Yeah, I didn't really see it coming either. She-folk feel free to give this one a miss, but if you wanna know for whatever reason, then feel free to read on. (I know a girl who once read a part of this book and still claims to be "scarred for life", so really. Do feel free to give this one a miss.)
For starters, can I just say how vital this book is. There are spiritual books out there on rage, there are spiritual books out there on gangs and redemption and forgiveness and healing and all that sort of stuff, but this one is different. It just occured to me that a whole lot of you probably don't know what this book is, so for the uninformed it is about more or less what it says on the tin. "Every young man's battle". Every guy's often secret struggle with lust and masturbation and pornography and all that stuff that nobody ever talks about ever. EVER. So now you know.
But this book is vital. If you are a guy, I'd bet my bottom dollar that you deal with this stuff. If you don't, then congratulations, I don't even know what to say. But you know if you do or you don't. And this book has help. It has knowledge and insight and techniques. Techniques.
This is why I loved this book. It did not tell me why, It told me how. So many of these topics and talks and blah blah blah talk about why lust is destructive in lives. You know that it is. This book gives real-world advice and plans and strategies and techniques on how to fight it. It also sheds light on a lot of lies you may have heard about this subject. It's a genuinely eye-opening experience.
I want to get into what this book teaches, per se, but I can't explain it very well, but I'll take a stab at it anyway.
There are two fronts to the battle: Offense and defense. Duh, you say. But what you might not know is that there is a way to make the enemy weaker. And that usually has to happen before you can get stronger. There are ways that you can (and probably are) feeding your sex drive that you might not even be aware of.
The benifits are astounding. The sheer level of intimacy that starts to grow between you and God when there isn't a giant wedge of pornography in the way is astounding. I'm really beginning to feel it, and I'm only just beginning to get out of the darkness I've thrown myself into.
And finally, it talks about how to resist temptation for good. And this is where "Tactics" the follow-up book comes in.
They say that when you get rid of one addiction, you have to replace it with another. Now, in the past, I'd try to replace lust with video games, music, friends, and guess what? None of it worked.
But this second book really introduces something I hadn't dared to think of before. What if you replaced the addiction with God? Now, if you're still reading this, then odds are you already have God in your life, so I'm not suggesting for even a second that having God in your life is something new to you. But when you begin to remove this sin from your life, there is a hole. Depending on your dependance upon it, the hole could very well be massive. And this is why filling it with God is something that half of "tactics" is about. It's all about taking the pain and frustration that would be whitewashed with the numbness of masturbation and taking it to God instead. And this is where that new intimacy I talked about earlier comes in. The more often you go to God with your needs, the more he'll answer your requests. And this builds up trust. I'd say you've probably got a lot of things that you need his help with. There's a lot of things I need his help with. But as you start realising the freedom you have to go to him instead of sin with your loneliness and pain, you'll start going to him a lot more often. Because as humans, we need comfort. And I can guarantee you that he's the comforter you need.
That said, it's hard. It's really, really hard. It is the hardest things I have ever done, and it is the hardest thing I am doing. Because the fight doesn't stop. You never stop wrestling with this, and this never stops wrestling with you. But you can weaken the opposition, and you can get stronger. You can do it with God's help.
My thanks to Nexus who was courageous enough to speak up first to those from whom he had the most to lose.
3 comments:
My admiration to you both btw. It's well known that you 'he folk'do struggle with lust and all that comes with it, yet this is like the 2nd time I've heard anyone talk about it. (The first was someone else reviewing the same book btw!) Kudos to you guys for standing up and speaking out.
*pats lorcan on the back*
your a role model :)
Aren't you forgeting someone bernard?:P
Well done man, you captured exactly what the books teach. You should be proud of yourself.
Ohh and thanks for mentioning me:P
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