Today, I’ve transcribed a pretty dynamic and tech-savvy testimony by a Christian guy on YouTube named Nathan Taliaferro. Nathan became hooked on pornography in his early 20s after experiencing a health crisis that drove him to seek sensual images as a means of comfort. After numerous failed attempts to get free, including an episode where he smashed his dumbphone, Taliaferro was able to break his addiction with the power of faith. Taliaferro attributes his freedom to a decision he made to believe Biblical truths about the issue, and cooperate with God in the process of recovery.
Taliaferro’s 4 tips for Christians struggling with porn addiction are 1-) Recognize your powerlessness. Taliaferro’s track record of failure was evidence that he simply could not defeat this sin with his own strength. Taliaferro illustrates his point with the story of the Hebrew king, Jehoshaphat, who sought God after being confronted by a vast army from Edom. 2-) Go to God. Humility alerts a man to his need for God, whereas pride says “I got this,” and refuses to accepts God’s grace after relapse; 3-) Cooperate with God synergistically. Faith works when we move hand-in-hand with God, not when we passively expect God to do everything on our behalf; and 4-) Don’t get overconfident. After experiencing success, it’s easy to get complacent and stop doing the things that got you where you are. Stay vigilant.
Check out the complete video and transcript below!
Freedom from this sin was like walking out of a fog. I have a deep peace and joy in my life. True joy that lasts longer than my short stints in-between my sin before. Freedom from sexual sin is liberating, empowering, and energizing. I love my life without this sin.
Nathan Taliaferro
For more from Nathan, see Quit Porn Addiction By Thinking Differently (A Christian Perspective). You can also visit the complete archive of articles on integrity.
Transcript Of Nathan Taliaferro Sharing How He Quit His Porn Addiction
For many years, I was enslaved by pornography, but eventually I found several things that helped me find lasting victory and purity.
There was a long period of my life when I was enslaved to pornography. Almost all of us who have struggled with sexual sin understand when I use the word enslaved. You want to break free. You know the scriptures. You’ve done the research, but freedom seems helplessly out of reach. Up until my early 20s, I resisted the pull of sexual sin and had great success. Then I had a major health crisis at the age of 22, and felt terrible all the time. I started to look at sensual images online to find comfort.
Over the following months, sensual images rapidly turned into pornography on a regular basis, and, despite my efforts to break away, this pattern continued for years. I set up boundaries that I would constantly find shameful and creative ways to get around, so I could get my fix. I betrayed friends’ trust and deeply hurt people in my sometimes desperate search for pornography. I heard lessons, tried online programs, read books—I even attended a sexaholics anonymous meaning, but freedom would never last more than a few weeks at best.
2 Peter 1:3-4 says “His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these, he has given us very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.”
I remember when I was enslaved by pornography. I knew this scripture to be true in my mind, but my heart was like “Really?” If I have everything I need, why am I still stuck here. But since then, I know in my mind and in my heart that this scripture is true. Freedom from this sin was like walking out of a fog. I have a deep peace and joy in my life. True joy that lasts longer than my short stints in-between my sin before. Freedom from sexual sin is liberating, empowering, and energizing. I love my life without this sin. I haven’t watch pornography since August of 2018.
Look, in no way is this video a cure-all, or some kind of formula for you to have guaranteed success in your sexual purity. I’m going to be pulling a lot of inspiration from Tom Nuelle’s study series Living Pure. There’s more info in the description below. I want to give you 4 tips that helped me, so you, too, can enjoy true, lasting freedom from this terrible sin.
Tip #1: Recognize Your Powerlessness
Wait, what? That may not sound empowering at all, but here me out. Anyone who’s been enslaved by sexual sin at one time or another understands the deep despair that comes with it. You’ve done it again. You promised last time was going to be your last time. “I had 3 good weeks, what happened?” You feel the despair. Personally, I wanted to go from where I was, and move as fast and as far away from that as I possibly could. Instead, it was a cycle that just kept repeating itself, and seemed to inevitably end in my watching pornography again. I just couldn’t break free.
To show you just how hard I was trying, let me describe my situation. I had accountability software and filtering on my computer and phone. My phone was set up in such a way to make it nearly impossible to access anything sexual. Several times over those years in my sin, I didn’t even have a smartphone. I opted for a dumbphone. And, in an effort to further raise my boundaries, I even got a $300 fancy-designer dumbphone. Youch.
Boundaries are an important part of the journey of purity, and we’re going to dive into that in a future video, but why did I continually go back to my sin? When I would sin, I would follow it up with really beating myself up, praying longer, fasting for days, or smashing my phone in an act of defiance against my sin. No, really, I smashed my phone *shows smashed phone on screen*.
Look, I smashed that phone long before I found victory over pornography, and I’m proud of that moment in some ways, but with all the boundaries, which are good, I still lacked a vital understanding of my powerlessness against this sin. In my mind, I was going to overcome this sin. Smashing my phone wasn’t bad, but it didn’t solve the problem. I was trying to fix the problem with God as my wingman, but if I view getting free from my sin like some sort of Chess match and just me and Satan, I’ll never find or maintain freedom. News flash: you’re not going to outwit Satan by yourself. I was powerless to break free, by myself, but that’s just the beginning.
Here’s a situation in the Bible when a king of Judah recognized his own powerlessness. A vast army is approaching King Jehoshaphat, and he’s alarmed, so what does he do? In 2 Chronicles 20:3, “Alarmed, Jehoshaphat resolved to inquire of the Lord, and he proclaimed a fast for all Judah.” He prays in verse 12, “For we have no power to face this vast army that is attacking us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you.”
