Help for Addicted Women: Paving the Way for Destruction
Mike: Kathy, when we look at a woman who is dealing with sexual sin, I think we need to make it clear, right up front, that it's not just the sexual sin that the woman is addicted to, but she's really addicted to a complex chain of actions.
Kathy: That's right, Mike. It all begins with temptation and then moves into the person's particular routine, whatever that may be and peaks, in the act itself and ends with the lingering, inevitable consequences of that death process that sin always brings.
Mike: Underlying that is something else. It's just this idea of the lust in the woman's heart. Talk to us a little bit about that.
Kathy: Well, I want to read a verse of Scripture, actually 3 verses, James 1: 13-15, "Let no one say when he is tempted, 'I am being tempted by God,' for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death." Lust comes from within. It's not an outside thing that comes to us, but we are drawn away and enticed by something in us. So that's where lust comes from.
Mike: Well, let's talk about the process of sin. There is a process. The initial step, of sin is what most people would think: the temptation.
Kathy: Yeah, you get tempted, and you follow that temptation down a trail. There's a path, and there's something that's enticing to a person. One person may be tempted by seeing the cover of a magazine. That may do something for them, so that's going to start a whole chain reaction.
Mike: One of the things I often hear from people, and I've even said it myself, and we've probably all said it is, "you know, I just hate this temptation. I really don't want to be tempted." Is that true?
Kathy: No. I think people don't want to have to deal with it. But the truth is, we do enjoy the temptation. We enjoy the process that those thoughts take us down. So, to say, "I don't enjoy this," or, "I don't want this to happen," is really not being honest with yourself. Because, if that were true...
Mike: We'd stop it right then.
Kathy: You would. It would be like stepping on a nail. I really don't enjoy stepping on nails; therefore, I'm going to put shoes on my feet and I'm going to quit doing that because I really don't like stepping on nails.
Mike: And there is a sense that temptation is a lot like alcohol, or a lot like drinking. The more we drink, the more intoxicated we become by it. And that’s the same with temptation.
Kathy: That's very true. I want to read a quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who really was able to capture the whole idea of temptation and what happens to us when we are in the throes of our temptation. "At this moment, God is quite unreal to us. He loses all reality, and only desire for the creature [or sin] is real. The only reality is the devil. Satan does not here fill us with hatred of God, but with forgetfulness of God. And now his falsehood is added to this proof of strength. The lust thus aroused envelopes the mind and will of a man in deepest darkness. The powers of clear discrimination and of decision are taken from us." You know, reality is, and I think I can say this honestly, that for a lot of people we don't want Him. When we're in our lust, it's like we're saying, "Lord, go out and close the door for a while, because I'm going to do my thing." And that's the ugly reality of it.
Mike: That's a very convenient forgetfulness.
Kathy: Yes, it is. It's very convenient. And what he says here at the end of this quote, "The powers of clear discrimination and of decision are taken from us," I would add to that - not that it's taken from us, but that we have surrendered it. We are not being taken captive by some power outside of ourselves. It is something very much in our hearts. That's why we hammer away at dealing with the heart. Until you deal with your heart and get brutally honest with yourself about your heart and your issues, nothing is going to change.
Mike: You mention that as the woman gives over to this temptation, that is when the physical begins to kick in. What's happening there?
Kathy: Well, she's actually going to start moving towards acting out. Once the thoughts come into her mind and once the temptation comes upon her, if she doesn't stop it right away, she's going to start physically moving towards the act of sin.
Mike: I assume that, when a woman is in this position, that she's probably imagining to herself, "Well, I'm just going to do this, but I won't go any further and I won't do it again." But that's almost never true.
Kathy: It's never true. I would say it's never true. It's just more of the lie we have to tell ourselves. She can convince herself she's not going to do it, that she won't do the same thing as the other day. She may say, "I'm not going to get on the Internet," or, "I'm not going to go as far as I went." But as she's speaking those words, she knows in her heart, if she's honest with herself, that's exactly what the plan is.
