Watermark Community Church Pastor Timothy TA Ateek discussed his struggles with pornography and how he found freedom from his addiction through Christ, telling a young adult gathering porn can prevent Christians from knowing Jesus more intimately.
Ateek, the lead pastor of vision and preaching at the Dallas-based megachurch, gave a sermon last Wednesday at a gathering for the church's young adult ministry, The Porch, which focuses on adults in their 20s and 30s. He was candid about his own multi-year pornography addiction and how it limited his impact as he sought to enter ministry nearly two decades ago.
Ateek told the crowd that some people run to porn to fill a void of love, with many feeling "undesirable" and "unlovable." He suggested porn is an ill-fated attempt to "pacify the pain in our souls that Jesus desperately wants to satisfy."
"The reality of porn is that it is hard to just be swimming in sin and still be intimate with Jesus at the same time," he said. "If you've convinced yourself that you're close to God when you are very close to porn, you can't be close to both at the same time. It also hinders the impact."
The pastor recalled the time many years ago when he had to come to a reckoning with his own pornography struggles. One of the things that led to a change was when he applied to be a Bible study leader at the church he was attending, and the application asked him if he struggled with porn. He admitted that he did, thinking many other guys struggle with that issue.
"I remember this guy calling me and saying, 'TA, we need to talk about this. It is going to be hard for you to lead a group of guys in studying God's word when you are struggling with this,'" he said. "That was a wakeup call that ... sin impacts your ministry."
Ateek says it's been 19 years since he has struggled with a porn addiction. He admitted struggling with the addiction for over seven years before he could walk in freedom. Even after 19 years, he said he still feels the temptation to look at porn.
"The summer between my eighth grade year and my freshman year in high school, my dad and I, we were flying to Indianapolis to go to the Indy 500 race. And on our way back to Dallas, we were in the Indianapolis Airport. And I stumbled upon an inappropriate magazine, and I don't know what caused me to do it. … I picked up this magazine without my dad knowing, and I hid it in my stuff, and I took it home with me," Ateek said.
"I didn't realize that that one decision was the beginning of what would be a seven-year intense battle with pornography. Pornography became a very, very defining part of my story for the next seven years. And when I think back upon my intense battle with pornography, there were various things that marked that struggle."
Ateek said during those years, he believed many lies that he later realized weren't true.
"The first was that I just believed that everyone struggled with porn, like there was this statistic that people would float around that 98% of guys look at porn, and the other 2% are just lying about it," he said. "That's what all the guys would tell themselves, and so I just viewed myself as a stereotypical college guy because everyone looks at porn," Ateek said.
"Another thing that defined me was just a consistent appetite for more. What I would find is that there were certain images that would lose their effect, and I would just want more. I would want the material to be more explicit or more intense; there was just an insatiable, growing appetite for more," Ateek added.
"On top of that, there was the feeling of being a failure. Because I was a Christian and people knew me as a good Christian guy. And yet, so often throughout the week, I was looking at pornography, and I felt like a hypocrite. And so I would go through this cycle of promising God, I'm done with that. And then, I might have a good few days or a good few weeks, and then eventually, I would just relapse back into pornography."
Ateek said something that marked his struggle with pornography was a desire to be done with it. However, his desire to rid himself of his addiction was accompanied by feelings of fears that he would never be done with his struggle.
"I just want you to know there is hope. The reason that I can say that is because the summer before my senior year in college, God intervened in my life in a very clear and miraculous and supernatural way through the power of the Gospel. [God] began to go to work on my heart. It wasn't an overnight thing. But, what He did was He set me on a path towards healing," Ateek said.
"For the last 19 years of my life, the Lord has led me in freedom from pornography. I tell you that to say I stand up here as someone who can say, look, there's hope because I've been in a place where I felt like there was no hope."
There are a few crucial steps that Christians can take in their quest to free themselves from pornography addiction that Ateek said helped him in his journey.
"There are several things that I want you to know that are going to help provide the remedy for your struggle with porn. … You need to know God's will. And what's great is that Scripture spells it out," he said.
"Listen to what Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 4:3. He says, 'for this is the will of God,'" Ateek added.
"We can be so consumed with God's unrevealed will that we completely ignore His revealed will. So just listen. What God spells out for us for this is the will of God, your sanctification … that you 'abstain from sexual immorality.' That word sexual immorality in the Greek is the word 'porneia,' which is where we got pornography. 'This is the will of God, your sanctification.' What does sanctification mean? It means to be set apart," he added.
The pastor advised Christians struggling with porn to get to know Jesus Christ more every day.
"If you know Jesus Christ, if you've surrendered your life to Jesus Christ, then Christ has made you completely wholly pure in God's eyes, which is amazing that positionally before God, you're not filthy, dirty, packed full of wretched sin. No. In God's eyes, you're actually clean and pure and holy," Ateek said.
"But, when Paul says that 'the will of God is sanctification for your life,' what he's saying is God's will is that we would be practically what we already are positionally. If positionally in God's eyes, we are pure and holy and clean, then God's will is that practically we would begin to live pure and holy and clean lives."
Ateek also warned that "porn strains and even ruins relationships."
"I have seen marriages dissolve because of pornography," he said. "Studies show that porn use can increase sexual debt dissatisfaction. … It cultivates unrealistic expectations. Second, it normalizes perverted desires. Like what it does is it convinces you that perverted desires are actually normal," Ateek continued.
"It increases self-consciousness in women about body image, and it increases the probability of divorce. Some medical professionals have concluded that some people or some men are experiencing porn-induced erectile dysfunction, which is it's this kind of desensitization of men that they can only reach the point of feeling stimulated when sex is like it is on a movie."
