Do You Want To Get Well

A key for recovery and healing for all sex addicts is their ability to answer three spiritual questions.  In one of my three new books, Becoming A Man of Valor, all three of these questions are elaborated.  The three are:
1.  Do you want to get well?
2.  What are you thirsty for?
3.  What are you willing to die for and are you willing to die to yourself?

All three are taken from stories of Jesus' interactions with people in the Gospel of John,  Question one is the question Jesus asks an invalid who has come to lie by the healing pool of Bethesda as described in John 5.  For addicts, we must be willing to heal despite our questions, misgivings, and even anger at God.  Question two is from Jesus' conversation with a Samaritan woman at a well near Sychar in Samaria.  He tells her that earthly water never heals thirst but that "living water" does, the healing water of salvation that he has to offer.  Addicts need to know what their soul has been thirsting for and what false attempts they have made to satisfy it.  Finally, questions three recognizes that addiction is selfish and that recovery is self less.  What better question to ask than what would a person be willing to die for, the utmost act of selflessness.  John 11 is the story of Lazurus who Jesus allows to die and later raises from the dea to demonstrate his resurrecting power.  Addicts do need to die to themselves.  It is only in that what that Jesus can come into their life in a powerful was and heal their hearts.  Recovery is, in fact, resurrecting!

Adultery of the Mind

One of you has asked about where the line is drawn about adultery in the mind.  On the one hand we don't want to set the bar so high that we are doomed to fail.  On the other hand, we want the bar to be high enough that we become the men that God calls us to be.  To me, it depends on our definition of lust.  Lust is the process of thought in which we imagine having sex with someone and in certain situations.  Temptation is when we see someone or something that is sexually stimulating.  We can't avoid temptations.  They will bombard us on a daily basis.  When can notice that we are tempted by stimuli and allow the temptation to be in our mind without overreacting to it and trying at all costs to get it out.  If, on the other hand, we take the temptation and "run with it" into imagined sex, that is lust and that can be a sobriety violation.  I am, as always, interested in your reactions and experience with this question.  On September 15 I have three new books being released.  One of them is called Taking Every Thought Captive in which I cover this question in great detail.