One of the more engrossing sins common to young men is addiction to pornography. You have to treat this as you do with all other addictions, otherwise you will fail. Pornography, with it’s easy access, affordability and anonymity (accidental alliteration) runs rampant in many people (and not restricted to young people or even men). It’s rarely more than a click away.
Buying a house can be a trying time. I closed on mine (my first) in mid-July this year. I started looking for one in January. I did not have much luck at first. Actually, I had no luck until I found the house that is now my home. Either I would show up to view a house and it would be a disaster needing significant and costly repairs or I would tell my agent that I wanted to view a house that just came on the market and by the time we would show up to view it someone would have put an offer down (the average time on market for houses in my price range when I was looking was about 16 days). The stress of trying to find a house that I both enjoyed, could afford, and thought was a good buy was not overwhelming but it was constant and that's worse in many ways. The extremely competitive market only made it worse.
I wasn’t about to be outdone so I bookmarked a couple of websites and search engines that I used to find and filter listings. I started out looking every couple of days, making a list of houses I wanted to see, then sending them to my agent. That progressed to looking every day, then morning and evening, then to looking basically every free moment I had. Despite the stress I enjoyed it and I never lost the blind hopefulness that what a house 'could be'. I started looking at the same houses over and over. Not houses I was going to look at but houses that I had already dismissed for a variety of reasons. It was counter productive. I missed out on at least two houses because I was too busy looking at houses that were terrible buys, and thus prolonged my stress. I eventually found a house. I found it the day after it went on the market, was viewing it by the end of the week, placed an offer on it, and had two inspections on it before it was on the market 14 days.
I intentionally kept looking at listings until just a few days before I closed on the house. My mindset was that until I signed the paperwork it wasn't mine. There may be some wisdom in that but I wasn't doing it because of wisdom but because of folly. I was hooked on the shallow emotional connection I was making with the home listings. Made even more evident by my continued looking even after I was moved into my new house.
The sinful desires that I entertained during this time are similar to the desires that are tempting with pornography. Certainly any desire can be, and is, perverted by sin, but this is more than a casual passing. The Greek word that gives us the modern word "porn" is porneia. Though it's usage includes all manner of sexual immorality, it also includes the worship of idols. The same sinful desires that encourage us to pursue sexual immorality are the same desires that help us pursue the idols that we worship instead of the Lord Creator.
Do not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord or of [Paul] His prisoner, but join with him in suffering for the gospel according to the power of God, who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was granted us in Christ Jesus from all eternity, but now has been revealed by the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immorality to light through the gospel
2 Timothy 1:8-10
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