Every Young Man's Battle: Stategies for Victory in the Real World of Sexual Temptation: The Every Man Series (16 page)

Dennis told us that he grew up in the
church, but when his parents got divorced while he was in high school, he
became involved in pornography—something that still plagues him today. We
heard many stories like Dennis’s, and we think we know why: 30 percent of
fathers who get divorced never see their kids again. These broken relationships
cause great internal anguish and insecurity in the sons, leaving them to seek
intimacy wherever they can find it.

Sexual sin flourishes in the wake
of bad or broken family relationships. The splintering effects of divorce or
parental death shatter our worlds. Teens, rather than feeling accepted and
cherished by their parents, feel as though they’ve been cast aside. They
spend their lives searching for love and meaning, when it should have been
provided in the home by a mother and a father.

I’ll never
forget the day when I (Fred) came home from elementary school, tripping quickly
down the school bus steps with my sisters and rushing into the house to eat
cookies, then to go outdoors to play army and float boats down the creek. When
we entered the house, however, my mother called the three of us into the living
room to talk. She
never
did that, so I sensed that something serious
had happened, especially after I noticed Dad sitting on the edge of the
sofa.

“I have something to tell you,” Mom said. She leaned
against the dining room table, arms crossed, eyes red, her face puffy and
moist. I turned quickly toward Dad, who was sitting eagerly with a bemused
smile on his face. (Years later, I found out that just before we arrived, he
had declared to Mom that when the kids heard she was filing for divorce, all
three of us would turn against her and rush to his side. He couldn’t wait
for his vindication.) As I surveyed the scene, terror struck deeply. Something
was terribly wrong.

“Your father and I are getting a
divorce,” she said.

I don’t remember the rest of her words.
They didn’t matter. My world crumbled into dust, vaporized instantly. We
raced headlong to Mom, wailing and clutching her legs. My father, crushed that
his children ran to his wife first, burst into tears and ran out of the
house—the first time I’d seen him cry. I hurried to the window and
watched him get into his car and drive off. Agony swept my soul at seeing my
hero cry. This wasn’t just another day, nor would any day be the same
again. The sun dimmed over my world and never shone as brightly as before.

To his credit, Dad remained in the area to help raise us, but he was an
adulterer and very harsh with me. Furthermore, life became an emotional and
financial horror for my mother, my two sisters, and me. The pressures of single
parenting nearly leveled Mom, but she tenaciously fought on. She’d come
home from her day job as a receptionist, grab a bite to eat, then head out to
sell grave plots at night. Mom was easily the bravest person I’ve ever
met. My young heart ached for her as she battled on. To ease her pain, I vowed
never do anything that would make her cry. As the only male in the family, I
shouldered the mantle of manhood as best I could, while inwardly I seethed at
my father for doing this to us.

Mixed emotions, however, served only to
confuse me further. On the one hand, I loved Dad, even idolized him. He was a
bigger-than-life, charismatic superhero, and I wanted to please him in
everything I did. Handsome and tough, Dad had been a national wrestling
champion in college and a bulldog in business.

Yet, on another level, I
couldn’t have cared less about him. While I loved my father, deep down I
knew he’d traded his life with me for life with a mistress. That spelled
betrayal to me. Until the day he died, he never accepted me as a man or an
equal. He even crossed me out of his will on his deathbed, if only to express
one last time how unworthy I was to carry his name.

All I could do was
shrug my shoulders, because he never really knew who this son of his was when
he was alive. I remember the time in high school when I began training with a
close buddy. We were serious; that’s why neither of us dated much. One
night Dad chewed out Mom for allowing me to hang out with this buddy, accusing
her of turning me into “a gay.” He didn’t even know that it
was my passion for football that caused me to shun dating, not
homosexuality.

Another episode occurred when I was fourteen. Dad called
Mom early one week and gave her the following order: “Have Freddie ready
for me to pick up Friday night at seven o’clock. I’ve got a clean
prostitute arranged for the evening. It’s time for him to learn about
love.” He didn’t understand why my mother and I were repulsed by
the bizarre idea. I cannot describe the rage that flooded me after I heard that
over-the-top suggestion.

Perhaps you’ve felt the same type of
anger and pain in your family relationships. Such anger often opens a door to
pornography and masturbation. The desire to become close to
somebody
can also drive you quickly into the arms of women or one-sided friendships.
Rather than turn to God, you truly can begin looking for love in all the wrong
places, hoping for something, anything, to take the place of that loss.

This is where our maleness works against us. Remember, men primarily give
and receive sexual intimacy prior to and during intercourse. When you bring
yourself to orgasm while fantasizing or viewing women on a glossy magazine
page, you have a feeling of intimacy.

School adds to the problems at
home. The cruelest place on Earth is a high-school campus. If you’re not
part of the right “clique”—the jocks, the cheerleaders, the
ASBers—then you’re put down and laughed at mercilessly by your
peers. I’ve told my kids to just hang on during the high school years.
“Besides, you won’t see 99 percent of these kids ever again,”
I say. “Why let what they say bother you?” I remind them that in
college, people mature and things start returning to normal.

Trouble
is, during these trying days of acne and academics, many young men get
dreadfully lonely and pummeled. For these guys, masturbation makes them feel
good and takes away the loneliness—for a moment.

The trouble
with this tack is that masturbation is an implosion of sexual pleasure that
focuses a guy further and further into himself. However, that genuine need for
interpersonal intimacy cannot be met by self-seeking sexual activity.
It’s like slaking your parched thirst with salt water. A sip can satisfy
for a moment, but the eventual results are disastrous. If you masturbate to
“fix” your feelings of insecurity and isolation, then the
masturbation just adds to your loneliness because you’re not receiving
true intimacy when you do the act.

