The Purity Project of OKC

What we think of ourselves and the worth we believe we have have powerful consequences. For those of us who suffer from sexual compulsions, it has everything to do with whether we act out or not. The three sources of self-worth are: ourselves, others and God.

When we find our self-worth in others we will be guided by what the culture that surrounds us says is okay. Let’s face it, in the culture we live in pornography is widely available and mainstream; and many, if not most people in our society don’t worry much about its effect in our lives. If you live your life according to what others says is okay, you’ll never get well.A second place we find self-worth is what we are able to do. We live in a performance oriented society where what you do, what you own and what you have accomplished brings us many perks. For instance, If I have an advanced educational degree or a great job or lots of nice things I think I’m okay. Or conversely, if I don’t have these things, I may get down on myself and think very little of who I am. To those of us who have sexual addictions of one sort or another, we have the tendency to look to ourselves to solve our problems. If we don’t think our spouses give us the attention we deserve–we find another way to meet the need. Some would have us believe that it is healthy to find our worth within. We hear statements that we have to be confident in ourselves, know who we are, care more about what we think than others. But if we really think about it, these statements, and others like them, encourage each of us to look to ourselves for our solutions. I don’t know about you–but my best thinking got me into a life of addictive problems. Using ourselves to heal ourselves may make sense to those about us but I don’t know of anyone who finds lasting healing that way.

My life became unmanageable doing things my way. And now that I’ve had a chance to reflect on it, I don’t know of anyone who does a great job of managing their life when they insist on doing it “their way.”What we can find by doing things our way are methods of coping with our problems. When we cope, we either minimize what we do that’s inappropriate or we try to stop doing it altogether; but, we have trouble staying stopped. That’s because we don’t heal the reasons behind our problems. Personally, I’ve noticed in myself, and others, a great tendency to rationalize the things I did because I wanted to keep on doing what I liked–even when it wasn’t good for me–or I didn’t want to face up to the fact that I might have a serious problem.When I look to myself to fill my needs, I can become very selfish and self-serving. My thinking becomes more about what I want and how I can fulfill what’s important to me. Gradually, as the addiction becomes more profound, we find our thinking is totally focused upon us. Our addictions and compulsions cause us to lose perspective to such a point that we can’t even see the impact of what we are doing upon others. The pain that we are causing to those closest to us goes right by us unnoticed; or, we discount it all as unimportant. We rationalize what we do and practice dishonesty in the way we hide things, make excuses and cover-up what we are doing. We may spend multiple hours a day involved with our habit; never considering that we are robbing the people around us of a person they need.

Perhaps the most deluding form of self-worth, other than serving ourselves, is when we try and find our worth by listening to others and God at the same time. We want to serve God; but, do so in a way that harmonizes with what others think. Most people don’t follow God; and, when we try and serve God and others at the same time, we will find that we please neither. Our service to God is very shallow and our friends will most likely view us as hypocrites. The deluding part of all of this is that we may think we are serving God when we are not. Many of us who have sexual compulsions have been life long members of churches and para-church organizations. We deluded ourselves into thinking we were serving God all while acting out in sexually inappropriate ways. We have seen well known ministers fall from prominence. We understand what is going on because we have been there. While we were aware of what the scriptures taught about sexual immorality, we acted as though they did not apply to us. Some of us looked very good on the outside; but inside, we were not who we said we were.
The best way we can find self-worth is to listen to God and actually do what he says. Many of us in the Purity Project thought we knew God–but we didn’t. We only knew what others had told us about God or what we thought we were supposed to think about God. Our God was built off of our opinions and those about us. We either saw God as very punitive or totally okay with whatever we wanted to do. We didn’t take the time to build a deep relationship with him. How could we when all of our spare time was spent on feeding our compulsions?When we made following God and really listening to Him the focus of our lives, we found a new self-worth. We discovered that God has a great love for us and is willing to take care of every single need that we have. We learned that God will help us in all situations–even the ones that drove us to seek satisfaction outside of Him.
For my part, I found that He actually can deliver me from the compulsions that once held me captive. Friend, I once thought that I could never be free of the thoughts and addictive behaviors that consumed my life. I saw my life falling apart before my very eyes. I hated the person I had become; but the day I turned to God and decided to listen to Him, really listen–my life started to turn around. I stopped minimizing the things that I had done and stopped minimizing the things He has written. I stopped looking to myself and others for worth and found that He could give me what I was looking for. I had made a mess of my life–and most of my friends have as well. But, for each of us who turned to God, and started doing what he said–our lives turned around.I have a new self-worth now. It isn’t based upon what others think of me–or what I think of myself. I find my worth in the fact that I serve an awesome God who lives in my life, delivers me from the mess I’ve made and works through me to accomplish his work of deliverance.I hope you’ll find your self-worth in God. There is a new life waiting for you if you do and it is much better than the life you have now. We at the Purity Project would like to help.

This post was written by teach4him--a member of the Purity Project in Oklahoma City. If you have questions or comments of a personal nature, you may reach him at purityproject@cox.net