What’s hindering you from running your race?
Here is a checklist to help you destroy all sources of porn in your life. The effectiveness of this check list depends on your actions and wiliness to succeed.
Sexual immorality is idolatry. “Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry” col. 3:5.
How are we to treat idols? “This is what you are to do to them: Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones, cut down their Asherah poles, and burn their idols in the fire” Deut. 7:5.
– Are you ready to start? – Good –
- Tell someone that you intend to destroy all sources of, and access to, your pornography, and to take serious preventative measures. Share your plan with this person and ask this person to follow up on your plan. We recommend sharing with another man in whom it is safe to confide. “As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another” 27v17. You may also wish to confide in a Pastor. Remember that you are not alone. This is a very widespread struggle and there is help available!
- With complete reckless abandon, scour your house and DESTROY all porn. (This means actual destruction as in DESTROYED. It does not mean giving it to your buddies or friends or leaving it so someone else can find it, even by accident at the dump. Many men have stumbled across pornography after someone else got rid of without completely destroying it.)
- Choose a destruction method so the materials can no longer be used for their intended purpose, and cannot be repaired. Paper shredders are now relatively inexpensive and can be purchased at office supply stores. If you have a fireplace, you can burn them. Use caution if you are burning VCR tapes, or anything toxic. You need to breathe fresh air. Make sure you have good ventilation and your flue is open so you don’t smoke up your home.
– Take these same actions if you store porn in storage or somewhere else other than your home –
- Destroy credit cards that facilitate the use of pornography
- Destroy video rental cards
- Destroy photos that remind you of encounters.
- Destroy business cards that remind you of a past you wish to leave.
- Cut off your access to those people that you have been in affairs and unhealthy relationships with.
- Destroy the following items in your home or outside your home
- Magazines
- VCR tapes
- DVD’s (break with a hammer, or scratch repeatedly with 25 grit sandpaper)
- Burn printed images of any kind
- Books that support sinful behaviour of any sort – tear up by the spine of the book.
- Posters – shred into pieces
- Sex toys (if this applies).
- Lust-inducing magazines (Maxim, Nuts, Zoo, FHM, etc)
- All swimsuit and lingerie pictures, catalogues, and magazines.
- Written materials or written records of websites or sources where you have found porn.
- Clothes that support or promote the pornography, that have graphic pictures, words, etc., or other features that do not help you.
- Personal items that remind you of a life that you wish to leave.
- Other items not listed here that support your habit:
- Note that you morally cannot throw out something that belongs to someone else. If your wife has lingerie catalogues, you can ask her to get rid of them or keep them out of sight. If you have a roommate that keeps porn and doesn’t want to give it up, you can (and almost certainly should) move out.
– Now, for your computer and computer related activity apply the following steps: –
- Take your computer and put it in FULL VIEW in the most occupied place in your home!!! (Pornography thrives in the dark – Get your computer out of the shadows!)
- Go through your computer completely and destroy all pornographic or lustful images you have saved. DO NOT back up these files – erase them
- Use a good software program to scrub your computer’s hard drive of all pornographic image.
- Delete bookmarks to porn sites and all inappropriate web sites. (These are listed as “Favourites” in Microsoft Internet Explorer and as “Bookmarks” in Netscape Navigator and Mozilla Firefox.) Delete all references to pornography.
- Delete any websites you have created.
- Delete all accounts to pornographic web sites
- Delete all inappropriate online computer subscriptions
- Delete all inappropriate email addresses from your computer or online email
- Delete email accounts you used to receive questionable material
- Remove yourself from inappropriate e-mail lists. If you cannot get out of them, change your e-mail address
- Delete computer screen savers with lustful images or inappropriate materials
- Delete inappropriate backgrounds (the picture(s) your computer has at the desktop).
- Delete all software that supports your habit in any fashion whatsoever, including archiving software or scan-inventory software
- Reformat all external disk drives where you have stored pornographic/lustful images. (This includes external hard drives, thumb drives, zip disks, floppy disks, etc.)
- Destroy computer CD’s and DVD’s
- Destroy or reformat any other electronic storage media containing pornographic or lustful images
- Delete any files containing records of websites or sources where you have found porn
- Now cut off access to pornographic images over the internet:
- Also do not delude yourself by thinking you can view “safer” images or web sites. There is no such thing as a “safer” site. You must admit that you are deluding yourself with these “safer sites,” so you and you alone have the responsibility to do something about this little sneaky/peaky game that leads you to something worse. This is like an alcoholic saying “I won’t drink, I’ll just lick the outside of this glass of rum.
- Remove Cable TV channels that show “adult” movies (Satellite , etc.) Or if your family must have these channels, use the blocking feature to remove access to porn. Let someone else have the password.
– don’t let up! Keep up the pressure –
- Call your phone company and place a block.
- End magazine subscriptions that fuel your slavery.
- End subscriptions to all inappropriate material including
- Magazines
- Movies and videos
- Catalogues that are inappropriate for you. (Yes, including Ann Summers, Victoria’s Secret.)
- Books and any other material that fuel your slavery.
- Remove bumper stickers on your cars that remind you of a lifestyle you wish to leave behind
- Replace the car-scent thing that hangs in your car with one without graphic pictures
- Remove all the images from your locker at the gym
- Change your dining and entertainment routines so that you are not exposed to temptation. (This can mean different things for different people.)
- If you have let pornography replace your wife, restore yourself with your wife and do whatever is necessary to end the wrong relationship. Get guidance from a pastor or close friend who has a lot of integrity
- When staying at hotels, tell the front desk to authorize the adult channels or ask them to remove the television from the room.
- When travelling, cut off access to internet service unless expressly required for your work. (Try to arrange for filtered internet or accountability in some form.)
- When travelling, make arrangements with your wife or a friend with integrity and call when you arrive at the hotel. Let them know you are not going to the wrong places. Be honest
- Only take with you enough money for travel or lunch and keep all receipts to show to your wife or friends, hand over all your credit/ visa cards you will get them when needed
- Change your route home from work if it involves going past red light areas or places where you may be tempted
- Make a commitment NOT TO RETURN to your past
- Maintain this by finding someone to be accountable to so that you will not slip back to old ways.
- LASTLY, AND MOST IMPORTANTLY – Develop a spiritual hunger for God – the closer you draw to God, the less and less you will want porn.
The above list is a very proactive way of staying ahead of the things that will cause you to fall. Simply following this list will help you in your daily struggle to crucify the flesh, which in turn will free you to concentrate on the Battle for the mind, for more help also check out Dressed to kill. click here for The Quitters check-list prayer
Gen 3x – Encouraging Believers to Quit Pornography
“Hear, O Israel, Ye Approach This Day Unto Battle Against Your Enemies: Let Not Your Hearts Faint, Fear Not, And Do Not Tremble, Neither Be Ye Terrified Because Of Them. “Deuteronomy 20v3