Thanks I guess the problem comes back to something I raised a few pages back (I think) about balancing diligence with entrusting things to God, both of which The Bible tells us to do. I guess I'm also not good at letting go of something that affects the wellbeing of others around me, such as my parents or colleagues I'm responsible for. It's hard to just stop when I know I can be doing something for these people. I've M'd a few times this week but been too busy to post to report it. I'm really tempted to draw up some ideas again. I can't make myself do it, thankfully, but I'm mentally stuck in the "do I or don't I" limbo, and the stress of that itself causes me to touch myself. A positive note though is that I'm beginning to cut down on caffeine, as I've noticed that temptation is much stronger just after drinking it. Over time I may see if I can give it up completely, or at least only drink it when there's no opportunity for giving into temptation shortly after (e.g. just before I drive to work or while I'm out somewhere).
Of course Giving it over is a steady process and takes times to adjust to. God is sovereign even over your own responsibilities. Luke 12:25-31 has a fairly good balance of diligence and entrusting in God: 25 Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life? 26 Since you cannot do this very little thing, why do you worry about the rest? 27 “Consider how the wild flowers grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 28 If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today, and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, how much more will he clothe you—you of little faith! 29 And do not set your heart on what you will eat or drink; do not worry about it. 30 For the pagan world runs after all such things, and your Father knows that you need them. 31 But seek his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well. At the end there. Not only do we rest in Him, but we seek Him and His ways as well. That is the balance. We do our diligence by doing what is godly and right, the golden rule and all, asking to be transformed and freed from sin. For both others and ourselves and our relationship with God. Realizing that all things fall into place when we put God first is where rest begins. We really aren’t figuring it out on our own— we are following a path that’s been laid out for us! That really simplifies things when put in perspective. Also, it could be that stress leads to M and caffeine leads to stress? It could be making you extra jittery. Nothing wrong with cutting it out. Just be mindful of caffeine withdrawal. Maybe decaf?
The fight is easy when there is no fight. How do we get there? Surrender. When we give up the right to turn to any sort of sexual activity as a way to curb stress, when those things are completely off the table, we will get free. But the surrender must be total and irrevocable. Only Jesus can change our hearts to desire that.
Thank you for this Though I always interpreted "seeking the Kingdom" as not just our own personal sanctification but also actively building the Kingdom, whether through evangelism, discipleship or any other act of service. But here also I struggle to find the balance between diligence in doing so and entrusting it to God. God doesn't *need* us to build His kingdom (rather he *chooses* to use us ), so it can become an idol if we overwork ourselves under the impression He does. But on the other hand, God does not want us to be idle in this either. So even in seeking/building the kingdom, I still get stuck overthinking the balance. Yeah, actually caution about caffeine withdrawal is why I want to gradually reduce my intake and not just straight up stop. I've heard it said many times that coming off caffeine needs to be gradual. I used to drink decaff actually so may try it again. I think the hardest part of stopping completely will be not drinking my first coffee of the morning, especially on days I drive to work and I need to be alert. But then again, after I move house (God willing!) I hope to use public transport more anyway.
I understand the dilemma and I think you have a good heart and intentions about this. I had to look it up to see where it was, but I think in Ephesians 2:10 we are basically told that as Christians we have good works laid out for us to do ahead of time. God knows how he wants to use each of us already. Opportunities will come up that are meant for you to take up, if you keep your eyes open for them. You do not have to strive so hard when the Lord is setting these kinds of things up for you. You can pray over this and ask God what He wants you to be doing, and then you can pursue that diligently. But you don’t need to scramble There can be seasons of waiting where you are working personal things out so that you are better equipped to do good works in a later season. You may even be doing good works now, for the kingdom, without realizing it. Little acts of kindness can add up, for instance. Don’t confuse idleness with laziness and stress yourself out. Sometimes nothing big is going on for a bit and that’s okay . God is still moving. I try to take at least a few sips of coffee in the morning before my commute so I can get it in my system and pour the rest to bring with me in a thermos. I take sips at stoplights. You can have a little best of both worlds that way, maybe, and that caffeine isn’t hitting all at once.
Just read this today. Seemed apropos. I think you've got it, @Faithe ! https://beliefsoftheheart.com/2024/02/07/grasping-for-significance/
I hope you don't mind my commenting here. I don't want to say there's no appropriate sense in which to understand "kingdom building" as a Christian, but the "seek first the kingdom of God" in Matthew 5 is an invitation to seek what God freely gives. It's in a passage about reducing anxiety, not increasing it. So you are welcome to simply revel in the fact that Jesus has lovingly brought you into his kingdom. And he's the one who is building his kingdom by his powerful Spirit. In that sense, we add and contribute nothing to the work. We are living stones in the temple, not brick-layers.
