“As I sat in the front seat of the church, my mind quickly rushed to the porno images I had watched that morning before my sister came to knock to call me out for morning devotion. This had become my daily early morning routine before devotion. Every morning before I am called, I would have watched several minutes of pornographic images and masturbated several times. Once the devil succeeds in capturing your mind and influencing your thought patterns, he has won the battle over you to an extent. No wonder the bible advised we guard our hearts with every diligence for out of it are the issues of life (Proverbs 4:23). The mind is the control center of the body and until you take control of the mind, you will always remain a slave to pornography. The images of these naked men and women were still fresh in my head that morning and only the sound of “Brethen Praaaaiiiisss the Loooorrrd” jolted me back to the building. The opening prayer for the first service will be taken before I would be called to the podium to teach the Sunday school class that morning.”
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John 10:10
“The thief comes only in order to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have and enjoy life, and have it in abundance (to the full, till it overflows) “
1 John 3:8
“But] he who commits sin [who practices evildoing] is of the devil [takes his character from the evil one], for the devil has sinned (violated the divine law) from the beginning. The reason the Son of God was made manifest (visible) was to undo (destroy, loosen, and dissolve) the works the devil [has done].”
The devil has always been in the business of fighting against the purposes and plans of God for an individual and a people. Remember the story in the garden of Eden? Satan knew exactly what he was doing. The greatest weapon and advantage of the devil also is that he was created and endowed with wisdom and this perverted wisdom had become his means of exchange (Ezekiel 28:12&17).
Everything in the world is a means to lure anyone away from God and His purposes, you don’t have to fall a victim to accept it as fact. You must understand that you are constantly being hunted by the evil one and an appreciation of that fact will keep you glued to God and His word. If you trivialize the hunt of the devil for your life, you may easily be captured and kept in perpetual bondage.
However, the good news is that, it doesn’t matter how far or deep Satan has taken you, you can overcome. The Son of God was manifested to destroy the work of the devil over and in your life and in turn give you an abundant life. Jesus is the only answer you have been waiting for. I had always loved teaching and knew God had blessed me with the gift of teaching and seeing that, the devil stepped in and tried to truncate what God wanted to use me to do for him just as he has tried to do with a lot of people including you reading this.
Being the child of a pastor, we were brought up to love the Lord and the church. I grew up in this environment and due to the position of my father, I also had opportunity to the podium. This platform instead of becoming a tool that will bring out the ability of God in me became a dangerous tool used by the devil for cover me in a false sense of security.
I remember one particular Sunday morning at God’s graceland church (real name) where my father was pastoring, worshippers were coming in to worship God as the routine is every Sunday morning. As the Pastor’s son, we were already in church before everyone could come and I was looking smart and cute in the matching dress. That Sunday, Daddy made sure our clothes were finely matched suit for both the boys and the girls because as he always says, “we are the role model to this people and need to look smart” and trust Dad our outside appearance must be the best in church.
As I sat in the front seat of the church, my mind quickly rushed to the porno images I had watched that morning before my sister came to knock to call me out for morning devotion. This had become my daily early morning routine before devotion. Every morning before I am called, I would have watched several minutes of pornographic images and masturbated several times. Once the devil succeeds in capturing your mind and influencing your thought patterns, he has won the battle over you to an extent. No wonder the bible advised we guide our hearts with every diligence for out of it are the issues of life (proverbs 4:23). The mind is the control center of the body and until you take control of the mind, you will always remain a slave to pornography. The images of these naked men and women were still fresh in my head that morning and only the sound of “Brethen Praaaaiiiisss the Loooorrred” jolted me back to the building. The opening prayer for the first service will be taken before I would be called to the podium to teach the Sunday school class that morning.
The coordinator of the morning prayer gave the prayer points and voices erupted across the church building and on my own, I paced from one end to another as I prayed and blasted. My mum had once told me that she was “very proud of me” because I could pray and display a lot of charisma and physicality while on it. I was very charismatic but very far from God. My being charismatic never bothered the devil. It is not our charisma infact that threatens the devil but our stand with and before God. The devil may allow you to display all the outward spirituality for as long as you don’t know God and walk with Him for yourself. “You know, I wish the other youths in the church can learn from you”. She once told me too. By this time, I was only watching porn like once a week and was not really lost in it as I later became. My parents were not bad parents, but they could be easily carried away by the outward display of spirituality.
