Jesus said in Matthew 5:28 “If you look after a woman with lust in your heart, you’ve already committed adultery. So pornography opens the door for: spirits of lust to enter; spirits of perversion; spirits of prostitution; and spirits of idolatry. In the Old Testament, the idolater’s practices in the cultures that Israel went into - you know one thing they mostly had in common? Temple prostitutes! So being involved with prostitutes, male and female, was a part of the whole worship ceremony. Again, what God intends for good and blessing, becomes a destructive doorway into people’s life for demons.
I was reading recently about a survey done on pornography. They did a test on the areas of the brain that were affected, when a person was exposed to pornography. This is what they found: if a person had little or no exposure, when they saw some pornographic images, there was not a very big response in their brain; however, if they were watching a lot of pornography, whole areas of the brain started to become alive and stimulated - and these are exactly the same areas that become stimulated by someone who’s involved in drugs, or some kind of chemical dependency.
The conclusion they came to, was that the response of the brain to pornography is chemically identical to that of any other kind of addictive material, or addictive substance. Of course, you can understand there’s a lot of resistance to agreeing with that point of view. Essentially they’re saying that it is addictive, in the same way a drug is addictive. It alters your brain chemistry; creates a false reality; and progressively requires more to produce the same result. This is a major area now, and we need to be straight upfront and talk about these things - help people in their journey to get free of it.
So that’s only one of a whole range of sexual sins. I’ll give you a number of things that the Bible talks about; you can search them out yourself. The Bible talks about, first of all, fornication – sexual sin outside marriage; adultery; homosexuality; rape; sexual intimacy with demons; child abuse; bestiality – sexual relationship with animals; prostitution; cross-dressing. In other words, anything that perverts God’s pattern for man is a problem - incest; rape and abuse. So the list goes on and on. We need to have some strategies on how to set people free. We need to know what we would do to help people.
I wanted to just talk about some of the pathways to freedom. Here’s the first scripture, Proverbs 28:13, “He who covers his sins will not prosper; but whoever confesses and forsakes them will have mercy.”
Let me just go through perhaps the journey of ministry to set people free. I think there’s the actual ministry itself, and there’s the follow-up afterwards. Let’s first of all, have a look at the ministry side.
1) Ask the Holy Spirit to help you to reveal the roots. We must learn to depend on the Holy Spirit’s help, in dealing with any person. Learn to listen with your heart, to any impressions He gives you. It could be simply a question to ask: “Have you been involved in this?”, and watch to look at the person’s response. Ask the Holy Spirit to help you. Be open all the time to listen to His promptings.
2) Diagnose the problem. That means you have to ask questions; and keep asking questions until you feel that you have got to the root of the problem. The root of the problem may be generational; that could be a factor in it. This is not just this person’s problem, there’s a contribution that comes from the generational line. Perhaps there’s some trauma the person’s been through. Were they sexually abused? Where they exposed to any sexual situations when they were very young?
Abuse ranges from just being exposed to something you shouldn’t have seen, right through to very serious and prolonged abuse. Is there a pattern of sinning in this area? Take your time to find out the truth, because sexual sin carries with it a huge deception around it. People will try and conceal from you what’s really happening. Commitment to the truth is the only way the person will get free. There can be no shadow of darkness, the person’s got to come clean.
So diagnose the problem. That means asking questions; looking for any contributing roots - are there generational issues; are there trauma, abuse issues; is it a habitual pattern; when did it start; how did it start? It just helps to search, because sometimes, for example, a young man may have experienced a family breakup, and in the midst of the pain, he’s gone looking for comfort.
So sexual sin is the comfort; but the root is the pain of the breakup. So look for anything that contributes to this problem. Don’t just look at the sin, and get disgusted by the sin -diagnose what the problem is. When you think you’ve got it summed up, just talk back. Just share with them what you see is the problem - interact with the person over this. If you don’t understand the extent of the problem, your solution will only be a patch over the top. The person needs to be honest with you.