I (Corey) was recently looking through old pictures of my wife and I that were taken back when we were in our teens.
They immediately brought about some heavy feelings of grief. It felt strange, I’ve seen these pictures so many times before.
It wasn’t long before I started to understand the grief was coming from a place of regret, disgust, and shame.
None of these words were a description of her but was how I was feeling about myself.
I remember my porn addiction. I remember my objectification of her. I remember the times I wasn’t spiritually available to encourage her, in her walk [with Jesus].
All of these things would effect her and be some of the issues in the early part of our marriage.
The thing I didn’t realize back then: all these things came from not knowing the love of God for me and how He viewed me.
There was the part of me that knew these things were wrong I had at least that bit of morality. The part where I knew I was God’s boy whom He loved, whom He would do anything for, whom He desired to have His Spirit live inside of and transform radically well, I never fully understood any of that.
God doesn’t want us to miss knowing how much He cares about us.
The way that He shows His love to people of all types throughout the Bible gives us hope. Yeah, God can love us too! Those spiritual strongholds that rip us away from our child of God identity, can be torn down and destroyed.
During those years of struggle I accepted, “Hey I’m a guy, I’m just going to struggle with these things.“
Ladies I know there are those of you reading this that also have struggles like these.
But dear child of God, for us to accept an impure lifestyle and just say “well I guess this is my cross to bear” we are in danger of rejecting God's will for us to be holy (1 Thessalonians 4:4) as He is holy (Leviticus 19:2). We are giving ourselves permission to leave those spiritual strongholds constructed in our lives which will eventually overtake us.
These strongholds have to be destroyed. So that you can live holy, set apart and in intimacy with the Lord.
Reach out to God. Ask the Father to show you His heart for you personally. Ask Jesus to be with you in the dark places. In the middle of the struggle. Confess that you can’t do it and you need Him. He is there!
~ Corey Santistevan