Mike: And before long, as she's giving over physically to the sin, her own thinking is really becoming warped.
Kathy: It's rotting out a resolve to do the right thing. You get a seared conscience after a while. The Bible talks about your heart becoming very calloused and hard. Eventually, you get to the place where you don't care about what God thinks.
Mike: Well, that leads us to our next point: the point of no return. What is the woman thinking at that point?
Kathy: She's not thinking. That's probably the problem. She's only entertained now by the thought of what these feelings are going to produce for her. You know, she's in the "feeling-mode." The feelings are now very dominant. They're controlling her, and she wants to satisfy this chain of events that she has entered into.
Mike: You really do think to yourself, "I can't stop now. There's no way I can stop."
Kathy: Right, essentially she's saying to herself, "I've gone too far. I might as well go ahead and get it over with." And she begins to justify herself thinking she can go to God get cleaned up afterwards, but right now she has gone too far. Now, it's the point of no return.
Mike: And we talk about women in this process, and of course, there are various routines that women get into. Give us an example of a routine of sin.
Kathy: Well, everybody is so different. She may go to her computer after work, at night, and convince herself that she is just going to look at the news or just look at the weather. Maybe she says, "I'm going to download some stuff on to my iPod. I'm not going to go there again." But she's already started the process. This is the trigger. And the longer you sit there, the more easy it's going to be for you to go ahead and go into something that you know you shouldn't go into. I mean, everybody's got a different routine, but everybody has a routine.
Mike: And the commonality, whatever the routine may be, is we lie to ourselves about these routines. I think you said also earlier that, deep in our heart, we really want the sin, so we put ourselves in these routines because, deep in our heart, we know where the routine is going to lead.
Kathy: Right, when you're really serious about changing, you do hard things to yourself. You put yourself in a hard position, rather than a position of falling. But people that are addicted make sure that their routine won't be thwarted.
Mike: But we know, of course, that once given over to the routine, it's very unlikely that the woman is going to end up doing anything but giving over.
Kathy: Right, actually you know that is almost always the case.
Mike: And we know where sin leads.
Kathy: In death.
Mike: Talk to us about what that means. What does it mean that sin ends in death?
Kathy: The end of the actual sin brings forth death. It brings the death of self-respect and the death of her dignity and the death of feelings and it leaves her in shambles emotionally inside.
Mike: Well, what a contradiction. Even as you're saying those things, I'm thinking about what she even saw in the sin when she first saw the temptation, compared to what you're describing now?
Kathy: That's, see, that's the deceitfulness of sin. If I could grab a hold of the women that are listening, that are struggling, and somehow impart to them the reality of that and how deceitful sin is. If I could sit here and tell you right now that, whatever fantasy you may be entertaining or whatever lust you may feel in your heart, I promise you that when you're done, you will hate yourself. You will not walk away fulfilled; you will walk away empty. You won't walk away satisfied; you'll walk away unfulfilled. You’ll be miserable.
Mike: You know, we look at, very often, the catalyst here: the enemy, Satan, and at one moment in the temptation, he is promising the world and at the end of it, he brings condemnation. It's a terrible, terrible price that he extracts from these women.
Kathy: Yeah, he's a liar and he's the father of lies. He's a deceiver and, you know, the Holy Spirit is always wooing us in the other direction. But the power of our lust and the power of the enemy is so strong. And that's why it's so important to have a real walk with God. That's the only strength that a woman will have is what she has between her and the Lord.
Mike: So, I guess it's somewhat of an admonition, but really an encouragement when Paul said that God always - always provides a way of escape.
Kathy: No temptation has taken you but what is common to man. But God will, with the temptation, make a way for you to - get the heck out of Dodge!
Mike: And it's up to us to take that way.
Kathy: I did this when I was a young Christian. I always waited for something to float down out of heaven and make me different. But, so much of the Christian life is obedience. It's going through painful experiences. It's all of those things, and all of it is for our good. And that's what the Christian life is. It's a journey. It's very much a walk. It's very much a relationship. It's me coming into my rightful place before God.
