SET FREE FROM PORNOGRAPHY
Robby Owen

I was your typical suburban kid growing up and I walked as a religious but unsaved person.  I was in church from birth but only went through the motions to please those around me.  I was raised with no concept of not giving my heart away to girls, resulting in a lifestyle of always having some kind of girlfriend/partner at all times and seasons.  Instead of finding my identity and purpose in the Lord, I found it in these girls.  I had no concept of intimacy with Jesus, but had been instead raised and taught to give my heart away to others in order to receive emotional and physical fulfillment.  Sexual intimacy was the deepest and even greatest place of fulfillment that I knew of.

I was introduced to pornography even before I entered puberty.  This early exposure ensured that the foundation of sexual orientation and fulfillment for my life was built on an addiction to perversion and fantasy.  It seemed as though I basically masturbated my way into the beginnings of puberty.  From there, I had my first sexual offer at 13, my first encounter at 14, and lost my virginity at 16.  Sin plagued all areas of my life leading to hard-drug use and dealing, sexual involvement with multiple women (many of which in the same time periods), and a lifestyle that was out of control…all while claiming to be a “Christian.”

The final season of this spiral of destruction began when I, at the age of 20, married my 19-year-old high school sweetheart.  A primary rationale for this choice was the sheer fact that, through the lens of religiosity (which requires the marriage covenant to rightly have sex), this was the only way to ensure a life of endless sexual satisfaction.  It’s not that I didn’t “love” her, but the paradigm that I had in my head from childhood was that marriage was the ultimate solution to my insatiable sexual lust.  Well, the break from the addiction from pornography only lasted about a month into the wedding and thus returned with a force stronger than I had ever known.  Marriage didn’t solve a thing, and in fact, allowed the enemy to make it worse.  Here I was, married to this absolutely gorgeous, blonde, “Christian,” rich-suburban, teenage model, but then at the same time, addicted to pornography at the greatest level I had ever known.  I can remember nights when she would be asleep and I’d be in the same room checking out a wide range of other pre-recorded women on the computer.  It’s sickening.

Interestingly, she never found out about the pornography addiction, but divorced me before a year had passed.  When she left me, I had reached my end.  She effectively was my trophy and object of worship that had just crumbled before my eyes.  She was my purpose for living and whom I effectively worshipped, but I ultimately and quickly found out that she wasn’t enough to satisfy the depths of my fallen fleshly desires.  Because she was my world and everything in it (including my identity, purpose, future, and life’s investment), when she left, everything fell apart for me and I, for the first time, fell on the Rock of Jesus Christ.  At that point, for the first time ever in my entire life, Jesus became Lord instead of me.  I was completely done with me and my issues, and I was ready for Him to help and assume leadership.  This is the point (age 21) that I account as my salvation, and everyday since then has involved my absolute full surrender to Him and His will.  Upon surrender, He’s done nothing but completely transform all aspects of my life, filling me life with His amazing grace and mercy to fully redeem me and release me into His calling.  Now, I’m not saying that you have to go through a divorce in order to get set free from lust and sin; the point is that the divorce is what it took for me, specifically, to surrender to Him and desire to obey Him.  Once that salvation and position in the Lord was established, I was then able to consistently tap into the power source from Him needed to overcome all the strongholds.  I also began to gain His heart on all matters of life, which caused me to love what He loves and hate what He hates.  Because of His revelation to me, His grace and enabling power, and my complete response to it all, I have been set free to experience the fullness of joy and strength!  I now walk with a life-giving, bible-believing church body, I have a loving spiritual family around me to help me stay on the right path, and I am passionately full-speed ahead into the future that He is calling me into.

Because of His grace and power, I have been set free from masturbation and pornography and have rooted out sexual lust of the flesh in my life.  I now enjoy deliverance and a level of purity that I never thought was possible.  My interpersonal relationships with women and even men are crystal clean, my thought life is under control, and my time alone at home is no longer a shameful nightmare, but instead a haven of peace and rest. Additionally, I have seen purity in all areas of my life beyond sexuality including physical concerns (dress, appearance, and working out), relationships, spirituality, gifts and talents, and desires.  Likewise, I now live life with a guarded but liberated heart as it comes to my future wife, knowing that He has only one special person in store for me that He will lead me to (I no longer need to date women or worry about the future but instead trust and obey my way to that destination).  I also now live contending for purity in others’ lives, in our cities, in the Church, and in my own life.  I believe that God is moving across the world desiring to bring conviction, repentance, and great freedom to all those who will respond.  Lust is perverted worship, so we must choose to live pure lives now and overcome this crippling giant in our midst!

Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust (2 Pet. 1:2-4 NKJV).

“‘ “Come out from among them and be separate,” says the Lord.  “Do not touch what is unclean, and I will receive you.  I will be a Father to you, and you shall be My sons and daughters,” says the LORD Almighty.’  Therefore, having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God” (2 Corinthians 6:17 – 7:1 NKJV).