Years ago when I was dealing with my own porn addiction and shame, I know there were times I’d ask myself this question…

Does God even care?

Like seriously, why was I struggling day after day after day praying for relief and freedom only to find myself going back to the same stuff over and over again.

Maybe you can relate?

The truth is God did care. He cared very much. But his cares did not line up with mine because while I was worried about immediate relief, he wanted me to experience lifelong change.

Last week I did an interview with the Pantry Podcast. We got talking about this idea of being magically “cured” from porn addiction because of a prayer we throw up in desperation versus doing the hard and long work of recovery.

I told them that while God certainly could remove a person’s struggle with porn based on a prayer, I didn’t think he worked like that for the most part.

I told them that, yes, God wants to be our Savior, but he’s not our sugar daddy. He wants us to turn to him for strength and not just because we are tired and want to throw in the towel.

Then the one host then made this statement:

God doesn’t want to just cure the pain, he wants to cure the source of the pain.

#brilliant

See, that’s what many of us miss when we are deep in our struggles. We just want relief from the torment, but we forget about the tormentor.

And no, I don’t mean the devil.

I’m talking about…All the pain we carry.

– All the shame we experience.
– All the love we fail to receive.
– All the trauma we’ve been subjected to.

The real problem is not your porn use. It’s not your masturbation or compulsive sexual behavior. Yes, those things are problems, but they aren’t the real problem.

They are just symptoms of the real problem and God knows this, and he wants to heal you and me from those things.

See, if God had just granted my desperate request to be “cured” of my addiction, I probably would have gone along my way not ever bothering to do the work of deep healing and emotional growth.

I would have kept those things suppressed and, chances are down the road, something else would have swooped in to fill the hole that my porn use once filled.

Understand that God isn’t ignoring your request.

He’s not callous to your pain or struggles.

But he wants you to experience deeper healing. He wants you to experience true and lasting freedom from your pain and hurts, not just a temporary cessation of your symptoms.

Understanding that doesn’t make things easy, unfortunately.

It doesn’t change the very real day-to-day struggle and shame you may be experiencing. But keep doing the work, keep engaging in healthy community, keep deconstructing the sources of shame in your life, and eventually you will get to the root of your pain and that’s when you will see God do what he does best.

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