280+ days, hard mode : how the miracle happened

So encouraging and I'm so happy for how happy you are! You're so right about how sexual fulfilment/satisfaction shouldn't be our only/dominant source of fulfilment, if one at all in your case. Really happy you found an approach and a method that works for you.

 

Awesomely beautiful posts. I'm learning a lot from the saints and our brother monks and sister nuns.

 

I just wanted to say that this thread helped me last night (day 4 after a very tough night 3). No temptation to speak of! A tiny bit when I woke up but it went away quickly. God bless you all!

 

Thank you for sharing your story and I'm interested in your method. I'm not Catholic but more of a pseudoprotestant Christian. So you say all we have to do is pray, pray, and pray some more? Even if we relapse, just keep praying and eventually our prayers will be answered? Sounds good to me, but I'm worried I'll forget to pray that much or my motivation to pray that much will wane.

 

Yup. Always pray. I can't tell you how many times God provided in many different ways when I prayed in other situations in my life. Sometimes the answer is no then it turns out to be a great thing that I didn't get what I wanted.

God loves us regardless. We're flawed. We're sinners. Even The Pope goes to confession. Nobody is perfect.

That's why we need divine help but we need to be willing to do our share of the work because God also gave us free will. It took me a while to decide if I wanted to join the nofap forums. Did I truly want to stop M? When I first prayed for help with ceasing M, I said "I like it too much. I don't know if I can wait until marriage if I'll ever get married. You did a great job at creating Os". I was speaking to God who knows what is truly in my heart so I had no choice but to be honest. Then I listed the reasons why I wanted to "at least give it a try but You know me, I'm weak! I'll try my best but I need you to help me. I will fall, I know it but I'm not planning to and I'm determined to do your will".

When I pray during times of temptation, it's not me saying "God this is what I want from you. Thank you". I'm saying "Ok this is a raging E I'm getting and I know I truly don't want to touch. God, please keep me pure.".

 

YES! YES! MOOOOAAAR ROSARY! MOAR! MOOOOAAR! The Rosary, and our Blessed Mother's intercession are SO POWERFUL! So powerful. St. Joseph, and his Chaste Heart, are also incredibly powerful intercessors.

Please say some of your rosaries, @Proxydore, for the healing of my marriage. I want to show my wife the man that Jesus and His mother have made me!

 

Yet. You think Mary doesn't finish what she starts?

 

Praying to our Blessed Mother is so efficacious it almost feels like magic. (Quick primer for Protestants: Mary has no power, herself, but we are asking her to pray for us, and we know she holds great influence with her Son. That's why Catholics pray to her - it's not the same way we pray to God.) But yes, pray. Pray all the time. And when you pray, accept that you need help. You're not doing something, you're asking for the gifts and graces you need in order to do as God wills. And God wills you to live well, and chastely!

 

Fair enough. Though, you might ask your higher power to reveal to you His nature. Also, you might find St. Paul's words on the "monument to an unknown God" interesting. Even just academically, it's quite intriguing, and is only a few lines.

 

God bless you brother! The Lord helped you overcome your demons, as he has helped me. He will also help anyone who asks of him. All is possible through God! Amen!

 

1 Timothy 2:5 "For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus."

 

So

what do you think of Paul asking the community to intercede for the pagans a few verses before in 1 Tim 2:1-4? Paul highlights that intercession is not optional for the christian life, its an essential part. He commands his people to intercede for him. Paul in 2 Corinthians 1:11 asks the people to intercede for him. 1 Tim 2:1 he asks them to intercede for each other. This is important for building up each other. Love of God and love of neighbor. When we grow in love of neighbor, we grow in love of God. Our fellowship with the saints brings us closer in union to God. we see fellowship with each other brings us closer to God i.,e conferences, retreats, small groups,...nofap. What father gets mad when he sees his children honoring or growing in love with each other, what father feels jealous or feels threatened by that? … We share our needs with Mary and the saints and each other because God loves it when his children seek each others help .