The church members and especially the youth loved me a lot because of my ability to teach the scriptures and bring out lessons from passages. When my Dad started giving me the platform, I was a bit nervous because naturally I was the shy type but when I became intoxicated with the aural of applause and praise singing the shyness varnished.
“Thank you everyone and please take your seats,” I looked around and smiled.
Pride mingled with boldness in me and the feeling of it was sweet. But deep within me, I knew I was not qualified to be standing there. Deep within me, I was battling with chronic addiction to pornography. My life was beautiful, glamorous, envious and spiritual on the outside but deep within me the evil of pornography had made a hole that was difficult to fill up.
I remember one day, after consuming loads and loads of porn and spending close to N1000 worth of data on it, I laid on the bed with my undies soaked with semen from masturbation, looked up and told myself, “Joseph, what are you doing to yourself? Do you actually love yourself this way?” I wondered within me but actually, when the devil gets a man in his clutches, he wouldn’t want to let go of such a person. When I asked myself those questions, the lust for the naked men and women kissing and making love pushed against the sincere voice of my conscience that was trying to talk to me.
That particular Sunday, I taught on grace from Ephesians 2:1-22. Everyone eagerly turned their bibles. This had become a custom. Because of my eloquence and charisma, the people of our church had come to love my teachings.
As I said earlier, teaching is what I love doing and trust me I am good at it. Maybe that is my purpose in life and maybe that is what the devil saw and made haste to plant the thorns in the midst of the good seed in me. After reading from Ephesians, I spoke and focused extensively on what would support what I was doing.
“From where we just read to the end, it is very clear that Paul was trying to reorientate the believers in Ephesus and also reawaken their consciousness to the realities of the new life in Christ our messiah. Paul began by reminding them of their former state under the law by telling them that they were once living in bondage and sin according to the prince of the power of the air…”
I always made sure I took every verse of whatever passage we were considering and broke it down for the congregation. Surprisingly also, I never saw the passages as talking to me. I mean I wasn’t fornicating, at least not yet; I was not stealing, I was not chasing women and I certainly don’t lie, I was only addicted to pornography which to me was a lesser sin than the other ones.
“Verse 8 of that scripture is of utmost importance,” I continued.
“It noted that our salvation is by grace and not of ourselves. Brethren, your salvation is through faith in what Christ has done and is not by what you do or do not do.”
—————- “ I spent time talking about grace because that supported what I was doing in the secret. Isn’t it amazing that the devil always tries to twist scriptures that support our sins and blind our eyes to the ones that condemn what we do? As far as I was concerned the salvation was a gift and does not frown at whatever it is I was doing wrong. In my struggle with porn, I realized that until you see it as a very big sin before God and one that you need to be delivered from, you may never overcome it. At the first instance of watching porn, one may see it as something satisfying and pleasant. Actually this is the point I call the “early dose” stage.
The point I was in 2016 when I began to watch porn was this early dose stage when you think you are enjoying it. This point, yes the conscience is still alive and preaks you when you fall into it but you also get a heavy load of “presumed” satisfaction from it. At this stage, it is much more easier to break free from it but even more difficult to muster the courage to do it. This is because, though one is feeling guilty from it, the “presumed” satisfaction may never allow you to want to stop.
…… The service ended at 11:30am and we had a swell time in the church. After the service people flocked around to greet my parents and they will occasionally turn to me to commend me for the teaching. I had become so used to words like, “Evangelist, bless God for the Sunday school teaching, I was blessed.” “Man of God, thank you for yielding yourself to God, I was blessed today.” “My son where did you get the revelations today from? The teaching was powerful.” My parents were talking to some people, waving at some people and praying for some as the custom was.
I was becoming more impatient because I wanted going home to watch porn again since the feelings for it had become tensed. Whenever the feeling came, I felt so tensed and a hotness in my body even though my temperature was normal. The spirit that controls porn is the same spirit that the Bible says works in the children of disobedience. (Ephesians 2:2) and you cannot defeat a spirit with the physical flesh. It doesn’t matter how much I tried to say NO to the feelings when it came, I knew that it was a fruitless war because I was going to succumb to it. I was just like Paul in his battle against sin (Romans 7:14_20). You may be just like I was too trying to defeat a monster with human strength and ability; friend, it is a lost battle unless the cross of Christ comes to pull you out of it.
