Overview: 

What's happening to me? 
Why am I going through this? 
How do I get out....?
A husband comes home to find his wife next to the computer, holding a long printout of all the pornographic sites he has visited in the last three months. "What's this?!" she shouts angrily, and suddenly he feels the little habit he has tried to hide and justify as no big deal now has risen up to be the dominant preoccupation of his life... 
A quarter before midnight a young man tells himself, "No! I'm not going anywhere tonight. I don't want to do it. Never again!" yet within minutes he is heading out the door, seeking out another sexual encounter... 
A sincere, Christian man who seeks a close walk with the Lord grows increasingly frustrated that he can't stop his habit of masturbation, even though there are many times he has begged and pleaded on his knees with the Lord to take it from him... 
A wife tearfully confronts her husband when she discovers he has spent the equivalent of their car payment in a strip club. He defends himself and puts her down for confronting him, but inside asks himself, "Why did I go and do that?!"

What is happening to me?

Principle #1: It's sexual sin.
People try to understand it by calling it many different names: sexual addiction, a slip, an affair, a search for intimacy, an alternative lifestyle... God has one word to describe it: sin.

Principle #2: As sin, you can't change it.
Jesus Christ says, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin" (John 8:34). You don't control sin; sin controls you. Your thoughts, your actions, even your very being is captive to sin. No matter how many counselors you see, no matter how many books on sexual addiction you read, no matter how many support groups you attend, no matter how many years of sexual sobriety you reach, you cannot escape sin. No one in the entire history of humankind has been able to overcome sin... except Jesus Christ.

Principle #3: Jesus Christ has overcome sin.
He alone has overcome sin. He lived a sinless life, took our sin upon Himself on the cross, died for it, and was resurrected from the dead. He is alive, and sin and death cannot touch Him.

Principle #4: Your only hope for overcoming sexual sin is to share in the victory Jesus Christ has won already over it.
As you humble yourself before God, accepting by faith the death of Jesus Christ as payment for your sin debt, inviting Him by His resurrection to take control over all aspects of your life, you share in the victory He has won over sexual sin.

Why am I going through this?

You have a heart problem.
Jesus identifies that sexual sin is a heart problem. "Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart" (Matthew 5:28). "For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications..." (Matthew 15:19).

God, out of His desire for a loving relationship with you, wants to cure it.
"The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? I the LORD search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings" (Jeremiah 17:9-10). "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through Him might be saved" (John 3:16-17).

How do I get out of sexual sin?

As you accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior by faith and live under the control of His Holy Spirit, He guides you to do the following for your heart:

  1. Cut off the instruments of your sin.
    Even when it is painful and humiliating, Jesus tells us to cut off the instruments of our sin immediately, such as sinful sexual and emotional relationships, pornography, unaccountable time, unaccountable money, unaccountable travel, unfiltered or unaccountable Internet access.

  2. Ask the Lord to cleanse your heart from all sin, to make His desires become your desires, too.
    "Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me" (Psalm 51:10).

  3. Learn to protect your heart, focusing on three body parts that Scripture closely associates with your heart: your lips, your eyes and your feet.
            "Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life. Put away from thee a froward mouth, and perverse lips put far from thee. Let thine eyes look right on, and let thine eyelids look straight before thee. Ponder the path of thy feet, and let all thy ways be established. Turn not to the right hand nor to the left: remove thy foot from evil" (Proverbs 4:23-27).

  4. Develop relationships with other men who will encourage you daily to pursue righteousness and holiness.

"But exhort one another daily, while it is called Today; 
lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin" (Hebrews 3:13).

Lost and Found Ministries teaches and encourages men to live out these biblical principles, leaving the false intimacy of sexual sin for genuine intimacy with Jesus Christ and others.

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