Confessions.
Who are you when no one’s looking? What secret are you holding in that nobody will ever know? What’s the stuff you’ve tried to stuff way down deep but that still seems to linger somewhere right under your skin? We all have them. Or do they have us?
Every one of us has a struggle. Every one of us has a story. Whatever it is, you are not alone . . . and that’s what this Stirring Blog is all about.
It’s a place to come clean, to get real, and to share your story with our Stirring community. Because it’s in getting real with God that we can let go of the shame and the secrets that consume us. How is God bringing you freedom? How is God changing you? How is God speaking to you? We can’t wait to hear your Confession.
Porn and Pancakes was an encouragement in every sense. We’ve been shown that we can win a seemingly hopeless battle against ourselves. Community, Love, Each other, Jesus. We all struggle, we all know it, let’s move forward in the freedom Jesus has for us! Freedom!
My wife and I are experiencing more freedom than ever before . . . God is showing us how to be honest and live confession in our marriage . . . I still struggle with lust, but now I have a way to step into the freedom God has for me . . . I can’t wait to hear God speak to me this year!
The Porn and Pancakes event and the Confessions series has been a reinforcement at timely time for my wife and I. I have struggled with pornography since I was 6 when I found my dad’s stash under the desk in my parents house. It was always said that it was wrong in our house, yet allowed behind closed doors. Glimpses of it would strike me as I grew up while I was shopping on Saturday AMs with my dad. He would take notice of an attractive female and verbalize his thoughts (PG 13) in front of me. This displayed a model secret sex life of wild fantasies with porn when nobody was around and the look of a pure marriage. This has screwed my view of women up for years.
Brian from XXXchurch.com stated that the images of the women in the porn that he found and stowed away are stained in his mind to this day. I can attest to the same. I had access to porn at my parents house growing up from the age of 6 (that I can remember) to now, and I can almost guarantee that, that will not go away. I was caught once viewing porn with 2 of my classmates (we were 10). My mom caught us and we had a “good talkin”. The result, the porn stash was moved to a different location in the house. Porn was tolerated in our house growing up. Therefore I thought nothing of viewing porn growing up and going through college. The destructive nature of it hit me like a freight train when I got married and and came to know the Lord in my life. Porn caused me to have unreal, fantasy expectations of my wife. My addiction to porn in concert with my wife’s childhood abuse set the stage for a marital blowup and the very real fear of divorce at one point. Only through God, counseling, and strong christian couples were we able to get through this crisis.
I still struggle with porn. I must set all of the fences up to avoid it. I have an internet blocker, I have my wife get all of the mail (dang V-secret ads), I setup friends to call me and ask how my thought life is when I am away from my wife, and now I CANDIDLY SPEAK WITH MY WIFE ABOUT MY STRUGGLES. I found that all of these things help, yet if I let my guard down for 1 second the enemy is trying to find a foothold on this area in my life. I pray that through Jesus, God will see me as clean, and deliver me from this evil that has followed me as I have grown up.