Every Young Man's Battle: Stategies for Victory in the Real World of Sexual Temptation: The Every Man Series (22 page)

It’s so
important to remember that God once looked upon His only begotten Son in
Gethsemane as He struggled to submit in the biggest battle of His life.
Jesus’ submission was precious to the Father. Now this same Father is
looking down from heaven upon you, His adopted son, as you struggle to submit
in
your
battle for sexual purity. Sure, He wants victory, but He
doesn’t look only at the wins and losses. He looks at the heart. The very
fact that you’ve entered the fray is precious to Him. From the foundation
of the world, He’s longed for you to call His name and reach for His
heart. He’s pumped!

Like the father in the prodigal son story,
your heavenly Father is thrilled just to see you at the crest of the hill
walking toward Him. If you stumble a bit as you come home, it won’t
change the fact that He is eagerly waiting for you to arrive. Just get up and
get walking again. Reject discouragement and fall into His arms.

Victory is more than stopping masturbation, after all. It’s starting
to experience God in those moments that would have been dedicated to sex.
It’s finding God and His help in the midst of every struggle and even
every failure. It’s not about extinguishing masturbation as much as
it’s about igniting a new passion for God, with sexuality integrated into
your life in a balanced way.

Rather than say yes to masturbation, say
yes to intimacy with God. Replace moments that left you with regret and shame
with moments of fulfillment and devotion to Him. Rather than just saying no to
looking at the body parts of a woman, say yes to getting to know the incredible
human beings that God has hidden behind those fantastic body parts. When you
say yes to this kind of life and attitude, you more than replace the momentary
relief that masturbation brings.

One of the
most difficult assignments you’ll ever have is to integrate the sexual
person you are with the emotional, spiritual, social, and relational person you
can and will be.
Don’t view your sexuality as something shamefully
separate and distinct from the rest of you.
Instead, develop every
advantage possible so you can win the battle for sexual integrity. First Peter
5:8 warns us all to “be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil
prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.”

With no defenses and no understanding, you’re an easy target for this
roaring lion of a devil who wants nothing more than to ensnare you sexually and
to destroy your life. But by reading this book, applying the principles, and
reaching out to talk to God and others, the enemy can’t win, even if you
stumble from time to time. Your defenses keep him at bay.

Let these
verses from Scripture encourage you:

He does not treat us as our sins
deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are
above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him.… As a
father has compassion on his children, so the L
ORD
has
compassion on those who fear him;
for he knows how we are formed, he
remembers that we are dust.
(Psalm 103:10-11,13-14)

That last
line is the greatest source of encouragement. He knows what we’re made
of, and nothing surprises Him! He knew about “blue balls” long
before we ever coined the phrase, and He also knew that the struggle for purity
would be overbearing at times.

Don’t worry if total victory
doesn’t come by next Tuesday. Rejoice in what you
do
have. Do
you remember Dave’s story? Dave couldn’t escape masturbation
immediately, but the random dirty thoughts and glances at close friends fell
away as he practiced bouncing the eyes. His sex drive began to dry up. Do you
remember what he said? “I feel so liberated!” He was rejoicing! And
so was God.

So, too, should you. Move out. Grab sexual territory and
integrate it. Rejoice with the Lord over victories. Proclaim His power. Where
you lose, don’t hang your head in shame. Rise up, pray, and hit it again.
Never quit. With each victory, your spiritual, emotional, and physical sides
will align further.

Eventually, total victory will be yours.

For me (Steve)
the most difficult part of this book is providing a standard for you that
doesn’t inflict needless shame but instead guides you toward a life of
meaningful relationships and lays a foundation for your sexuality being fully
integrated into your marriage relationship.

Bouncing the eyes can be
done by everyone right away. Taking thoughts captive can be learned by
everyone. But stopping masturbation? That may—or may not—take a
while.

Am I advocating two standards? No. The standard is no
masturbation. But just because you may fail for even a long time doesn’t
mean it shouldn’t be the standard to claim. Believe us, the standard is
achievable. I say that knowing that I certainly didn’t achieve
it—but that’s because I never even
tried
to. I
didn’t even know that not masturbating was a reasonable standard. But it
is, and many can achieve it.

Actually, exploring the topic of
masturbation has revealed some weird surprises to me. A friend of mine told me
he’d never masturbated until
after
he was married. Imagine! He
enjoyed twenty years of celibacy after puberty without masturbating, but then
he fell into it
after
marriage. Now he’s stopped the practice,
and so have many other men.

If you really want to prepare your heart
for your future wife, then place masturbation on the altar and sacrifice it for
her. If you’re not convinced it’s the right thing to do, then try
not masturbating for three months. See what happens during those three months.
See whether your relationship with females is better and your feelings about
yourself are better. We know they will be.

Truth is truth, so there
aren’t two standards. But there may also be more than one way to get
there. Some of you may be able to get victory over masturbation right away.
Some of you, however, may not get to “none” unless you first
achieve the standard of less masturbation than you’re practicing now. The
standard of less may help you bring your habit under control until the real
standard of none becomes achievable.

Wait a minute. I know you might
not think this is the right approach (since we’ve already advocated
“cold turkey”), but let me use an example of tithing to
illustrate.

In my early years, I was quite financially irresponsible
and deeply in debt. My father had taught me to tithe, but he hadn’t
taught me to manage money. So each time a paycheck came, I would write out a
check for 10 percent to the church. I wouldn’t drop it into the
collection plate, however; otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to pay my bills.
I was so far underwater in debt that all I could see was darkness.

