5 Steps to Breaking Free from Porn _Joe Dallas (2)

life and you’ll see He set aside time for prayer. He was and is God incarnate,
yet He felt the need and desire to commune with His heavenly Father through
prayer, publicly and privately. Honestly now, wouldn’t it be foolish to think
you need it less than Jesus did? Because you’re committed to God and to being
spiritually and physically healthy, pray daily. Schedule it, invest in it, let it
become part and parcel of your routine. A man accountable is first and
foremost accountable to God, from whom He hears and to whom he answers
daily. There is simply no other way to victorious living.
Accountability is established with allies.
“Exhort one another daily…lest any of you be hardened through the
deceitfulness of sin” (Hebrews 3:13). Sin is deceitful. Leave a man on his own
long enough and, dollars to donuts, he’ll find ways to start kidding himself.
This is doubly true of his tendency to rationalize the sin he’s most vulnerable
to. Without anyone else’s perspective and/or loving challenge, he’s often
inclined to look at his area of weakness and tell himself, “It’s wrong, but I’m
entitled to it anyway.” This eventually morphs into, “It’s wrong, but it’s not so
terribly wrong.” From there it becomes, “It’s wrong, but not always.” And
finally he says, “It’s not wrong at all.”
The deceitfulness of sin can translate the most obviously immoral actions
into something minimal, justifiable, even good. Let’s never underestimate our
ability to kid ourselves. That’s why you need a man or a group who will ask
you on a weekly basis if you’ve used porn, put yourself in danger of using it, or
indulged in behaviors that make you more susceptible to porn use. You can get
that sort of accountability in existing accountability groups or from an
individual, but one way or another you need it. And accountability isn’t
attending a Bible study, prayer group, or get-together. (These are all great, but
they don’t qualify as good accountability resources.) Where there’s true
accountability there’ll be three elements:
1. Someone else will know your specific area of weakness.
2. Someone will ask you weekly whether or not you’ve indulged that area of
weakness.
3. Someone will be there to exhort, encourage, or empathize with you in case
you’ve relapsed or to rejoice with you when you’ve stuck to your goal.