TRAPPED BY SEXUAL LUST
If you’re a believer in Christ and you keep hiding your sin … especially if it is sexual sin … you may have to learn the hard way that there are painful consequences to pay. I speak from experience, in hopes of being used of God to keep others from ending up in prison where I am now.
I gave my heart to the Lord when I was eight years old. We had an evangelist named Cowboy Bill during a Vacation Bible School at the old Calvary Baptist Church. After one of his lessons he asked if anyone wanted to know the Lord. I did, because I wanted to make sure that I would go to heaven when I died. They had me go with a leader one on one, where she led me through the sinner’s prayer where I confessed my sins and asked Jesus into my heart. I felt peace, knowing that if I were to die, I knew I would go to heaven and not hell.
My parents were not Christians but they allowed us kids to go to church. I am the youngest of four children so I was the last to enjoy going to church and learning about Christ. Over the years I was able to encourage my parents to go to church, where they eventually came to know Christ as well. They even came to see me get baptized when I was 15 years old. My mom wanted me to be old enough so I could understand the significance of being baptized.
Throughout my junior and senior high school years I did my best in learning the Bible and understanding the Lord. I graduated from the AWANA club that I was in at church. My parents were very proud to see me learn so many verses from the Bible. Throughout my high school years however, I became very rebellious. My grades suffered and I just barely graduated.
The one thing I was good at growing up was having a gift to listen. I believe that God had gifted me with a listening ear. So my friends knew they could come to me if they ever needed someone to talk to, but even with those gifts I was not a strong Christian.
After I graduated from high school I moved to Texas for a year and a half. But things were even harder there. I lost my uncle and my grandfather from my dad’s side.
After seeing how distant they were with each other before their deaths, I swore that I would not let that happen to me and my dad, so I decided to move back home to be close to my parents. When I got back, I quickly found a job and went back to church. However … I was playing secretly with sexual sin, and God allowed me to get trapped by it, which landed me in jail.
For eight - nine years, my greatest weakness was sexual lust. I had gotten into pornography really bad and that led me into cheating and ruining two marriages that actually had a good chance of being happy and successful. It also ruined a great relationship with my high school sweetheart, so you can see the consequences of sin if you don’t surrender it completely to God. All the counseling in the world doesn’t mean a thing unless you are truly willing to give your heart completely to God. It’s all or nothing when it comes to God to be set totally free from sin. Like He says in His Word, “I am a jealous God.” (Deut. 5:9). In my life, my “idol” that I “worshipped” or paid more attention to was pornography than God. Many days and nights I prayed for the strength to overcome my addiction but my spiritual walk with the Lord was so weak that I didn’t have enough discipline to make it happen.
On the outside, I came across as a loving dad and husband. On the inside, there was a sin that had ahold of me, and behind closed doors I had this obsession that eventually would make me lose just about everything.
Thank God, at least I still have my immediate family and some friends from my home church. I caught my case in 2002 but it happened two years prior. I won’t go into details except that I am now taking my earthly punishment. I’ve been locked down for 2½ years now and I have had a LOT of time to reflect on my past sins and to see how by the grace of God His love has brought me thus far. Had God not allowed my sin to be exposed, only He knows how many more lives I may have hurt if I had been allowed to stay on the destructive path I was on. Sexual lust, like all lust, is simply a heightened state of selfishness. Sexual lust will almost always look for greater thrills than constant, incessant masturbation. The only thing that holds it back is a guilty conscience before God, and getting caught and punished. Once others are contaminated by your sexual lust, it begins to slowly keep spreading like a wildfire out of control, scorching everything in its path.
I can honestly say that for the first time in a very long time, that my heart and mind is the clearest it’s ever been, thanks to God. I am not perfect, and I won’t be until I get to heaven above. Satan does and will attack me, even here in prison, but I know that in Christ I am free. He paid the ultimate penalty for my sins way before I ever knew, but I can proudly say that I am His child and He watches over me. There are days when I have a rough time, but that’s when I turn to God and trust in Him more than I have before. As I read my Bible everyday and spend time with God in prayer, my spiritual strength grows more and more. By the time God lets me go home from prison I will be more than ready to be in God’s army. I will also be well equipped to live the life that I was supposed to have had before.
I want to encourage you, my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, to stay strong and keep in the Word because in the worst of times that is where you will get the encouragement and strength to turn to God. He is always there but it is up to YOU to ask Him for help, then to accept His help.
I also want to warn anyone reading this that if you are a Christian and you are struggling with sexual lust of any kind, and you refuse to say no to it, or refuse to seek Godly help to stop your addiction, you are playing with fire. Lust of any kind is the bait of Satan. Lust for fame – lust for power – lust for money – lust for drugs and alcohol - lust for unhealthy food – lust for sexual gratification that is usually fueled by pornography … Satan wants to entice you into constantly gratifying your lust. Why? Because he knows that sooner or later, God allows judgment to come upon those who practice on-going sin. Judgment always involves pain in one degree or another, and Satan is into inflicting as much pain as he can upon Christians.