It’s like watching TV all
alone. Have you ever noticed that you feel even more lonely and isolated after
a night of solitary TV watching because there was no real human contact?
Masturbation is similar. It’s not a real sexual encounter. Sure, it feels
sexual, but it actually leaves a guy feeling more alone and more ashamed than
when he woke up that morning. This is the opposite of what real sexual
encounters are supposed to do.

If you expect to stop masturbating, in
nearly all cases you must first make a strong decision to stop. But the power
of interpersonal relationships is also so important to this process that it can
sometimes break the power of the masturbation cycle on its own. Will, a friend
of mine who directs a drug treatment center in western Iowa, told me that
simply deciding to get out with people broke the masturbation cycle when he was
single.

I was always kind of a loner and stuck to myself a lot.
Every night after work I’d go home to my apartment all alone, and
I’d wind up buried in pornography and masturbation. The experience left
me feeling lonelier and more isolated! When friends at the office invited me
places after work, or my family called to do things on weekends, I found myself
saying no to all of them.

One day, I’d just had it with
myself. Putting my foot down, I committed to saying yes to every invitation for
the next four weeks, just to see what would happen. That was really hard at
first because I felt out of place—like a third wheel. It was as though I
had forgotten how to be with people in a casual environment. After a few
experiences, however, I started getting comfortable and even loosening up
around my friends and family. Believe it or not, midway through the fourth
week, I realized I hadn’t masturbated in over ten days. A habit that had
been with me for years began to fall away naturally as I reached out to other
people.

This is why many
young men fighting for sexual purity seek support in a men’s Bible study
group or a smaller accountability group with one or two other men. Having a
safe place to discuss this tough issue often results in an honest exchange,
although getting there can be awkward. (Another drawback of being a male is
that we don’t verbalize our feelings very well.)

Honest sharing
must occur in these relationships. Tough questions must be asked, and true
answers given. After the first three or four weeks of getting to know each
other, powder-puff questions like “How’d you like church last
week?” must give way to introspective questions like “How were
things different this week from last week?” and “What’s
changing?”

Otherwise, you don’t have an accountability
group at all, but merely a sympathy gathering where each person admits his
failure again and again, week after week. The wounded merely lean on each
other, hoping to be told, “That’s all right.”

To
counteract that, you may prefer a one-on-one, direct accountability partner.
This should be a male friend, perhaps someone older and well respected in the
church—a person who can encourage you in the heat of battle and ask
probing questions like, “What are you feeling when you’re most
tempted to masturbate?” Such questions bring clear insight. The
men’s ministry at your church can help you find someone who can ask the
tough questions and suggest ways to help you.

Are you wondering how
this works? Nathan asked his youth pastor for an accountability partner. Ron, a
longtime Christian with experience in this area, was asked to help out Nathan.
Ron called Nathan on the phone to chat.

“How’s it going at
home, Nathan?” Ron asked. They’d previously established that this
question refers to masturbation.

“I plead the fifth,” said
Nathan.

“Uh-oh. Talk to me.”

“It’s been
happening every other day for the past two weeks.”

“Are you
reading the Bible?” Ron asked.

“Yes.”

“Are you praying?”

“Yes.”

“Are you really angry with someone?”

“Not
really.”

“What’s the problem then?”

“Too much television,” Nathan answered. “Shows on HBO and
Baywatch
reruns.”

Following this conversation, Ron began
calling Nathan every day. Sometimes Nathan needs to be encouraged. Sometimes he
needs to be challenged to do what’s right. In the end, though, it came
down to whether Nathan had made a decision to win, a decision for purity.
Accountability only works when coupled with a firm commitment to win.

Who else might be your accountability partner? Ted uses his father.
“God is bringing me through the worse struggle of my life,” says
Ted. “I’ve struggled with what I watch on TV for five years, but
then last year I became hooked on Internet porn. God has provided a wonderful
accountability partner into my own dad. Can you believe it? We talk regularly,
and he’s been real understanding.”

Nearly any committed man
can be your accountability partner. Let us caution you, however, from enlisting
your girlfriend as one. That’s a recipe for getting into more
trouble.

While you build real
interpersonal intimacy into your life by joining a men’s group, talking
with your youth pastor, or enlisting an accountability partner, don’t
forget to place God in the center of the equation. By seeking and asking Him
for supernatural help in this battle, you can overcome things that you never
thought possible. You’ll find yourself hungrier to know Him and
you’ll experience a greater desire to communicate with Him. As your
intimacy with God grows, you’ll need less of that false intimacy.
You’ll find Him to be your best accountability partner.

What
helps bring true intimacy with God quickly? Worship. We were created to
worship. Worship and praise brings intimacy with the Lord and ushers us quickly
into His presence.

I first heard Charles Swindoll mention this on his
Insight for Living
radio broadcast when he said that he never enters
prayer without first entering worship. I started there, memorizing a few
choruses and hymns and singing them softy to the Lord for about twenty minutes
before beginning prayer. So what if I couldn’t carry a tune across Merle
Hay Road if my life depended upon it?

What kind of songs did I use?
Love songs! Songs I can sing
to
Him, that address
Him
directly. I want to tell Him I love Him and build on that intimacy. So I use
love songs that I can sing straight to Him. There are many songs expressing
love to the Lord that are popular now. One of my recent favorites begins
simply, “You’re the One that I love.” Another starts with,
“I will worship You, my Love.”