Freedom from sexual sin

It started when I was about 3 or 4. My parents worked and so would drop my siblings and I to my uncle's house on their way to work so that my uncle could look after us during the day and my sister and I would play with each other and watch TV at his house until my parents arrived to pick us up. One day, as siblings do, my sister and I were arguing over something silly (probably the remote and what we're going to watch on TV) and I got really annoyed with her so I went upstairs to report her to my uncle. I opened the bedroom door and my uncle was there having sex with a naked woman. As you can imagine, as I was so young, I didn't really understand what was going on but what it did do was leave a mark in my mind. The image never really left. I remember being about 12 and having the image in my mind and wondering whether I had made it up or not but my uncle confirmed to me that I hadn't.

I became increasingly curious about sex and became sexually active from a very young age (I'm talking year 2, year 3 (i.e. 6-8 years old)) and doing things that you wouldn't expect a child of such an age to do or even know about. When I had opened that bedroom door, I experienced a feeling that I wanted to create over and over again and so my exploration was with a view to achieving that.

This curiosity carried on in secondary school. In secondary school, I became exposed more to pornography and eventually developed an addiction to it. I'd come home from school and watch it; sometimes I'd even watch it in the morning before school. It became a burden and something that I began to really struggle with. Because it's an addiction that people don't tend to speak about as freely, I felt like I couldn't really reach out to anyone for help. The thing about lust is that once you feel it, you want to keep feeling it again and no experience ever satisfies so you keep pursuing it. It led me to have sex with lots of girls but because I hated the feeling afterwards, I'd quickly disassociate myself with them and run as far away as I could from them. Relationships that I had, that I cherished, became ruined because of lust. It got to a point where I ended up telling a girl that I really cared for that we couldn't continue in a relationship any longer because I didn't want her to be my idol of lust.

It weighed me down and for years I felt caged. Lust played on my mind daily and I'd try to get images out of my head and I couldn't. I felt like a slave to lust. Until one day, I heard the verse "if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off". I had heard this verse so many times but it didn't register with me until that one moment. That is how far away God wants us to be from sin. We talk about it so metaphorically and distance these instructions from ourselves sometimes but it became so real to me in that moment. If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off. I feel like when I came to that realisation that God wants me to run from this thing, I strived to get away from it. I took crazy measures and set certain boundaries to help. I made sure that I wouldn't go on my laptop at certain times (particularly the night time) and made sure not to visit certain girls' houses.

Despite taking these measures, I still continued to fall. I spoke to a pastor about it and he gave me a book. I opened the book and the first three or four pages was telling the story of grown men whose families had been ripped apart and torn to shreds because of lust and pornography. I read these pages and knew that that was not what I wanted for myself. That cannot be me. I strived, I laboured, I fasted and prayed to God. It wasn't something that changed in one day but it was a journey of enlightenment and grace and every step I took I saw more and more of God's grace. I saw God's saving hand come and reach me. I saw God's love draw me in. I saw His mercy reign over me and it was such a beautiful feeling. It was such a beautiful feeling and I just thank God.