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May 21, 2010

Purity Project Steps to Recovery

The steps
Do you want to be free from your addictive and/or compulsive behaviors?  If so, you’ll need a road map that’s been tested and proven.  The Purity Project is an interdenominational group of Christian men dedicated to helping those who want to be free from their sexually destructive  behaviors and we’ve worked with countless men who have found victory by following the steps below.  These are not steps you can do by yourself–they require others to walk the path along with you–and that’s what we’re here for.  We hold open meetings each week and intensive mentoring classes each January and August.    There are three aspects of the path: seeking, finding and connecting.

Seeking

Admit that you need help.

It goes without saying that we won’t seek help until we know that we need it, are willing to seek it, and become ready to live differently. In theory this is a simple step; but it can very difficult to do in real life. It took me almost 15 years to seek the help I needed; and, in my work with numerous other men, I’ve found that my story isn’t that unusual. It takes a lot of emotional energy to get to the point where we clearly understand that we need to go a different direction. Until our life begins to crash upon the rocks we usually don’t make serious changes in our lives.

The good news is this; we serve a God who is always hoping that we will come to him for help. It doesn’t matter if we’ve never known God at all, thought we knew him well, or have drifted far away from him; God is always at work and ready to use the very circumstances of our pain to set the stage for our future healing. A prayer as simple as “God, please help me,” is enough to bring about the people, places and things you’ll need for help. If you have come to this website, please know that it is by the grace of God that you have been led here. God is already answering your prayer for relief.

I come to know God.

We need God. Let’s face it, if we haven’t been able to stop doing what we’ve been doing on our own by now we never will! We tried to quit acting out many times. We’ve followed all sorts of programs, read all kinds of books, used our will power and tried to stop numerous times. Even though we’ve been failing, it’s hard to admit defeat. We need a power that is greater than ourselves—or we don’t stand a chance.

At the same time, as we turn to the power of God for our lives, we need to learn more about God—who he is and how he works. The truth is, most of us need to start afresh about our concepts of God. Our notions of God didn’t keep us from failure and didn’t deliver us. We have a desperate need to learn the truth about God and the relationship he envisions for us.

Finally, we have to learn, really learn, an awesome truth. There is a God and we’re not it! As we learn more about God, we come to see how we’ve actually been trying to do the work that is reserved for God. We’ve been trying to control the people, places and things about us—with disastrous results. We have to be taught how to be disciples of God—not try to be God.

Finding

I replace my thoughts with his thoughts and my deeds with his deeds.

We seek God for a reason; we need his help and power in our lives. We realize that we cannot heal ourselves; therefore, the healing must come from Him. We may have sought God before, but this time we need to do it differently. This time, instead of learning about him—we decide that what we really need is an experience with him. Think of it this way.

I could talk to you all day long about my dad. I could tell you all of his good qualities and what he was like as a father. If I did so, you’d probably appreciate him as a person—but you still wouldn’t know what he was really like unless you had an experience with him as his son. The same is true of our heavenly father. We can study our Bibles and listen to preachers tell us all about God. We can learn a thousand and one facts about him; but none of this will be meaningful until we have a personal experience with Him.

The way we do this is to start replacing our thoughts with His thoughts and our deeds with His deeds. As we do this, a marvelous change begins to take place. We actually come into a personal relationship with Him. We also discover a subtle living presence within us. This is none other than the Holy Spirit.

I give up trying to control people, places and things.

When we find God, we discover that our relationship has certain rules.  Simply stated, “There is only one God, and I am not it.” If God is not in charge of everything and I am making myself to be God. Since God is God, and I am His disciple, I am expected to place my trust in him and follow his leading.  Our relationship gets better as I give more and more aspects of my life over to Him.  Once I stop trying to be in charge of all the people, places and things in my life, God is able to give me what I really need—and often it is surprising to discover that what I really needed was different that what I thought. If I really insist on running my life my way, God will always let me try; but, I soon learn that my successes are few and small.  When I try and assume control of all that happens to me—I am making myself to be a God for my life.

Connecting

I do what I can to make things right with God, myself, and others

The last stage of recovery has to do with making connections with others.  The fantasy world of sexual compulsions, addictions and pornography isolates us from others.  It draws us into our minds and makes us more intent on pleasing ourselves than others.  We lose our hearts of compassion and become selfish as we seek to fulfill our needs.  This isolation causes pain in other people as they deal with our anger, resentments and indifference.  God never intended for us to lives of isolation or lives that inflict pain on others.

God’s intention is that we should live in a healthy relationship with those about us because of our relationship with him.  When we make God’s thoughts our thoughts and his deeds our deeds, it becomes possible to live in harmony with ourselves and others.  Once we start doing this, we realize that we have a work of reconciliation that is similar to Christ’s reconciling work with us.  We begin to mend relationships that were strained or broken and we do our best to make amends to everyone that we may have hurt—and this includes ourselves.  We adopt new attitudes and behaviors and we learn how to successfully connect with others.  This doesn’t happen all at once, but over time.  Before long, we discover that we are more successful in our interactions than unsuccessful and that we have been transformed to a new way of living.

I live a life devoted to serving God, others and myself.

At the Purity Project we define healing something like this: it’s when we are able to give to others more than we take from them. Healing means we are no longer caught in our compulsive behaviors or in mental negativity. Before the steps, we needed more help than we were able to give to others. Now, as we enjoy a life of relationship with Christ, our friends, and our families, we find that we enjoy a transformed life that we have not known before. Yes, we still have problems we are working on; but, we have a new mission in life which is to bring the good news of Christ’s deliverance to others. As other problems arise in our life, we use the tools we have learned in our journey of deliverance to overcome these new challenges.


This post was written by teach4him--a member of the Purity Project in Oklahoma City. If you have questions or comments of a personal nature, you may reach him at teach4him@purityproject.com

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