@Faithe, @Tao Jones , @Wilderness Wanderer , thank you for these responses. I've only just got round to reading them (somehow I missed the notification from the forum) and I think I'll need to meditate on your answers more, but each has made an impact on me just now that I'm going to need some time to digest One think I will say now though, from the article Tao shared, this quote is especially profound, I think: "That thief on the cross, in that one simple sentence, impacted more people than Billy Graham did through his decades of crusades." The thief on the cross has always been one of my favourite passages, as an example of how it's never too late for someone who truly repents, but I've never thought about it from the perspective of that same thief's service to God's mission. Fascinating!
Had a dream about sex last night. Well, actually, in the dream I was about to have sex but the woman (who in the dream I was in a relationship with) decided against it, but in the dream I was truly excited about sex nonetheless. I feel this is significant for somebody like me who doesn't get off on fantasies about sex nearly as much as I have done about my fetish in the past. The woman was actually a celebrity who I've enjoyed seeing in one or two bondage scenes on TV, so maybe that's significant. And of course, it would be better not to be having lustful thoughts at all! But there are times lately when it feels like the fetish is losing its power, and I think this dream may have been one of those signs. Some might ask why I don't fix my fetish by PMO-ing to vanilla porn, but it just isn't a Godly solution. I want to discover sex together with my future wife, not through a medium which is an addiction to so many.
The “flavor” of sin is largely irrelevant. It’s still a terrible addiction at the end of the day. You’re correct to stick to godly values and not wanting the damages of PMO to affect your relationships. You can’t quit cocaine by smoking weed, frankly. Anyone who suggests to you that you should try a different kind of porn is setting themselves up for more heartache if they follow their own advice. Glad that dream went in a different direction! Subconscious progress, perhaps.
Very stressed out at the moment with a matter concerning my parents' care and also trying to move house. The latter is looking positive overall, but there's just uncertainty as to which day it will happen. I want to blame another party but I know it technically isn't entirely their fault. They weren't completely honest about something, but then again I should have known that they had been promising something they technically couldn't keep. Regarding the family matter, God knows the details. Please pray over these things. God Bless you all.
Thanks for prayers. Things have improved. Not over yet, but in a better place and I'm feeling more relaxed again. I just posted the following in another conversation on NoFap, but figured I'd copy it (with some adjustments here) as I had been meaning to write it up in my own journal: ------- I would say my desires have "narrowed" lately. They have sort of reverted to fantasies closer to what got me into my fetish in the first place (women tied up in Saturday morning kids cartoons). The more hardcore stuff from fetish sites just add so many extra layers that as I have analysed my fetish I have come to realise that these extra layers just aren't what got my inner child into this stuff in the first place. But at the same time, images from those shows don't always turn me on either, I think because those women just aren't realistically attractive enough, or rather they don't appeal to what I find physically attractive in a real woman. So the scenario and some other details still have to be stuff that I'd have seen on mainstream family-friendly TV in the 90s and early 00s, but the women also have to be attractive. This is why I would say the desires have narrowed. The original childhood fantasies go too far back. What my desires have narrowed to is some combination of that with what normal people would find attractive. ------- The post I made recently about a vanilla sex fantasy in a dream feels relevant here. "Normal" fantasies are beginning to appeal more, but the fetish-driven sexual awakening from my childhood still has a strong influence.
MO'd this morning. Stress driven. Attempt to move house progresses more slowly that it should do and there's been another hiccup today. Still progress overall, but a delay at this present time. It's infuriating. I've not been able to focus on work, I've been irritable, and tempted to MO again even since the morning's failure. But I was struck by a curious revelation during my later temptation. If I want to MO to feel relief and feel better despite the difficulties I face... then there IS a situation in which I can feel content despite present trials. Such a state of mind is possible. So the problem isn't really that big a problem, otherwise I'd be just as stressed regardless of whether I'm satisfied sexually. So if such a state of contentment is possible, why should it only be possible through MO? It's not. So much of our "trials" are only seen as such because of our state of mind, because of chemicals sloshing around in our heads and the biological reactions they trigger. Our bodies lie to us. "What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?" (Romans 7:24) God offers us the true perspective on all of our affairs. Irritating bureaucracy such as I am facing right now is only a problem because of the sinful world we live in. If we fix our eyes on this world we are only going to be distracted by all of the mess that is within it. Put things in a heavenly perspective and this world and its trials are nothing. Once we are free from it, we will be in eternal bliss with our Lord and Father who has saved us from the fires of this world. It's as we've discussed recently in this thread: "But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well." (Matt. 6:33). --- This Easter weekend my solicitors can't talk to the other solicitors or the estate agents or any of the other parties involved due to offices being closed, so my move can't progress over these next few days, but I'm seeing that as a good thing. There's nothing I can do. At all. So more time to fix my eyes on Jesus and why we have this holiday weekend in the first place! --- Father, I'm sorry for when I feel anger at the people involved in this process. I forgive them. They are victims of sin just as I am. Please teach me patience and forgive me. Thank you Father that I even have a roof over my head right now and money to even come as far as I have. I know many are less fortunate and you could take away all I have in an instant. Thank you Father for your Son. Praise be to God!
