Video coming soon. The video teaching for Day 13 is still in production. Read the full lesson below, it will be added here as soon as it is ready.
We're still on sacrifice #4: sacrificing your anonymity. Today we get specific about exactly what to be honest about.
The garage door I forgot to lock
I live in south Oklahoma City. Over the years I've had two lawnmowers, two weedeaters, two leaf blowers, and five or six bicycles stolen. I've learned to lock up. Once, I checked every door and window in the house except one: the garage door. It sat open all night, a ten-foot-wide invitation to anyone walking by.
Do you have any doors wide open besides your internet filter?
Today we're identifying exactly where lust gets an entrance, so you know what to actually get honest about.
"See what earnestness this godly grief has produced in you, but also what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what longing, what zeal…"
An eagerness to clear yourself: to get all the way transparent. That's the opposite of minimizing the problem.
The MAP method
A lot of men have known for a long time what they need to do. They just haven't done it yet. They've been meaning to. Today's the day to stop meaning to. Here are three things to analyze, using the acronym MAP:
Media inputs
What are you watching or scrolling through? You can't spend hours every day consuming content that sexualizes women and focuses on sensuality, and then act surprised when that's where your mind goes at night. All music is worship music, in the sense that it lifts something up as worthy of your attention, your thinking, your hope, and often, that something is lust. Shows aren't neutral either; they carry a perspective about what's worth wanting.
Then there's the algorithm: the programming that chooses what to show you next on social media. After a few days, your feed is basically a mirror of what you've been looking at. Those platforms exist to sell your attention, so whatever keeps you swiping is what they'll keep giving you. If your feed is full of content that pulls you toward lust, that's not an accident, and you don't have to stay a victim of it. This is battlefield triage: if you're wounded and bleeding out, now is not the time to sit and scroll. Get out of it first. Once you're healthy, you can retrain your algorithm toward things that are actually good.
Access points
Where do you usually get hit with lustful options? Some men need to move the television out of the bedroom, or out of the house entirely. Some need to cancel a streaming service or delete an app. What are your access points?
Patterns
When do you fall? What time of day? What does the hour before it look like: late at night, alone with your phone in bed? Early morning before anyone's up? Traveling, alone in a hotel room? You know your pattern. It has a shape. Identify it, then deliberately break the shape: go to bed at a different time, charge your phone in another room, change the setup. You cannot keep handing the enemy the same conditions and expect a different outcome.
Work through your MAP with people who get it.
The workbook walks you through Media, Access points, and Patterns step by step, so you're not guessing what to write.
Back to sacrificing your anonymity
Does anyone else actually know your MAP? Have you admitted to God, to yourself, and (this is the important one) to someone else, the real shape of your problem?
Someone might ask why it matters that another person knows. We'll fully unpack that soon, but here's what's true today: when you admit it to someone else, something happens that helps close and lock that garage door. Something happens that helps you stop deceiving yourself.
If you need help thinking through your own MAP, work through it honestly on paper first, then set an appointment to actually tell someone.
This is Day 13 of Victory Over Pornography. Continue to Day 14 →