 

Plus Mary's intercessory power is because of her relationship with the Son. Plus... just skipping right to tl:dr Tradition is one of the pillars, and sola scriptura is defeated by 2 Thessalonians, I.e. by its own mechanism.

 

Never once in all biblical scripture is it said to ask deceased people to intercede for us. And there is an enormous difference between praying for eachother's well being, and praying in the place of eachother. There is nothing wrong with me praying for my fellows, but there something wrong with the idea that someone else's voice has more influence over God's will.

People are finite. They are limited. They, unlike God, are not omnicient. It is absurd to beleive that certain people are given Godly powers, like hearing millions of prayers from earth, when they ascend to heaven. The Bible never tells us this. Not even close. The Bible doesn't say that people in heaven are aware of earthly affairs at all. Mary and every Saint that ever lived was human, just like us. They sinned just like us, and they cannot compare to God's power, just like us.

Before Jesus, people needed high priests to intercede for them to God. They did not have access to His word. But when Jesus died, the curtain to the Holy of Holys was torn in the temple, signifying that God's glory is no longer separated from the people. This was the fulfillment of the law.

The bottom line is that the Bible does not contradict itself. And God said that Jesus is the last and only intercessor from now till the end of time. Because He is our high priest.

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not upon your own understanding." Proverbs 3:5

I do not want to argue theology. I am tremendously joyful for @Proxydore's triumph over PMO and that is the point of this particular thread.

 

We don’t pray to dead people because biblicaly the saints and Mary are not dead. Because the bible reveals to us that we are alive in Jesus Christ (luke 20:37-38) (in those verses Jesus talks about how our Lord is "God of Abraham and Jacob") "God is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to Him all are Alive." The saints in Hebrews are described as a cloud of witnesses. They have finished the great race and they are rooting for us, cheering us on not to fap. We dont pray to dead people who cant hear our prayers because the saints and Mary are not dead! When we die we are still connected together in this mystical body of Christ.

sorry brother but its biblical, "the prayer of a righteous person is very powerful" James 5:16 If anyone is more righteous whose prayers are most powerful than it is the saints in heaven who are righteous and have been purified all of sin before entering....and although the saints were fallible and sinned while on earth, Mary was without sin for she was declared "full of grace" by an angel Luke 1:28. How can you be in a full state of grace and still be stained by sin?

We are not saying that Mary is a deity, is omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent like God. Only God holds those attributes. ...However, wouldnt you agree that the devil "who is your enemy prowls around the earth like a lion waiting to devour someone"1peter 5:8 is not omniscient or omnipresent like God , but still can tempt large sums of people at once? so if the devil can tempt millions of people, why cant Mary and the saints hear millions of prayers from the eternal vantage point from heaven? for millions of prayers is still a finite number, no need to attribute her with omniscience.

Where in the Bible does God say Jesus is the LAST AND ONLY INTERCESSOR? Im curious wasnt Mary interceding between Jesus and the servants at the wedding of Cana?

O i dont. I trust in the visible church Christ established in Matt 16:18.

Neither do I, but you started it. if you were happy for Proxydore, why did you feel you had to post 1 tim 2:5? we catholics are just giving a reason for our hope to anyone who asks 1 pet 3:15

God bless you on your nofap journey. peace and prayers

 

It saddens me that anyone beleives this.

"For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God."

All doesn't mean all except Mary. And yes, people die. It is a fact. Those who are alive in Christ live eternally spiritually, but

"Sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, so all will die because all have sinned."

We all die physically and our spirit leaves this earth. It is all there for you to read. Good luck with PMO and your faith.

 

sad to see this kind of theological argument here...
if there is nothing wrong with you praying for your fellows, what is wrong with saints in heaven praying for you? and what is wrong with asking them to pray for you, just like you would ask someone in your church... you know your communion of saints?

and for the record - I am protestant - i have found great beauty and spritual connection in Catholic and Orthodox practices and i have found them to be exemplary Christians in thought, word and deed.

on a broader note, protestant, catholic, orthodox- we need to come together as a church again- that's not to say can't have variation in our worship- but if there was never a schism - the bells of Hagia Sophia would be ringing out now.

 

Idolatry