Excellent realization! I am often guilty of this. To have a low anthropology is a good thing, but grace and forgiveness must be extended even (or especially) to those that annoy us the most.
More move-related stress and morning MO. For one MO I was thinking about an attractive woman in a film I watched the day before. It led to me realise that the effects of triggers can 'lag'. Just because you resist a trigger in the moment doesn't mean it won't be an issue for you later on. We may think we'll be fine watching a certain movie with a certain actress because we're feeling strong on that day. But it's still a thought that may be recalled during weaker times. We would do well to remember this in our vigilance.
MO has become daily and today became PMO for the first time in the year. The MO has often felt like something in my subconscious is trying to convince me to PMO. I can sense there's some part of me that just doesn't want to give it up, even though while I'm actually doing it I'm not really enjoying it. Stress-wise I've been unexpectedly triggered by a new problem with moving house, on top of the existing bureaucracy that's been dragging out. A neighbour's flat had a leak, which has damaged my flat included the electrics. The worldly solution would be to not tell my buyer about it, out of fear negotiations for progressing things will drag the sale out further, but I know that's not God's will. I actually felt a strange sense of peace about it last night, and have done on and off. It's more evidence that we really are never in control... unexpected things happen. Maybe this move will fall through again and it's God's way of telling me He wants me to stay where I am. I can see how I'd find my peace with not moving and just adapting to staying here indefinitely. Staying, though not my preference, isn't really stressful. It's all the work I'm putting in to change things that's causing stress. Matthew 6:34 comes to mind again and I'm seeing it from a slightly clearer angle. Not worrying about tomorrow and not labouring and toiling isn't just about trusting in God's provision, it's just mentally healthier. Of course we can't do nothing either! But what is the point of worrying about we cannot control? All it does is make us ill and lose appreciation for what we have now. Still, despite the comfort of what God taught me, I still let Him down today through PMO. One trigger was that one of the people helping to resolve the leak issue yesterday was very attractive, and I found it hard not to fantasise about her last night. That combined with moments when worry had got the better of me today set me up for weakness. But I'd already been very weak with respect to resisting anyway. Something I came across during my failure today was a TV scene I remembered as a child. Actually, the bondage was very light and it was never favourite scene. Actually, it stuck in my mind more for the drama, not because I found the actress or the bondage attractive. When a character is in bondage and in mortal peril and the drama is realistic, it doesn't really arouse me, but it does strike some fear in me that I find oddly compelling. Rewatching this scene, it was also a lot more violent than I had remembered, which is striking. The threat to the woman's life stuck in my memory as a child somehow, but not the violence at all. Yet watching it now, it was just upsetting. Other videos I found myself watching later were less dramatic and less realistic but somehow still just not actually satisfying. I felt like I was MO-ing to these because that's what I'm "supposed to do". I'm not denying today was sexual sin, but it all felt like an obsessive compulsion more-so than anything I was getting real sexual enjoyment from. A key difference is that I just find it too hard to lose myself in the mindset of a tied up actress anymore. The attraction was always about wanting to imagine the actress was getting out of it whatever I've always seen in bondage as a child, even though I'm still not 100% sure what that is. But the more I've reflected on my fetish over the recent years, the clearer it becomes that the women I see in bondage clearly don't think about it the same way I do. There's the element of disgust too... I don't like that I try to imagine myself as these women. These recent changes in my heart are strong, but something animal in me still wants to PMO purely because that's the sexuality it knows. This is the part I'm struggling to silence. I think people's understanding and acceptance of my fetish in recent years have also tempted me into complacency. I feel less bad about a failure because I know people won't abandon me for it. But here I'm living to please men and not God. He won't abandon me for it either, but his "kindness is meant to lead to repentance" (Rom. 2:4). Anyway, regardless of the reason, something in me doesn't want to let go of this fetish. All the logic and reason against it and living for it is as clear as day, but sadly as we are trapped in these bodies of sin, we don't always think with our minds but with our sinful hearts.
I can relate to the fetish and also the struggles with MO. I'm almost 8 months sober from porn and 110 from full masturbation. When I was MO regularly but stopping porn it was almost impossible not to go back to porn until I got Covenant Eyes. Even after that MO always tempted me back, but I was trying to get longer and longer stretches. The problem with MO, is your brain just relives the porn fantasies keeping it live and keeping you wanting more. The only way to get really free from it and from the dopamine it produces is to just starve it altogether. Don't think about why you like it, or how it appeals to you or not, think about how it robs you of your sobriety, strength, sleep, and mental clarity. Think about the benefits you want to gain without and the benefits you are having when sober. Even now, I have struggled with edging and depended on my wife to release the stress I build up. This is stupid too, because it pushes me too close to relapse, robs me of the moments I should be mentally in with her (instead of my pent up fetish), robs her of real intimacy, and returns my brain to the porn dopamine fogginess, compulsions, and sleeplessness. You can't play with fire and expect not to get burned.
