Chapter XVIII

Chapter XVIII

It Was Removed

    When I started into the study of Hosea I was studying the fifth step about unending love. The fifth step took me to Hosea in my study. As I began to study, the study grew to a passion, which lead me to the study of the whole book and writing of this book. Hosea touched every part of my life including reconciliation with family members and God. As I studied I saw the will of God in how reconciliation is supposed to work. The fact that I am separated from my wife I am sure gave me some of the passion to study Hosea. When I think of the things that I have done, and the chances of reconciliation with My Lady, the chances are very, very slim. The book of Hosea gave me hope for reconciliation. At the same time, I can recall hearing for years the phrase, Jesus is all I need.   I have had people ask me when quoting the phrase and I asked the same question to myself, how can Jesus satisfy my sexual needs? I am going to answer that question now, and at the same time explain how I know without a shadow of a doubt that as God states, I have been cured, which comes from lesson six or step six in the 12 Step recovery program. (With the completion of step six in the next chapter I am only halfway through my 12 Step program. I have an idea step seven through twelve will also become a book.)

    Within a week of beginning to turn my life around I went on a search to find a search group. I visited several Bible bookstores to find if they had received any large orders of the books Search for Significance or Untangling Relationships. I wanted to plug into a study that could help me. There had not been, but I found a church that had in the past bought the materials and used them.

    Let me emphasize here that when you make a decision to give your life over to God and to get help, as you pray God will help you by bringing people into your path that can help you. When I allowed my addiction to bind me I found that I was bound totally with no freedom from bondage. You can be like Paul, although bound in chains in a prison Paul was still totally free of his past bondage to sin. People may have you legally bound, maybe even prison, but if that does happen you are still free from the chains, which were far worse than prison. I have been set free regardless of what happens to my body.

    I had prayed, within four days of being set free of my bondage by confessing my faults to my friend Scotty. The first thing I did starting Friday morning just five days after the confrontation with my wife was to seek counsel. I found a pastor who had a master’s degree in counseling and believed in mercy and grace. I believe it was the same day I found my new friend (a state trooper). I went to the church I had been told had search class. I drove up to find that the pastor was not there. There were a few musicians practicing and one muscular short-haired sergeant-looking guy. I found out that this guy had been called because he had a key to get into the church. He was a state trooper who just happened to be called because he facilitates a group when the church is empty. As I began to talk to the man of my desire to find a search group he told me that his wife was getting ready to start a new group several months away. As we talked I began to tell him of some of the reasons why I was looking. Of all the churches, of all the hundred thousand or so of people that live in my area, of all the times to stop, I meet the man that facilitates a group to gain freedom from sexual addiction using God-based Rapha materials. Tell me that wasn't God. I won’t except your opinion. I might even tell you to go eat fur balls. Within one week of our meeting I was in the class. I met a whole group of guys who were coming to be set free of all kinds of addictions. I can not give any details as to personal history but the class is open to those who want to be set free from being addicted to porno, the gay life style and self-gratification.

    One of their books that everyone volunteers to work on along with the 12 Step program is 90 Days to Freedom. The book is a help book to be freed from self-gratification.   In the past week, I was the last one asked.

    I explained that I had no problem with the issue in that I did not believe it was a sin. From the first class until the second class I continued. After all if a nationally known evangelist can write that it’s okay in his monthly magazine then it must be okay. Of course several years later the man was caught taking pictures of a nude hooker. Now this man explained that as long as you weren’t thinking of anyone else but your wife that it was okay- some kind of picture has got to be going through your head and Jesus said the very thought is the same as adultery. I never have figured out what that preacher wanted to do with those pictures.

    Anyway, three times in one week, thoughts of my wife the first two, the third I found myself fighting with pictures in my head, which flashed back and forth between my wife and another. As I finished the guilt hit. I don’t need this. And I stopped. I went back to class, confessed and that was it.

    I'll tie all this together in just a minute.

    As the Super Bowl commercials and the game approached it took me back to my honeymoon just one year ago. I began kicking myself and hurting because we were married the 27th of January and watched the game the 28th the following day together. So is it time for kicking?

    I thought so, several months ago. I sat down and wrote a list of words in their most vulgar forms to describe myself. They all fit.

    What started the kicking was when my step-daughter was supposed to be cheerleading at a certain game in another state. I called our cable company to see when it would air, it was not to air in our area. So I tried to arrange so I could watch or have it recorded in the state it was in. The team was so bad that it was not going to be aired. I call the association that video tapes all games, they said, The team is so bad we aren’t even sending out a team to video tape it.   They said, The half time entertainment with your step-daughter will probably be the highlight of the evening.   I felt like a piece of dung.   (I’m getting much better in using words that don’t have to be edited out.)

    I wanted to write about my feeling of just how it felt to be separated so that I could help others, so I went to where I had spent my honeymoon. I took the elevator to the floor and walked down to the room. I went back down stairs and sat by the pool and whirlpool where we spent our first three days together. I then went to the second hotel and checked out the Jacuzzi, where we spent time together. (They’re rebuilding it.) By the time I got back home to write I not only felt like a piece of dung, I was convinced I was a piece of dung and a total 7th planet from the sun. I was not able to write, and it did nothing for me to help me.

    The pain I feel comes while watching T.V. when a commercial comes on for Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman or anything on that my wife liked to watch. The pain comes when riding near where we used to live, when I think about dolphins, when I think about gold fish and when I hear certain songs. There is constant sorrow for the ones I hurt but when that sorrow comes I start to pray for them.