While in church, I couldn’t control the surge of hotness in my body and I needed to release the heaviness weighing up in me. My struggles with Pornography had no respect for location. When the feeling comes, no matter where I was, I will be very uncomfortable and my temperature will begin to rise instantly. That Sunday after getting home despite teaching in the Sunday school class, I went indoor and buried myself in porn. The devil doesn’t respect what you do or who you are. The devil doesn’t respect the title or the gift of God operational in your life and the devil certainly will not respect who your parents are. If you give him any space, he will take more than you gave him. It is better not to give the devil any more space than you have given him and it’s even far better not to give him any space at all. The word of God instructed not to make any provision for the devil.
At the “early dose” of my fight against Pornography, I made a decision one day to cut down on the consumption of porn because of how it was affecting me. I never knew that the devil won’t allow me off his clutches so easily. I went to the church I was attending in school and after the service, I asked the bassist for his phone to collect some movies to engage myself with and there the devil waited to capture me back to chronic watching of porn again.
“Guy how far”
“I dey. How e dey be now?”
“I’m good Bro, please do you have movies on your phone, I just want to send some to go home and watch,” I asked him.
He gladly gave me his phone to go through the movies and while going through his movie list, I saw hardcore Pornography movies on the phone and the spirit returned.
The devil will always put people strategically in your life to make sure you are kept under his control. The devil will bring friends and people your way that he will use to drain the strenght to do the right thing and live right your way. Fortunately also, God will also bring your path people that will help you to do the right thing and live right but the choice of who to choose between the two category of people lies with you.
Even while I saw the porn videos on the phone, I had the choice of returning the phone and following the advice, “run away from every appearance of evil,” but right inside the church, I reduced the volume of the phone to zero, looked for a corner to sit and fed my mind on porn again. I never expected to see what I saw on the phone and I wasn’t complaining either. I watched and sent some to my phone to continue at home. I pretended like I was sending movies to my phone and fed my mind wrongly.
Pretence is the greatest weakness of a child of God and whenever a child of God starts pretending, the devil will be over the moon. While in church I was pretending and I saw someone who did that also in my bassist. The service you render to God in the church doesn’t move God if your life isn’t right with Him (Romans 12:1-2, 2 Timothy 2:19).
You cannot bribe God with your zealous service same way I couldn’t bribe Him with my service in the church to Him. God wants “us” and not our “service”. The problem is that, we put “service” before “us” and we think the former can substitute for the latter. The fact was that for me, I never allowed Pornographic content on my phone and never left the website address on my search engines. I taught I was playing smart but within me I knew I could only hide it from men and never from God. You cannot find help until you begin to open up and you cannot open up until you become tired of it. God can only help when we are ready for His help
Psalm 34:18
“The Lord is close to those who are of a broken heart and saves such as are crushed with sorrow for sin and are humbly and thoroughly penitent.”
You can never find help until you reach out for help. It is just like this; when you meet a person with a heavy load on the head and you offer to help, the person may decide to decline your request of assistance and if he does you won’t collect the load from him/her by force. God can only offer to help and the duty to accept the offer of help lies with everyone of us. At this point in my life, I wasn’t ready for any help from God. I loved the satisfaction that Pornographic videos gave me and I wasn’t ready to let that go just yet. I thought I was having fun but I never knew that I was killing myself. I was killing what God has put in me and I was silencing the voice of the spirit every passing day.
I went home with the new porn videos on my phone to begin another fresh cycle of uncontrolled masturbation. I didn’t know what to expect from the new videos and didn’t know if they will be different from the pornography I had watched since I got hooked to hardcore porn early that year. But how did I get here? I think I should take you to the Genesis of this endless journey of porn addiction and later fornication.
Watch out for Chapter 2 next Sunday: THE DEVIL’S BAIT.
Your brother,
Peniela Eniayo, Akintujoye.
(On behalf of the narrator, Joseph Ogbuh).
©Peniela Eniayo, Akintujoye| hello@lovestraighttalks.com
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