Getting Practical About Recovery

The habit loop, for good or bad, goes something like this: Trigger. Craving. Response. Reward. Let's get Practical About Recovery.

When it comes to unwanted sexual behaviors, that loop slides shame in just after the reward. That’s why you’re here now. You’re doing the work to break the cycle. But sometimes, the work feels annoying, unnecessary, and even boring.

If you wish you could stop with the steps and just “lean into Jesus,” you’re in the right place.  

Friend, there is a battle for your heart. And Jesus, as both God and man, wants you whole.  The battle plan must include the heart work and the homework. 

Listen in as Josh lays out your battle plan using both spiritual and the practical.

Highlights:

“The ultimate freedom we have as human beings is the power to select what we will allow our minds to dwell upon. It is in our thoughts that the first movements toward the renovation of the heart occur.”-Dallas Willard

You are free to choose what you do, brothers and sisters, but these things have consequences for you and for others.

When we put up practical boundaries it creates space again. It slows the process down so we don’t find ourselves too far in.

Homework:

Consider Jesus asking you this question, “What are you looking for?” Let’s try doing a Heart Map. In the center of a piece of paper, write out in a word or two the thing that you’re struggling with - porn, lust, affair, etc. draw a circle around it. 

Around it, write the feeling you get from it, write the feeling you experience after, write the experience or person that led you to this moment. Draw a circle around each of those and then connect those circles to the center one. What are the details of those feelings? Is there something in common that you see on that piece of paper? A heart map can slow your brain down long enough for your eyes and heart to catch up with the “thing beneath the thing” - your motivation. 

Let Jesus ask you the question, do the practical homework and listen long enough for Him to guide you through the answers.

Extras:

1 Corinthians 6:12 “I have the right to do anything,” you say—but not everything is beneficial. “I have the right to do anything"—but I will not be mastered by anything.”

1 Corinthians 10

Romans 6:16 “Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness?”

For more on this topic, check our latest article Was It Do I Need a Filter to Overcome Porn?

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