    I did learn something. If you want to kick yourself you can find ways to do it. You can go to a bar (I did not) and play all the sad songs on the juke box and drink until you’re unconscious. It will not help. If you cry in your beer while you’re listening to your sad songs it will only make your beer warm and salty.

    I have found that I do need to look at myself. I do need to search and find the problems I chose. I do need to shed tears over the sorrow that I chose but I do not need to cry over songs that talk about being apart. I do not need to visit places where we spent time together. Those tears do not bring healing. The tears of sorrow as I pray for the Lord to show me my wrongs will bring healing to me and the prayers will bring healing to those I have hurt.

    Am I kicking myself too much? No. Let me tell you why. As I am looking at myself I am not embracing what I find. I am looking at myself so I can find what needs to be thrown away. I am not throwing away who I am, I’m throwing away who I was. Who I am is who I like. Who I was I liked too. Who I was wasn't the problem, it was what was in me that was the problem.   What was in me latched on to what I am to destroy who I am. So why would I be afraid to look at what I was? I had garbage in me. Who God is making me to be is becoming part of who I am. What God is making me is being added to who I am now and to who I was with the garbage removed. For the first time in my life I like me. He has left me with who I am and who I was without the garbage. So why should I be afraid to search into who I was to find the garbage. God is only removing the garbage. So am I kicking me too much? No. I am confessing what I was and kicking it out of my life forever. I really do not know what my future holds but I do know my future is based in 100% truth, 100 % truth allows me freedom to go forward. 100% truth in confession to God and man allows 100% healing. I learned a very important lesson from a friend of mine named Scotty. I was put into a position where I had to talk to him one day. I know I had garbage in my life. I had been caught in an adulterous situation. I called Scotty and made an appointment to see him. Scotty told me that those things in my life would cause me to be bound. I wanted to be free but how could I? The garbage was the reason I was bound. The garbage took away my freedom. When I sat down with Scotty I knew he was a man that could help me. It has now been almost four months since the day I talked with Scotty and still when I think of what that man did for me I begin to weep. I can not thank the man enough. The tears are flowing again as I write. I have never loved a man like I love Scotty in my life. I say again like I have said before. Thank you sir. God knew what he was doing when he brought Scotty on board my Star Ship. Scotty has done more for me than any man in my life to help me understand just how my mind computer was programmed. Scotty has done more to help me understand how to delete the garbage than any man. Within days of the release of my bondage I started to understand a verse that I had underlined in my Bible when I was sixteen years old. The verse was James 5:16 KJV, Confess your faults one to another...   Those words had haunted me for years, knowing what my secret problems and faults were.

    As I sat there reading that verse again, I began to see that to confess my faults would make me accountable to somebody, when I would be honest with another person, a police officer, a pastor, a priest, or a Rabbi, then they could look me in the eye from then on and say, How are you doing this week, Sam?   That is what search groups and group therapy is all about.   Hanging my laundry out for all to see, you better believe it. There is no other way for healing. I spent three hours with Scotty then five hours with my pastor where I live, then called by phone to my pastor where I used to live, then talked with my mother, father, sister and brother-in-law and my kids and their mother, the confessing has brought miracle after miracle of healings to those who I have hurt because of my addiction.

    Within a few days I went and found my old Bible that I used when I was a teenager looked up the verse and read, Confess your faults one to another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed.   As I read the word healed, it led me to believe my fault might be a sickness. Then I went on to read, The effectual fervent prayer of a righteousness man availeth much.

    By being 100% truthful in confessing I am now able to be prayed for, for my healing. If you go to the doctor with kidney stones that gives you excruciating pain you do not go in to the doctor and tell him your arm hurts and hide the pain. If you can be 100% truthful Doctor Jesus, the master surgeon, who with his word can cut tissue from bone will cut away the cancerous garbage so you can be totally healed. Don’t hide the pain, don’t protect the cancer, confess it so you can be healed. I do not want the cancer, I do not want the garbage in my life. I do not want the pain it has caused me in divorce, separation and wounded hearts.

    As I was feeling the pain in myself, triggered by the T.V. commercials of the Super Bowl and the trigger of remembering that Saturday was the day that one year ago I had been married, I kept myself busy all day writing and continued until about 4:00 a.m. into Sunday morning. I went out for a walk to pray. As I was praying is when I realized that Jesus is all I need when I realized that I am now almost to 120 days of being delivered from self-gratification. I realized that there is absolutely no way I could have done that on my own. This thing had a hold on me since I was twelve when a sixteen year old teenager had gotten a hold of me and showed me how thirty-four years ago. Not only that but I had just broken a fast that lasted eighteen days. I ate nothing. I drank coffee. I have wanted to fast again and had not been able to fast more than three days since I was sixteen years old. I went through the Christmas season with one party right after another without even being tempted to eat. I wrapped up cookies and cake and pie, etc. to take home and freeze. I found out the Russian Christmas is celebrated just a few days after my fast would be over in January. I planned on celebrating then with my goodies. The reasons I was fasting was for God to bring healing to those I had hurt with a heavy burden for one in particular, and for hearts to soften to allow healing to start. The point of this is that both of these victories I could have never done in myself. It is impossible. You see I now understand that Jesus truly is all I need. Anybody else that becomes a part of my life is only put there to help me grow and to complement who I am in Christ.