Each
month I would write that check and keep it right there in the checkbook,
absolutely sure that I would drop it in the collection just as soon as God
provided a miracle. That never happened, so after I’d accumulated a few
checks, I would tear them all up, feel horrible about what I did, then start
over with the practice of going through the motions of tithing
but giving
nothing
to the church.

I really believe that the standard of
giving is a 10-percent tithe. Many people, however, indicate that tithing was
an Old Testament standard, and we’re free from it. Even if that were
true, it just makes sense to me that a tenth isn’t much to sacrifice if
we believe God has given us everything we have. Thus I knew what the standard
was, but I was in a situation that prevented me from ever achieving it.

So this is what I did. I decided that I couldn’t give 10 percent, but
I could give 1 percent. I began to give 1 percent to God’s church, and I
felt great. I was now a giver.

Some might criticize a faith that was so
puny that I could only give 1 percent. Some might say that if my faith had been
stronger I could have given 10 percent from the very beginning. But the reality
was that I didn’t have the faith or desire to turn in even one of those
10-percent checks, but I did when it came to writing out a check for 1 percent.
Result? I wasn’t there yet, but I was headed toward God’s best. I
asked God to help me find a way to double my 1 percent, and before long I was
at 2 percent.

It just got better and better. Two percent became 4
percent as I continued to double my gifts to God. And it wasn’t long
before 4 percent became 8 percent, and later I was
exceeding
10
percent!

Now let me clarify something. I wasn’t just committed to
giving 1 percent for only the first time I dropped one of those checks into the
offering. No, I was committed to 1 percent
for the rest of my life.
Each new level became a lifetime commitment. I can’t tell you what joy it
has been to give back what has been given to me. These days, I love to give. I
make money in order to give. I look forward to writing as big a check as
possible whenever I can, but I don’t think I would ever have gotten there
if I hadn’t started somewhere.

The same principle, I believe,
applies to masturbation. If the idea of never masturbating again produces so
much anxiety in you that you’re compelled to do it just to prove that
it’s still an option, then don’t tell yourself that you can’t
do it ever again. You’ll be just like me, tearing up those checks.

If you’re one of those who have the habit so deeply embedded into
your life that you depend on it, then begin with a 1-percent standard of less.
Determine that you’re going to do it less. Commit to putting less
material into your mind that would lead you down that road. Commit your eyes to
purity so that your mind and body can achieve it. After you’ve done that,
determine that just for today, you’ll say no to masturbation. If
it’s too much to consider going a whole day without it, then pick half a
day. Commit that you won’t collect the images in your mind that fuel your
sex drive and lead you to masturbate.

Then see how many of those
half-days and whole days you can string together. If it’s just one, then
desire to go two days. Believe that it’s possible. After that, try going
from two to four days, and from four days to eight days, and after that, eight
days to sixteen days.

Once you get some momentum going in the right
direction, you’ll notice how much better you feel about yourself on those
victorious days. You’ll notice how much more connected to God and others
you’re feeling. You’ll also notice such a radical difference in the
way you feel and look at life that you discover it’s actually a better
feeling than the feeling you get from masturbation. It’s a feeling
that’s certainly going to last longer. In fact, “less” may
become so seldom that you achieve what we believe is the ultimate standard of
“none.” And when that happens, we believe you’ll like the
standard and you’ll like yourself and women a whole lot more.

Again, if you don’t think you can go without masturbating for the
rest of your life, just decide to go one day without masturbating. If that one
day is all you ever experience without masturbating, then you’re better
off to have experienced that one day. But don’t forget that God will give
you the power to do what you cannot do on your own. Ephesians 5:2-3 lays out
the standard God has for all of us, single or married, young or old. It’s
very difficult to misinterpret the message of this passage:

Live a
life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant
offering and sacrifice to God.…

Among you there must not
be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed,
because these are improper for God’s holy people.

God’s
way really is clear. Clean up the hints of sexual immorality. Wipe out the
things that destroy sexual purity. Be satisfied with God and the sex He has
planned for you in the future. Commit today to His standard, and you’ll
be surprised at how many of those days you can string together to create a life
that honors God.

Every battle in life is hard, but with victory comes the
spoils. So what are the “spoils” if you construct that perimeter
around your eyes? Well, you’re going to feel great about yourself, about
your life, and about your future.

I (Fred) remember the time
Garrett’s mother yanked on my sweater when I was at her church one Sunday
morning. “My son just finished reading
Every Man’s
Battle,
” she gushed. “And is he ever inspired! He’s
changed, too. He called from college the other night and said, ‘Mom,
since I’ve stopped doing the old “up-downs” with my eyes, my
love for Tracy [his fiancée] has just flown off the
scale.’”

“That’s great,” I said, as
people streamed past us in the church foyer.

“And that’s
not all,” she continued. “Garrett said that since he’s not
noticing other girls in that way anymore, he’s gotten more attentive and
protective of Tracy, as well. Tracy read your book and liked it
too.”

Whenever I hear stories like that, I like to get it
straight from the horse’s mouth. So a few months later, I invited Garrett
over to my house to chat…

Garrett
began his story by noting that he was raised in the church, but by the time he
was a senior in high school, he was drinking heavily, keeping a case of Bud
longnecks iced up in a cooler that he kept in his trunk. He and his buddies
drank a beer before school, then downed one at lunch, and kept right on going
after school. According to Garrett, “We mostly did it just to see how
long we could go before we got caught.”