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MORE OF SODOM

Michael Pearl
Art of Child Training Fathers / Men Protecting Your Children

Dear Michael,
I am a husband and a stepfather of a three-year-old. I’m hooked on pornography. I sometimes think I can’t make it without it.

I read your pamphlet Pornography – Road To Hell, and it fit me. I’m 29 and I need someone to talk to. I need lot’s of prayers. I want to stop this bondage I am in. I could use some help. God bless your website.

MICHAEL ANSWERS
You don’t need to talk to anyone. You don’t need help. You don’t need prayer. You need to repent. Nearly every porno freak to whom I have spoken has expressed a desire to be free from his addiction. The same is true of alcoholics and dopeheads. I have spoken with prostitutes and Sodomites. They all say the same thing. They are miserable; life is a disappointment. They know they are in trouble. They want to quit very badly, but they are “so dependent on it.” I have seen them cry, swear they will never do it again, and then go right back. They will confess their sins, ask for special prayer, let you cast the devils out of them, and then crawl back to their sin. Many professing Christians, preachers and priests included, are caught in a web of debauchery.

I said you don’t need to talk to anyone, because no one can help you. You don’t have an emotional problem that you need to “work through.” You don’t need affirmation or understanding. Yours is not a failure of information. You are a sinner, living after the flesh, and you are dead in trespasses and sins. No counselor can help you deal with your sin.
I said you don’t need help because no one can help you decide what you value. If you love the flesh and do not fear God, if you are not afraid of hell, if you do not value your marriage and your self-respect, if you choose to have the worldview of a baboon—to eat, sleep, and play with yourself—no one can help you except to assure you of the misery you will experience in this life and of damnation in the next.

I said you don’t need prayer, because God does not help sinners quit their sin. God commands the sinner to repent, and then God places his Spirit inside of believers, and by that Spirit the children of God are all overcomers. Those who are not overcomers are overcome of sin and will continue to be enslaved unless they become truly born again.

When you fear God and hell, you will lose your appetite for everything but forgiveness and restitution. You will stay on your knees, fasting, until you touch God and receive the new birth. When you repent to God, you will hate sin so thoroughly that the very thought of a porno image will make you sick to your stomach.

You have never been sincere about ceasing to do pornography. By the time you receive this reply you will doubtless have returned to your lonely room of self-love. If you really wanted to quit, you would permanently disconnect from the internet. If you must use computers at work, you would get a job working in lawn care. You would disconnect your TV from the cable or satellite. You would burn all the images you now have, and you would spend your free time in the Word of God—that is, if you were sincere. There are other, more drastic and permanent methods of ridding oneself of the means to lust, but I will not recommend them. I will leave that to the words of Jesus, found in Matthew 5:29-30: 18:9.

Paul said, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek” (Romans 1:16). I have seen many porno freaks, queers, lesbians, prostitutes, dope heads, alcoholics, and adulterers repent toward God and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and never return to their sin a single time. Either the gospel of Jesus Christ is what it claims to be or it is empty religious nonsense. Either Christ forgives the sinner and delivers him from the acts of sin or we are at the mercy of counselors and therapists.

The move is yours, not God’s. God did everything that is necessary to forgive the greatest sinner and to keep him from committing sin. But God cannot save the unrepentant. And, my friend, you have never repented to God. The choice is yours.

From years of experience, seeing God change lives, I have every confidence that the same gospel that has worked a change in others will work a change in you—when you are willing.

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18 responses to “MORE OF SODOM”

  1. To those struggling with sin:
    Repentance in the Greek is -metanoia – and it means to have a change of mind. The answer isn’t to hate your sin so much that you quit, but to see the truth made flesh in Christ, the Word of God, Jesus, Who came to crush the head of the serpent and fulfill His promise to give us life, which He promised from the beginning. (We all naturally hate our sin because we weren’t created for sin to manifest in us, some call this a conscience.) The answer is a person, Jesus, the mediator between God and man, (the Son of God and also the Son of man) Who came to remove the veil from our eyes by showing us the Truth! The truth about ourselves and God – that we are His beloved, created to be His dwelling place, perfectly designed to be a vessel of His Spirit. God is your Abba and He created you to be a partaker of His all satisfying life and love. One of the primary definitions of the Greek word for “sin” is: to be without a share in. A share in what? God Himself, His life, which is our inheritance as His children and image bearers. We partake of His life through intimacy with Him by doing the one thing that’s needful: sitting at His feet and hearing the Word He has spoken over us through the incarnation, life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus, wherein we can see the proof of His love for us and believe. And as He persuades us of His goodness and perfect love our flesh is put to rest, no longer lusting after ANYTHING, whether it’s a “good” thing or an “evil” thing, because His Life is SATISFYING. HE is our only need. To sin is to not partake in His life, and not partaking in His life causes us to look to the flesh to give ourselves life, but we cannot give ourselves life, there is no life outside of God, only death, when we look to this world or our flesh for life it brings forth the acts of sin, or, as Paul called them “the works of the flesh.” Contained within the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is anything “good” or “evil” that we do/don’t do in order to satisfy our need for life instead of partaking in the tree of Life, which is intimacy with God through Christ Jesus. “To the pure, all things are pure; but to those who are defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure; but both their mind and their conscience are defiled.” (Titus 1:15) who are “the pure”? Those who are partaking of their inheritance unto the satisfying of their souls and therefore no longer looking to their flesh or anything in the world to satisfy their need for life. This is not something we do but something we partake of – something that He does in us as we sit at His feet and allow Him to satisfy us with the fullness of Himself. There are so many different versions of “the gospel” in the world today but there is only one Truth. Jesus described repentance when He said “you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.” One of the meanings of Grace is: the divine influence upon the heart and it’s reflection in the life. We’ve heard grace defined as God not punishing us, but that is a weak and watered down interpretation, grace is the power of God to manifest what He has promised in our lives, both here and in the world to come. We were all in bondage to sin and death, Jesus came to set us free from that enslavement because it was destroying us and we couldn’t save ourselves. He created us to experience life, not death. And He couldn’t bear to see His beloveds dying. He wills that none should perish. God looks on you in your bondage with compassion, not anger. He knows that He is your only hope of freedom. So hear the truth and let Him love you, by His Spirit He will bring forth His life in you and you will find that you no longer “need” or want any of the weak and beggarly versions of “life” (aka death) that your flesh can offer you, because you will be satisfied with the goodness of your Abba.

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  2. I agree that the power of the cross is the power to set us free but it’s grace that frees us nothing else.
    I was bound by porn for years. I did fast. Once for 17 days. I memorized almost the entire book of James. I prayed for hours but still found no freedom. I finally read about t slave who was emancipated by Lincoln who never left the plantation because his old master told him he wasn’t free to leave (A lie) because he believed the lie he stayed for 4 more years. Finally he saw the other slaves were gone and he understood he was being lied to, then he left as well. Many Christians believe lies and these keep them bound. (Rom 6:5-7,12) I then shared my struggle with my in-laws (Christians) and they prayed for me and much grace came (James 4:6, 5:16) I found the grace to free me in HUMILITY. I finally found I needed to get rid of my TV as that was an open door for the enemy to pull me into temptation again. (Phil 4:2)
    It never worked for me the way you said Mike, and believe me I did all the work. I believe GRACE is the key. Blessings Lloyd

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  5. What are we to tell women who have men who would rather take care of themselves than have sex with their wives? I think there needs to be teaching on what women need to do when their husbands are addicted to porn. It has to be a very lonely place. Thank you for all of your teachings!!

    Reply

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