue as well. Your body has two seminal vesicles, which are located just below and behind the bladder. These vesicles constantly produce semen and eventually, they get full. That is what you are feeling when you try to go without ejaculating. As they get full, your body gets more sensitive to sexual touch. Your mind also tends to move to sexual ideas and that is where you start feeling like you are going crazy.
The design of the male body is to get rid of older semen to make room for fresh material. If you happen to produce semen very slowly, the body is able to get rid of a little bit each night through a drip method. When you have erections, the pathway to the ejaculatory duct and the seminal vesicles open up, allowing a small amount of semen to drip down. It then is flushed out of the body the next time you urinate. Unfortunately, this method doesn’t keep up with the rate of production for most men, especially when you are first maturing. To get rid of the excess, you actually have to ejaculate.
One way that excess is taken care of is an instinctive response by the body when your seminal vesicles get full. During the dream stage of sleep (also known as the REM or Rapid Eye Movement stage), your body automatically gets an erection. You have four to six erections every night, but you only notice the last one when you wake up in the morning. Since your penis and glans are hypersensitive because the seminal vesicles are full, your body responds by rubbing your penis. Eventually, you reach orgasm and ejaculate. For some men, they sleep so soundly that don’t realize it happened until they wake up in the morning. Others semi-wake while it is going on, but fall right back to sleep when it is over. Others come fully awake just before reaching the point of ejaculating.
Almost 100% of men discover at some point how to masturbate and trigger an ejaculation. The feeling of pleasure that comes with orgasm and the relief of ejaculating is so intense that it is common for young men to pursue it. But again, the design of the body is that it is easiest to ejaculate when the seminal vesicles are full, but harder when they get close to empty.
Many boys, in a desire to ejaculate more often, pursue sexual images (pornography) to get their bodies aroused sufficiently even when their seminal vesicles aren’t full. Pornography is wrong because it is pursuing lust and lewdness. “Let us walk properly, as in the day, not in revelry and drunkenness, not in lewdness and lust, not in strife and envy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill its lusts” (Romans 13:13-14).
However, needing to ejaculate isn’t lust. It is a physical need of the body that can’t be ignored.
There are many other things you and I should talk about, but I’ve given you a lot to think about and that will be enough for the moment.
Question:
Thank you for your response.
I did not understand if you were against masturbation or for. I personally believe that masturbation is a sin, but I understand that I do need to ejaculate. I just feel that it’s a sin if I masturbate, so sometimes it gets very hard. I know it’s going to be a process for my body to retrain, I guess, because it’s been so long. But what can I do to help retrain myself? I want to live holy. But when your body gets, I do not know how to say this right, “horny,” you do not want to distract yourself? Do you know what I mean? At this place, the body does not listen to the spirit. It’s so hard. What can I do during this process?
Answer:
The problem is that you are declaring something to be sinful that God never said was sinful. It is here where your problems lie. As God told the Israelites, “Whatever I command you, be careful to observe it; you shall not add to it nor take away from it” (Deuteronomy 12:32). You don’t have the right to make up your own categories of sin.
If sinful thoughts are a problem or if you have a habit of seeking out pornography, then I can accept that you want to avoid masturbation because you have a weakness to sin when you do it. But that is different from saying masturbation is a sin, and it puts the proper focus on dealing with the actual sins.
Yes, you can train yourself to do most of your ejaculations through wet dreams. I’ll tell you what needs to be done if that is what you prefer. However, you need to understand that wet dreams are messy. You’ll have to be willing to clean up after yourself when they happen. Also, wet dreams are not going to solve the problem of lustful thoughts. The dreams that accompany wet dreams are typically erotic and might involve things that are not morally right. If you spend your day thinking lustful thoughts, those thoughts will become the fuel for your dreams at night. Finally, you need to accept the fact that a wet dream is masturbating by instinctive action in your sleep. This is why you have to distinguish between the process of causing an ejaculation (masturbating) and lust.
You can also train yourself to treat ejaculations as a bodily function that needs to be done once in a while. It can be done without lustful thought, but you’ll have to struggle at the beginning with controlling the direction of your thoughts. Even with wet dreams, you are going to find that there are times when you need to know how to do this.
Let me know which direction you want to go and then we can focus on the specifics. Also, let me know if you have a problem with either pornography or lustful thoughts, so we can deal with those issues as well.