Revelation regarding relational intimacy and addictions.
God showed me that addictions don’t come from people wanting to do it but from a lack of love or emotional intimacy in their lives. Many times people who become addicted to secret sins are not “bad” people, they simply don’t have people who love them for who they are.
People who become addicted to pornography often are isolated and don’t have people to share their hearts with.
It’s a lack of love and emotional intimacy that leads people to overspend, overeat, under eat, under spend. It’s feeling shame or guilt that leads people to binge on alcohol, drugs or have unfulfilled desires.
It’s a desire to be accepted for who they are and to come into relational intimacy with other humans. There is usually a lack of emotional intimacy that causes people to run towards patterns that harm them.
When I was very young, I found out how to masturbate. It wasn’t in the conventional sense. I just rubbed my pelvis area to a surface and realized that felt really good.
Later on I was told that masturbating was wrong at church and so I tried to stop but found myself feeling guilty and often apologized to God.
I was also told I should stop by a woman who had gotten married but said she continued to masturbate and often was not satisfied by her own husband.
She blamed herself for not being satisfied by her husband.
The Lord recently revealed to me that it is a lack of love and emotional intimacy, loneliness and isolation that caused me to seek comfort.
I often felt emotionally numb and had to shut down my heart because of the emotional pain that cane with emotional intimacy.
I was taught to hold in my emotions. I was taught emotions were bad.
I had so much emotions that I often felt wound up and needed a release. There was no one to release or express myself to. I often felt like I had to hold back my emotions because they were too much for others.
Churches have looked at sin wrong the whole time. Sin comes from a lack of love and people not knowing who they are in Christ. When God loves you into the light, when people start feeling safe and have people they can share their hearts with, addictions and secret sins will automatically no longer be a source of safety.
Churches focus so much on sin but when Jesus said it is finished, He meant that Love covers all. Love forgave all. He doesn’t even see it. That’s unconditional love. That’s the type of love that draws a scared person who has been judged their whole life Into the light. It breaks off shame and guilt and shows that person- your past doesn’t define you; you are enough. Judgement is demonic. Judgment is condemnation and condemnation comes from the accuser, not God.
In my twenties, I drank alcohol to escape emotional pain. I needed a release and alcohol was it. But as I grew in my relationship with God, learning to open my heart to Him, I suddenly stopped wanting it. I knew that it was hurting my health and the Holy Spirit suddenly took the desire away from me.
Writing is one of my outlets now. It helps me express my emotions.
If you notice, people who drink a lot often need it to act like themselves. It’s because a part of them feels like they can’t be themselves when they are sober. There is shame attached to who they are. There is fear that if they are themselves people will reject them so alcohol is a way to say “that’s not who I am, blame the alcohol”.
I hear the Lord say “come into the light”.
Love is seeing people the way God sees them, unblemished, whole, enough.
When you see people as God sees them you don’t look at what they’ve done, you see them as God sees them, as Jesus.
Even if they haven’t accepted Jesus into their lives, God’s intent is that they receive the total love of Jesus.
And that total love makes them pure as snow.
It was a lack of love that caused the married woman I talked about to seek comfort in masturbation. Emotional intimacy and vulnerability would have caused her and her husband to have an honest and intimate sex life. There are probably somethings she was afraid to tell her husband in fear of rejection or judgement and vice versa. Our emotions are one with our bodies and whatever we feel emotionally we experience physically. That’s how God crested us and it is beautiful.
People who have sexual addictions are actually longing for emotional intimacy.
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Rebekka Lien 