NoFAP: A gigantic challenge

Staying away from pmo can be done in two wholly different ways:

1. You try to stay away from pmo as long as possible and you see the progress only as the number of clean days.
the result is that your temptation level is increasing more and more until the point where you can't stand the painful pressure and give in an urge ( it's like beating with your head against the wall in hope that you break it but you'll only be injuring your head until the day when you give up any fight being exhausted. So this way has no future as agent Smith from 'the Matrix' would say .

2. You try to focus all your efforts on prayer (more often, longer, deeper focusing on God) combined with avoiding any occasions of pmo sins (avoiding any porn substitutes). The base is of course the state of sanctification grace (if needed confession) plus general effort of repentance (always basing on prayer first). And the result of absorbing the grace of God will be your longer and longer staying away from pmo.

If you take from your body and psyche some utter pleasure you have to replace the lack with God's grace. If you don't fill enough your body and psyche with God's grace then this gap will be filled by anger, pain, impatience, void etc. and all you'll be dreaming will be some relief in pmo ecstasy.

 

Brother, be assured you will be in my prayers; however, no amount of prayers of mine will help you if you’re keeping proximate occasions of sin in your life.

You must ask yourself truthfully what persons, places, or things are causing you to continually fall into this sin!

• Do you have a relationship with people who advocate or expose you to PMO/impurity?
• Do you have devices that are making PMO easy and accessible?
  
• Have you taken steps to remove these devices?
  
• If it’s truly not possible to remove the devices, have you put in place blockers and accountability software in order to creat a line of defense?
  
• Have you done an overhaul of the media that you watch, read, or listen to on a daily basis? Have you gotten rid of anything that has immodesty or which blasphemes the Lords Name?

These steps are necessary in order to cultivate the soil of your soul to allow the Sowers Seed to take root and produce good fruits.

For myself, there was a point where I had to live a year with a flip-phone/dumb-phone and I had to have my laptop blocked/restricted and have accountability software. I likewise had to throw out all movies/streaming shows and music which had blasphemy or showed immodesty. Furthermore I had to severely restrict the amount of t.v. and music I listened to in order to listen to God and speak to Him in silence. Another thing I had to do was end long friendships with people who were not going in the same direction, towards Christ.

None of this though was accomplished without God’s grace, through prayer, so if you haven’t been praying for God to show you where your occasions of sin are in your life, then start praying for that today. If you genuinely want to be free and will go to great lengths to be free, then He will show you what needs to be done.

Jesus gave us an example of what such resoluteness must look like when he said if your hand or eye scandalize you, then chop it off or pluck it out. He said this because if you have a firm purpose of amendment which seeks to be that determined to be free of sin, then it will never get that far, because you would have already done what was necessary for grace to live and thrive in you.


John the Baptist sums up the entirety of the spiritual life with two statements:

• Prepare ye the way of the Lord; make straight his paths.
• He (Jesus) must increase: but I must decrease.

We must always ask ourselves, what are we doing to make straight the way of the Lord and what are we doing to make Him increase in our lives?

 

You have my prayers and offer of support via conversations and posts here. Quite frankly, I think any and all of us seeking freedom from this sin, and all sinful temptations, should read "Spiritual Combat" from cover to cover. The modern translations are easily read. The chapters are short but packed full of wisdom. I hope you will buy a copy and study it. There is more wisdom there than most of us here could ever offer to you. May God bless your efforts, today and everyday.

 

Yes, this is the one. There is a version which also contains "A Treastise on Peace of Soul" which is nothing short of wonderful encouragement.

 

I think another thing we miss is asking ourselves “why do I want to be free of PMO?”; meaning, what do you expect to do with your freedom?!

St. Pope John Paul II said “freedom isn’t the ability to do what you want, but the ability to do what you ought”.

What were we created for? What is it we ought to do?

The answer is the will of the Father.

We PMO addicts have arrived, and have been permitted to arrive, at our state of PMO addiction specifically because we have failed to live according to our calling to do the Father’s will—and as a mercy from God our addiction is the means in which He now invites us to see how trusting in His will, not ours, will lead us to true peace, joy, and freedom.

Our addiction, born out of our pride, has finally brought us to the crossroads, where we can only go one of two ways; we can either continue in our pride and die eternally, OR, we can surrender our pride, let God lead us, and reach Eternal Life.


If our reason to be free of PMO is anything other than to do the will of the Father, then we will not be free nor should God grant us freedom.

 

Yes, not doing God's will has produced all kinds of addictions. Not doing God's will results in doing what our body and emotions plus degenerated mind want to. And what wants, desires our body , emotion and mind? Always the same pleasure, comfort, an easy attractive life, etc. And where can you find something more pleasant than sex? unlimited sex = pmo.
And God's will always gives some limitations. You have to limit your food intake - if not you'll be obese. You have to limit your sex life ( marital life) if not you will be here on this forum with these issues. You have to limit ( check) your aggression - if not you can beat somebody or even kill him - the result prison. And so on. The man is so created that he absolutely needs some limits. If somebody breaks them they meet damage.
That's why the only working way is to come back to be obiedent to God's will. It's simply healthy. If we analyse 12 step program it has 12 steps what should you do in your life. All the 12 points we can find in our faith.

Yes, let's imagine what led us here. Our motto was " the ability to do what we wanted. And we wanted the most possible pleasure and relief.
We thought that being independent of God we will be independent of anything but it occured that the more are you independent of God the more you are dependent of your weaknesses. There is no third way.
Without changing our life ( another decisions, choices ) even our prayers will be futile. We have to be on the way to sanctity. If not we will be on the way down to iniquity and degeneration.

 

Can you see a common factor(s) which caused you to fall after those times you achieve 3 or 4 weeks of Nofap?

 

I can completely relate. My reaction to the stress of work and home life was frequently, perhaps always, to feel sorry for myself. I felt that the stress caused me to be unhappy but in truth it was I that chose to be unhappy. We have the choice of how to respond to things but so often we choose self-pity which leads to a justification to sin as some sort of deserved consolation. It is a victim mentality borne of pride. Dear God, please teach me humility, but do it gently, not as I deserve it.

 

Praise God! Thirty days of no M and 27 of no P is not small. Every day sober is in itself a miracle of grace!

 

Thank you God for giving this grace to @Stommy and Congratulations! I am sure your achievement, and more importantly the reasons you have sought it, are most pleasing to God. As you go forward, I hope you will see each day is not only an achievement in purity but also another step in building and strengthening your habits of purity. Most of us will remain at risk to the devil's temptations but the habit of fervently asking God for His protection, each and every day, is a path to remain free from this sin.