Tip #2: Go Directly To God
Don’t go to beating yourself up. . . When you see that victory is only possible with God, there’s only one thing to do, and that is come to God. There’s a difference in trying to prove to yourself that you have finally beaten sexual purity, and humbly coming to God for his power and help to defeat your sin.
In the Bible passage, Jehoshaphat knew that this was a lost battle without the Lord. There came a point in my enslavement to pornography where I actually went a few months without looking at it. Things were looking great, but I backslid and I decided to look at pornography again, but this time was a part of big wake-up call that God had for me. I finally fully let God in as he used other people to redirect me to him. A huge part of completely coming to God with your sin is opening up to people that he has placed in your life.
1 John 1:6-7 says “If we claim to have fellowship with him, and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out this truth, but if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus’s purifies us from all sin.”
If you are walking in the light of God, it is assumed you are having fellowship with your fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. There were periods where I felt there was no advice that I hadn’t heard and no knowledge I didn’t already possess. I would use these ideas to prop up my victimhood, thinking things like, “Yeah, I already knew that, and impurity still happens to me. It’s hopeless.” Can you relate? That pride was getting in my way. There were a few people, though, in my life who knew my whole story and that I had been vulnerable with. So after my last time watching pornography, God was able to work through one of these men, as well as in my own heart, and it changed my life for good.
I’d included God before, but this time, God was at the center, not my wingman. I was and am truly powerless to overcome this sin, as my past years of enslavement demonstrate, but with God at the center, everything changed. Thank you God for rescuing me from my sin.
But don’t get me wrong. God isn’t going to do your part for you, which brings me to my next major tip.
Tip #3: You And God Must Have Synergy
Later in that passage with King Jehoshaphat, a prophet tells him, “This is what the Lord says to you. Do not be afraid of discouraged because of this vast army, for the battle is not yours but Gods. Tomorrow, march down against them.”
The people followed God’s lead and marched down against them, but God wipes out the entire army while the Jews are marching out. And, in verse 24, when the men of Judah came to the place that overlooks the desert and looked toward the vast army, they saw only dead bodies lying on the ground. The people came to God, but God still required something of them.
This synergy is an essential part of a Christian life. Yes, you cannot win without God, but Jehoshaphat and the Jewish people didn’t stay home and watch Netflix while God went out without them. They took up their swords and marched to the battleline, and the Lord brought victory. God isn’t going to pull you along like a puppet. In my victory over pornography, God has not been my puppeteer; instead, I have been his humble servant, his obedient son, as I do my best to submit to him. I draw my sword, and God brings the victory.
Working together with God, not only can you defeat sexual impurity, but as the scripture read earlier says, “His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life.”
So what does this synergy look like?
Well, one practical is impressing God’s word on your heart. John 14:26, “But the advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the father will send in my name, will teach you all things, and will remind you everything I have said to you.”
You know, it’s hard to remind someone of something they don’t already know. Does the Spirit have anything to pull from to remind you of things. It’s important to drink in the scriptures, like a tree planted by streams of water. Something that really helped me was memorizing scriptures, specifically about sexual purity. I really started to connect with God’s heart as I memorized these passages and recited them every morning.
Over two years in, I still recite at least one memory scripture specifically about sexual purity every morning and pray for purity. If you want to work together with God at the center of the effort, you must be in his word, in communication with him. You’re not going to do this alone. And God’s not going to do everything for you.
Tip #4: Be careful of the trap of overconfidence. To fight this, we have to be consistent.
If you work on recovery for long enough, it can be really easy to be overconfident. It’s amazing how short-term memory loss seems to be a problem for many of us who have bene stuck in a cycle of sexual sin at some point. A week in to my recovery, I would sometimes feel like, “Hey, I think I got this.” I thought I had the situation under control, and so I stopped really leaning on God. Sometimes I just really wanted my sin to be fully in my past, so I wouldn’t have to ever think about it again.
Here’s a passage of scripture that illustrates my point. King Uzziah was a king who did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, and he grew powerful. Let’s read in 2 Chronicles 26:16, “But after Uzziah became powerful, his pride led to his downfall. He was unfaithful to the Lord his God and entered the temple of the Lord to burn incense on the altar of incense.”
Uzziah had apparently gotten so powerful that in his mind certain rules didn’t apply to him anymore. So at what point in our recovery from sexual sin do we stop needing God? “Maybe like a week.” “I think I’ve got it after a month, right?” “6 months? 6 years?
The fact is we should always be heavily leaning on God our entire lives in every aspect. Woah, that is overwhelming, but just take it day by day. Today, live for God. Don’t worry about tomorrow or the rest of your life. Just live for God today.
But, as soon as you start to feel like, “I got this now.” Or “I’m good.” Take that as a red flag, and remember how important it is to remain consistent. Uzziah grew powerful in humility and respect for God took at downturn. Remember how you felt when you just started to pursue purity seriously. You understood the stakes were high. Beware of losing that. Beware of, “I can afford skipping my time with God now.” Or “I can afford a couple of days without prayer at this point. I got this under control.” When you think these things, take that as a reminder, that you need to draw even closer to god now, and just focus on today.
So, remember, you have to admit your powerlessness with this sin. From there, come to God and begin to work together toward repentance. God will hold true to his promises.
And, finally, don’t stop after a couple days, weeks, or months. Put God in charge of your purity life, constantly and consistently from now on. I hope these 4 tips are going to find victory over sexual impurity in your life. Freedom from sexual sin is incredible, and I love my life now, thanks to God working powerfully in my life and bringing me victory.
