“I know I can be good for a few days….but then…”
It wasn’t the first time I heard it. The man sitting in my office was confessing his struggle with pornography and was lamenting the fact that though he had tried to fight against the temptations in the past, he could never stay consistent.
All it took was a night alone, a fight with his girlfriend, a long day at work, the right combination of substances, and his 3- or 7- or 12-day streak was back to a 0-day streak.
For him, the problem wasn’t the beginning, it was the challenges that would inevitably come. What struck me this time though was how his fear of future failure was paralyzing his ability to get up off the mat and fight again today. Can you blame him?
How many of you athletes would play a game with all your effort if you knew you were going to lose?
How many of you artists would produce something if you knew others would hate it?
How many of you pastors could get up in the pulpit again if every Sunday for months on end, the people in your pews said, “That wasn’t that great of a sermon, pastor?”
Persistent Struggle
I wonder if you’ve ever felt like that man. Not just with pornography, but with any persistent struggle. You look at the distance between who you are and who you want to be and the gap feels impossibly large. You don’t think about today. You think about the next year, the next decade, the rest of your life. And suddenly today’s battle feels unwinnable because you’re trying to carry thirty years of temptations all at once
But that is not how Christians fight against pornography. Christians fight with the gospel of Jesus’ death and resurrection at the center.
“Where sin increased, grace increased all the more” – Romans 5:20
Consider…. If you fell into temptation every single day for the rest of your life, but in contrition continued to repent and try again, would you be saved? Say it with me… Yes! “Where sin increased, grace increased all the more,” Paul says! And if you quit porn tomorrow and never watched again, would that qualify you for VIP seats in heaven? Say it with me… No!
Justified by faith in Jesus
You’re justified by faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus. But when we define ourselves by our expected or realized failures, we subtly undermine that truth. We subtly say that I can think of myself as a good person if I beat this (or a failure if I don’t beat it this side of heaven). But that is not your story.
Whether or not you win the battle against temptation tomorrow is secondary. It’s not unimportant, but it’s secondary. You’re forgiven, baptized, and promised a sin-free eternity. That’s most important, and it changes everything. Whether you do or do not sin tomorrow (…and let’s be honest, just because you don’t watch porn doesn’t mean you’re sin-free) doesn’t change who you are in Jesus!
Brining us back to the present moment
That means you can dispense with worrying about tomorrow or next Friday or 2028. Jesus tells us that those days will worry about themselves. (Matthew 6:34) And once you start looking for it, you see that the language of “Today” is all over the Bible.
In Hebrews, God says, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts” (Hebrews 4:7). Salvation is received today. Repentance happens today. Faith listens to God’s voice today.
A chapter earlier, believers are urged to “encourage one another daily, as long as it is called ‘Today‘” (Hebrews 3:13), because the Christian life is lived one day at a time.
Jesus speaks the same way when he calls his followers to “take up their cross daily“ (Luke 9:23).
Notice what Scripture does not say. It does not tell us to carry tomorrow’s cross today or to solve every future temptation today. Instead, God repeatedly brings us back to the present moment. Hear his voice today. Trust his promises today. Take up your cross today. The Christian life is not won by successfully imagining the next ten years. It is lived in faithful dependence upon Christ one day at a time.
God will fight with you daily.
And God will fight with you daily. When Israel wandered in the wilderness, God did not give them forty years of manna all at once. He gave them enough for that day. Tomorrow’s provision would arrive tomorrow. When Jesus taught his disciples to pray, he taught them to ask for “daily bread.” Not yearly bread. Not lifetime bread. Daily bread.
So, perhaps the key to fighting porn is not to quit porn forever, but to quit porn today. And maybe you won’t. That’s not OK. But it is forgiven. His mercies are new every morning. So fight today. Today is what God has given you to control. And don’t worry about forever. Jesus has already taken care of that.
Jonny Lehmann is an editor of the CtC newsletter. He, his wife Abbie, and three children live in West Palm Beach, Florida, where he serves as lead pastor at Divine Savior Church.