During my upper elementary school years, I discovered masturbation having witnessed my best friend pleasuring his own self via a hand held vibrator he'd discovered underneath his parents' bed. Thankfully, he demonstrated his technique with his shorts on. From there, I was immensely curious, and as they say, the rest was history.
On most days, during this same period of my life, I made a point to spend a few minutes each day perusing the pages of the Service Merchandise catalog. In particular, the electronics section. I did this in order to dream about purchasing some high dollar toy or somesuch that might make my life that much more fun-filled and pleasurable. If I looked at this catalog once, I looked at it a thousand times, reading the same captions / product descriptions over and over again. It made for a very effective escape.
My parents' marriage experienced massive fallout over multiple acts of infidelity around this same time, therefore what was already an extremely immature marriage was completely blown apart. Bob and Darlene from that point forward simply existed around each other; toleration was the key.
I was ignored through all of this devastation despite the fact that I was somewhat privy to the details relative to what had happened. This was a huge mistake that my parents chose to make as they focused solely on themselves and their individual pain.
And all of these proceedings brought about fertile soil for Church Lust to take root.
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Even today, there are times when I simply cannot shake the overarching shame I feel when I see someone at church whom I'm sexually attracted to. It's not that I'm necessarily tempted to lust in that moment, but when you have a history of said church lust from your childhood, I have found it permanently stains your soul and effectively clouds your thinking / experiences within certain situations.
My middle school youth pastor was my secret lover. This was all in my head, but nonetheless, it was just about as real as it could get for a young man who'd never had a sexual experience. And that sexual relationship went on and on throughout his tenure at our church (through my 9th grade year), but especially so whilst being pastored during youth trips / retreats. And all of this occurred sans any special treatment / attention on my youth pastor's part towards Rob. It's important too that you realize that I was simply a background student, rarely making a peep outside of small talk with my friends, and that our youth group was sizable, taking into account grades 7th through 12th. The latter especially gave me all the more "cover" to construct my sin-laden fantasy as I observed at arms length.
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Lust always involves imagination. It's identifying a part of someone or an entire someone you're sexually attracted to prior to placing them within a fantastical narrative where fornication / adultery occurs. It's as simply as that.
And unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you frame it), unlike the Service Merchandise catalog, people you're sexually attracted to are sometimes really hard to avoid, taking into account the comings and goings of life. And this can be especially true when you're a teenager.
As a side note, I carried on similarly sexually charged fantasies with teachers and coaches at my school as well, therefore all of this pubescent wiener rubbing quickly became second nature to me. Literally to the point of taking stock of it relative to its importance as I would brushing my teeth each morning before school. Hence, these fantasies became intricately interwoven with my hyper fluctuating adolescent emotional state of mind and unabashedly addictive to partake in.
In the past, I've described this season as one where if I were to quantify the amount of semen I ejaculated, it would easily have filled a 55 gallon drum. Obviously, I know, way too much wiener on my hands.
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What keeps men as far away from the church house as possible on Sundays? Typically it's shame.
They might cite "refusing to mingle with hypocrites", but that's a ruse. It's shame that's holding them back. It's no different than a fat person eschewing a gym, and this is a very, very hard thing to overcome.
Satan by definition is our accuser. The Bible says that he spends an inordinate amount of time doing just that around God's throne, talking trash about none other than us. For he's privy to our past, highly intelligent and extremely cunning. He knows what we've been up, even before we completely understood the brevity of what we were doing (childhood). There's very little about us that's he's not taken stock of, all in the hopes of shaming us down the road. For inciting shame within men is one of his greatest tools in hopes of keeping us stagnant and depressed.
Don't fall for it. If you're a Christian, Satan's lies are just that. Lies.
Take the time to dissect your past. This is called Self Examination. Use that good work to help you see clearly where you've been and why (to the best of your ability). From there, use it to your's and the Holy Spirit's advantage as you work to resist feelings of shame.
Emotions are important, but they're not inexcusable. Shame is an emotion. A terrible, debilitating emotion, but it can be overcome if its root is brought into the light.
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