I wrote this for a college student who gave me permission to share. 

The “stay at home” order may have protected from Covid-19 but it did not protect your soul from pornography.

It made it worse.

Boredom. Loneliness. Anxiety. Fear.

These are the calling cards of pornography. Old habits, once thought conquered, overwhelm you. Familiar keystrokes behind a closed door seem to provide a fake comfort. The dark corners of the internet are unrelenting in their persistence of your soul. Lust will never take a day off and the cycle of addiction is back.

Ten minutes yesterday, an hour today, your evening plans tomorrow.

The uncertainty of today, the fear of tomorrow and the loneliness of isolation is a breeding ground for pornography use. Your search on Google is not what will bring the peace you are looking for; it only intensifies the distress.

Shame. Grief. Anger. Failure.

Satan is not going to waste this global pandemic. He is a roaring lion ready to devour. His attack is vast and his tactics well practiced.

A leading pornography website made their premium content free to the entire world last week.

The devil is crafty.  

In Italy, after the quarantine went into effect, pornography viewing spiked by 57% on March 12^th. In the United States, pornography use has already grown by 17.8%. Viewership by girls is up 21% this morning. His attack is vast and his destruction great. The cross-hairs of our enemy are hard to run from.

But statistics don’t matter this morning, because you are the one who feels the weight of sin this morning.

I’m sorry. My tears are for you and because at times it feels like the horror of Friday won’t give way to the victory of Sunday. At times I feel like Peter on Friday night – in a moment of weakness thinking Satan had won.

I’m sorry I can’t save you from the effects of sin. I wish I could remove the desire, heal the wounds and erase the past.

I’m sorry you hurt.

I can’t speak life into your soul – so let me remind you of the one who can.

Satan is strong but Jesus has overcome.

John the Baptist proclaimed, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

His words are still true today! The darkness you feel is what all of creation felt when Jesus breathed his last. But sin did not win. Darkness would not prevail. The resurrection would come. Hope was on the horizon.

The cross was necessary but is not the end of the story. The sinner needs the cross and the resurrection.

We need the cross to cleanse the filth of our sin.

We need the resurrection to give us new life.

So, take heart! He has overcome the world. Sin is paid for and new life is given.

There is a place for internet filters and accountability partners. There is a place for counseling and a need to confess our sins to one another.

Can we save that for tomorrow?

Today, would you turn your affections to Jesus. Would you dwell deeply on the cross and the resurrection?

Sin has been paid for. It is as far as the East is from the West. You may remember it but God will not hold it against you – he held it against His Son.

New life has been given. His Spirit lives in you. Death has been swallowed up in victory!

We do not make light of sin, but we do want to make much of Jesus. He came to set the captives free and now sits on His throne interceding for us. The resurrection does not simply give us access to Heaven some day, but freedom now.

The one who overcame is enough for you. He breathes life into dry bones. I pray that you will step into that reality today.