I once had a conversation with a young woman who told me she was very frustrated with the role masturbation played in her life. She shared that she had been doing it habitually for several years. After a long conversation about it, she was more frustrated. She said to me, “I honestly do not lust when I masturbate. If anything I am celebrating how cool it is and how creative God is while I am doing it.” She admitted there are times when there is lustful “stuff” going on, but for the most part, her habit is strictly physical. She felt hopeless because she wanted to fight spiritually as the thoughts came and take care of the emotions that were fueling it. The problem was she couldn’t see the lust and emotions clearly and was convinced they weren’t even there.
We finally got to the bottom of it. She had been introduced to physical stimulus at a very young age by a family member. It was a very brief encounter, but it was the first time she was made aware of this part of her body. Naturally, as a child, she became very curious and began to innocently explore. I wasn’t long after that she had childlike questions that went unanswered or silenced because they were “dirty.” The emotions she had following that were humiliation, fear, confusion, loneliness, and the list went on. As she and I continued to talk, we both quickly realized that the reason she masturbated up to that day was because Satan had gotten a foothold into her life and spoken lies to her that said this part of her was dirty, out of control, and something to hide. Once we saw that, we replaced those lies with God’s truth and celebrating how she was created. The power behind the years of habit was gone.
What she was convinced was just a physical habit that she felt hopeless about ended up being much deeper. Through much prayer, confession and worshiping of God’s truth, masturbation began to take on a whole different role in her life. In times when she would normally be tempted to masturbate, she was able to journal out praises for how God created her and choose to believe the truth about who she is in Him. Now the physical desire quickly dwindles each time she does this, and it not longer controls her. This is just one story, but I hope it helps those of you who might have some of the same thoughts or feelings.
The truth is that for us as women, almost everything that goes on with us physically can be tied back to a thought that triggered an emotion. Because we have so many different emotions stemming from our thoughts, we can be sure that many of those thoughts are not based on God’s truth about us. So as we come full circle, we find ourselves once again confronting our thoughts. It’s time to stop giving in and “feeling” everything so much. We need to start praying, fighting and allowing our mind and emotions to be refined and used by God. We as women are so complex, intricate, beautiful, and COOL! We don’t have to live bound to our emotions. We can take our thoughts captive and live free in the truth.
— Jamie Book