Rewiring Our Brains From Pornographyናሙና

Habits of Accountability and Confession

The next step in breaking free of sexual sin and pursuing holiness is to establish some accountability with a mentor and other men.    

Accountability works like this. First, clearly agree to the boundary: “I will not be on the Internet when I am alone.” Next, if you cross the boundary, if you get on the Internet alone, you’ve broken your word and need to confess it to others, even if you don’t look at pornography. This is important. Having given your word about the boundary, you sin if you fail to abide by it. And you should confess that sin, even when it doesn’t lead to lust.

At this early stage accountability has two goals. First, we want to begin to retrain the conscience. That’s why clarity about the artificial boundaries is so important. Most guys who are neck-deep in sexual sin have desensitized consciences. They tend to be numb and deadened by sin. So one of our goals is to reawaken the conscience so it becomes rightly tuned and sensitive. We want it to be triggered early; the moment you get on the Internet alone, you ought to think, Oh no; I promised the guys I wouldn’t do this. Now I need to confess my failure to them.

And this is the second goal of accountability—building habits and patterns of honesty, trustworthiness, and confession. Habits of confession are incredibly important in the Christian life. Though this is certainly a matter of wisdom and personal application, in my experience a wise and healthy pattern of confession runs like this.

First, you must confess your sin to God. Forthright, honest, sincere, no minced words. This repentance and confession is what puts you right in the universe. Period. Your sin was ultimately against God, and therefore God must ultimately forgive you. This is the fundamental forgiveness we all need, and this forgiveness stabilizes us for any subsequent confession to other people.

Next, having repented and confessed your sin to God, you should then confess your sin to other men. This is a fruit of repenting to God. The aim is healing and holiness. This confession should also be sincere, forthright, sufficiently specific, with no minced words or euphemisms. Truthfulness and accuracy are what we’re after—specificity without being graphic. 

The main aim of confessing to other men is healing and holiness. But a secondary aim is wise counsel from them about what and how to confess the sin to your wife. Is this violation the sort that must be confessed to her? If so, what level of detail needs to be shared? Wise counsel from other men has a stabilizing effect and prevents the kind of reactive anxiety that further damages your marriage.

Finally, having confessed and been forgiven by God, and having confessed to other men for the purposes of accountability, healing, and holiness, you should confess to your wife—not in order to be put right in the universe but in order to make things right with her. But notice something—this confession comes from a place of divine acceptance and wise counsel. In other words, you’re now confessing out of your acceptance before God rather than confessing in order to receive absolution from your wife. What’s more, if she knows you’ve confessed fully to God and to other men, and if she trusts the wisdom, godliness, and counsel of those men, then, Lord willing, she won’t want to demand an unhealthy disclosure of details that will cause more damage to the marriage. 

A man who is resting in God’s approval and has been counseled by godly men is able to calmly and sorrowfully say to his wife, “This is what I’ve done. I’ve confessed it to God. I’ve confessed it to these men. And they counseled me to share this much detail with you. I’m so sorry that I’ve hurt you. And here are the steps we’re taking to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

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We adapted this plan from another resource. Learn more at morethanabattle.com