Evangelist Patrica Allbritton – Sexual Addiction
Transparency is the Key!
Today, I have come full circle; I am with the love of my life, my best friend, my husband-to-be. It is my desire to share the challenges and obstacles that I have been through with sexual addiction, to help bring other women and men to wholeness. Presently I am a retired Navy Veteran and I am now a junior at Troy University, majoring in Psychology and minoring in Business.
Somewhere…Someone Is Out of Place…Because Their Place Is Next You! In a Holy Relationship…that leads to Marriage!
Through therapy I found out that the spiritual sickness of lust wanted sexual stimulation instead of God’s love. I had learned after many years of abusing my body, my mind, and my spirit that lust wanted anything other than what was best for me. I was depressed and oppressed, and I suppressed what was going with me.
You must make a covenant with your eyes not take in pornography or lust in any form. This takes a conscious effort because mostly everything that is advertised uses some form of lust or pornography to sell their products.
You must make a covenant with your ears to abstain from music that will entice you to want to participate in lustful acts. You must make a covenant with your mouth that you mouth that you will abstain from corrupt communication that will lead you to engage in lustful or profane communication. You must make a covenant with your hands, your lips, and your sex organs, not to have sex before marriage. I know this is easier said than done.
James 1:5 “that if any person lacks wisdom, ask of God and He will give it to you” You must want to be free from sexual addiction.
Then I wondered how I could live without lust. It become clear that all I had to do was give it up. I doubted that life without lust was possible. I found out that there was hope in God. I have learned that progressive victory over lust was possible. I had learned to call on God for help. I leaned on the support of those who share common issues with lustful desires; yet, desired healthy and pure relationships.
First of all we are needy people. Our self-obsession leads the way, taking pride and resentment hand in hand, with fear, doubt, dishonesty, and all our other uglies following close behind. We need continually to see ourselves as we really are and others as they really are. We need continually to correct our wrong attitudes and actions with respect to the other people in our lives. We need to learn how to restore relationship and find union. Thus, we need to learn a new habit taking continued personal inventory.
Instead of looking always and only at others, we start looking at ourselves. We had always lived for ourselves; now we look at ourselves. God’s program of self-examination, which develops slowly in the process of attending therapy, making mistakes, doing wrong, learning to see and acknowledge our wrongs, and correcting those wrongs. This is why I practice, and so many of us have incorporated daily writing as part of working the Deliverance Step, as discussed in my restoration of being free from sexual addiction. Also, we sit down in therapy after an emotional scene, for example, and ask what did I do or fail to do that makes me feel this way? How can I correct it? This kind of writing can work wonders.
The deliverance Step we work anywhere and everywhere we interact with people, especially at home, at work, and in meetings. That’s where the action is, where life is, where people are, and where our cunning, baffling, and powerful egos are. We work it promptly, on the spot, as close to the heat of the action as we can. There is no faster, no better, no other way to get well.
Therapy can be where you can get deliverance as simple as that…
God wants us healed from sexual addiction just as much as He wants us healed from a dreadful disease. Sexual addiction is a dreadful disease and it does not care who it attacks. God is no respecter of persons. What He has done for others He can do and will do for you.
Eph 4:19 -Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more.
What is Sexual Addiction and What is Sexual Sobriety?
We can only speak for ourselves. The addict can best be understood in terms of what we call the sex addict. The sex addict has taken himself or herself out of the whole context of what is right or wrong. He or she has lost control, no longer has the power of choice, and is not free to stop. Lust has become an addiction. Our situation is like that of the alcoholic who can no longer tolerate alcohol and must stop drinking altogether but is hooked and cannot stop. So it is with the sexaholic, or sex drunk, who can no longer tolerate lust but cannot stop.
Thus, for the sex addict, any form of sex with one’s self or with partners other than the spouse is progressively addictive and destructive. We also see that lust is the driving force behind our sexual acting out, and true sobriety includes progressive victory over lust. These conclusions were forced upon us in the crucible of our experiences and recovery; we have no other options. But we have found that acceptance of these facts is the key to a happy and joyous freedom we could otherwise never know.
This will and should discourage many inquirers who admit to sexual obsession or compulsion but who simply want to control and enjoy it, much as the alcoholic would like to control and enjoy drinking. Until we had been driven to the point of despair, until we really wanted to stop but could not, we did not give ourselves to this program of recovery. Turning Your Wounds Into Wisdom is for those who know they have no other option but to stop, and their own enlightened self-interest must tell them this.
