Overcome Porn: The 40 Day ChallengeНамуна

We’ve taken an in-depth look at what it means to run from porn, run to better pleasures, and run with people who will strengthen us for the fight. Today we’ll look at Jesus, the ultimate model of these principles.

Jesus Ran From

In Matthew 4, we find Jesus in the wilderness fasting for 40 days. Jesus was on the brink of starvation when Satan comes in and suggests turning rocks into bread. In response, Jesus says he needs the Father’s word more than he needs physical nourishment 

Even when it feels like we’re “starving” sexually, we can look at Jesus and say to the temptation of porn, “Man does not live on sexual gratification, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.”

Jesus Ran To

Having failed to make Jesus bend to a literal biological need, Satan takes him up to a mountain and spreads the world out before him. All Jesus has to do is agree that Satan is higher than God. But Jesus refused to trade his true and better kingship for an easy way out. 

When we look to Jesus, we can forfeit the false intimacy and pleasure of porn and instead endure our own sexual temptations, knowing that Jesus has something better for us—if not in this life, then a greater intimacy and joy with God himself in the life to come.

Jesus Ran With

Our triune God has never been alone. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have always coexisted in perfect unity and harmony. If there was ever a human who didn’t need others, it was Jesus.

And yet, from the crowds of men and women surrounding him, he called out twelve men to share more deeply in his joys and sorrows, and from those twelve, he called three of them to a particularly close friendship. If even Jesus wanted his friends to pray for him, who are we to try to go it alone?

Reflection

Why did Jesus do this? Why would God come down and lay aside his power to spend 30ish years in a human body, walking among us? He came not only to die for our sins, but to be pure and perfect for us—to feel our pleasures and pains, and to share in our sufferings so that we could share in his glory.