I must apologise for my inactivity. The good news is that I finally moved house, by the grace of God. All glory to Him! It's taking a while to get internet sorted and I'm dependent on mobile internet. Because I use a VPN for things as personal as NoFap, connectivity via my phone's internet is poor and makes using the VPN difficult. Settling in and sorting the house out now that I'm here has also made me very busy. The bad news is that my battle with temptation has been pretty poor during this period. There have been numerous failures including the use of P. More evidence that we can't claim to be truly free of our addictions or to know what our real weaknesses are until we've faced our greatest trials. And we cannot know what our greatest trials are until our last moment on this earth. We are always at risk of failure until Christ returns again. The internet and busy-ness issue is a double-edged sword with respect to this battle. On the one hand, the poor connection has made looking at unhelpful content harder and the lack of free time has kept me too busy to get stuck in any significant binges, or to even let myself want to be. On the other hand, it's left me less present here and less accountable to others. Just this morning though I think I came to understand better how stress triggers me. I need to digress slightly first... The distraction of my moving process had led me to put less effort into dating and meeting new people. Not only does the free time make this easier again, but so does my new, better-connected location. Anyway despite this even after moving I've not quite got around to giving my search for a partner more attention, but a chat with a couple of other men from my church yesterday evening was a bit of a wake-up call in this respect, and I have resolved to put myself out there more. I woke up with that same resolve but find myself debating internally whether to pursue an old flame first or meet some new people online. Weighing up both of these options I found to become stressful and before I knew it, I was about to touch myself. I stopped myself but did realise, on reflection, that the indecision regarding the best course of action in a stressful situation is often what triggers a "need" to surrender myself to the comfort zone offered by my fetish. I am a very indecisive person, and indeed this is another reason I'd put off dating again in the first place. I realised that I really, really need to address my indecisiveness not only for the sake of meeting somebody but also for the sake of preventing triggers. As a side note, I acknowledge that stress and indecisiveness are not the *only* triggers. I still have to be careful where my eyes wander in the proximity of attractive women, for example! What is the solution to indecisiveness? Godly discernment and trust in God. It's another "spiritual trade-off" that I guess I struggle with: one the one hand I mustn't charge through a situation without thinking at all, assuming "it's okay, I trust God so He'll deal with it" in such a way as to take Him for granted. But on the other hand, I mustn't spend so long praying and discerning for a watertight case as to the correct course of action that I never actually take any action because no option is convincing enough. Some Proverbs on this: "5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. 6 In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths." - Proverbs 3:5-6 "8 The wisdom of the prudent is to discern his way, but the folly of fools is deceiving." "15 The simple believes everything, but the prudent gives thought to his steps. 16 One who is wise is cautious and turns away from evil, but a fool is reckless and careless." - Proverbs 14: 8, 15-16 "The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps." - Proverbs 16: 9 --- The following is related to my dating life but would have been even more of a digression from the above train of thought, so I've left it for the end: Possible trigger warning for those into more vanilla fantasies - for the first paragraph anyway: I had a dream last night, following my resolve to be more active in seeking partnership. I dreamed about a lady I had been interested in in the past, and in the dream it turned out she reciprocated. For some reason we decided to get married there and then haha. The wedding night came when we were alone and we were ready to explore each others' bodies for the first time, which I enjoyed doing, though we didn't actually have sex for some reason. The dream took a very weird turn however when, later on, she turned into a giant grasshopper! But also one I think with some kind of special powers. I think due to a combination of her not wanting to burden me with her condition and also because of the responsibilities her new powers gave her, she left me and insisted I move on without her. However in this dream her transformation did not stop me from loving her, and I was determined to devote my life to finding a cure for her condition. What struck me about this dream is that I was a very different person to who I am, or at least I was very different from the person I fear that I am. - I've sometimes been worried that my interest in bondage would render me disinterested in sex and unable to be aroused on my wedding night. Recently though I'm coming to feel this is not the case as I have fantasised about "vanilla" sex more and found it harder to understand why I find my fetish attractive. I've just never intentionally watched vanilla porn and still feel no desire to. - I fear that I'm still quite superficial in who I'm attracted to, so still loving this lady despite her transformation into a grasshopper reflects a selfless love for her. As does the determination to cure her I suppose. - I can be a pushover when somebody is insisting something of me (in this case, her insistence that I move on) out of fear it makes them dislike me, so my determination to not do so and follow my heart's desire also goes against and aspect of my character I would like to change.
