Episode 12: Sin Vs Weakness

You are listening to the Overcome Pornography for Good podcast episode 12, Sin Vs Weakness.

Welcome to the Overcome Pornography For Good podcast where we take a research-based, trauma informed and results focused approach to quitting porn. This approach has been revolutionary and changed thousands and thousands of lives. I’m your host, Sara Brewer.

Alright, you guys, welcome to the podcast episode this week. I’m so glad you’re here. This week’s episode is going to be just a little bit shorter than maybe what we’re used to. But I honestly think shorter is usually better. So, I hope you get a lot of real goodness out of this. This is a really powerful principle I want to talk to you about today.

But before I dive into this, I want to share a review with you that one of you left here on my podcast. This review says, “This podcast is incredible for anyone struggling with a pornography habit. She creates a mindset so that you can overcome this and you are so capable of breaking your habit. I highly recommend this podcast for anyone that feels that overcoming porn is scary, overwhelming, or too hard. Sara teaches you how to retrain your brain to not want it all while making listeners feel loved, heard, and cared about. So impressed.”

Hey, thank you so much for leaving that review. Seriously, you guys, I can’t tell you how much it means to me. Here we are, we’re at 110 ratings and reviews and I just am so grateful for all these ratings and reviews because all these ratings, they’re helping other people find me and find this content, and helping those who could really benefit from it find it.

And I know a lot of you, it might be kind of hard to share publicly, and so one of the best ways you can help me here is to go and leave a review for me. So, thank you so much for doing that. I so appreciate it.

And too, just a note on this review is that yeah, this is so much about mindset. And I can teach you all the skills and all the tools, but if you don’t have the right mindset, you’re not going to go and do it.

And so, up until now, this podcast has been very – I’m teaching you a lot of the science behind habit-reformation and how your brain is working. And today is going to be a little bit different because we’re going to talk a little bit about how to think of this from a church perspective, a sin perspective. Because this tends to come up a lot when I’m talking to people or talking to clients.

And so, I wanted to make sure that I had a podcast episode on this and give you just some new ways of thinking about it that might serve you a little bit better here.

Okay, so many of you are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and have been told since you were little that porn is evil and bad and we need to avoid it at all costs. And then you start looking at porn and then you keep getting these messages and you don’t know how to quit and you feel terrible because you know what’s being taught and you just can’t seem to quit.

What I tell my clients all the time and you all the time is, you don’t need to be told not to view porn anymore. You need to be taught how to, and how to change this habit instead of told that it is terrible and evil and that you need to quit.

Okay, so specifically, I was talking to someone this last week who was telling me that they were getting ready to take some new steps in their life and go through the Temple and was looking forward to all these things. But she was worried because her past mistakes, specifically with pornography, and even currently struggling with it a little bit, she’s like, “I just don’t know if I’m ready and I feel like this is holding me back from being worthy and taking these next steps in my life.”

So, this is what I shared with her, is that there’s a difference between sin and weakness. And I found an article on this. You can go Google, “It isn’t a sin to be weak Ensign.” It was in the Ensign. You’ll find an article on this that might be really helpful for you.

But there’s a difference between sin and weaknesses. Sin is willful, open rebellion. And weakness is human limitation, it’s lack of willpower, lack of strength.

I want you to think about those two definitions; willful rebellion and lack of willpower, lack of strength. Which one of those is your porn habit? Which one of those does your porn habit fit under?

And I would bet 99%, probably 100% of you listening to this podcast, you would call it a weakness. You wouldn’t be here trying to learn how your brain works, trying to see how you can quit if it wasn’t a weakness, if you are in a willful, open rebellion, right?

And think about this too. How does God treat sin differently than he treats weakness? With sin, it’s very, you know, repent, come back, repent. Weakness is completely different. Weakness, it’s like, “Hey, I gave you weaknesses so that you can get stronger.” He says, “Weaknesses aren’t a problem. Weaknesses are just part of being a human.”

He always tells us, “Hey, my grace is enough for you in these weaknesses. You don’t have to quit your weaknesses to be a more worthy person. You don’t even have to quit your sins to be a more worthy person. You are just worthy because you are my child and because you are a person.”

And he treats weaknesses much differently than he treats sin. I want you to think about this too. Do weaknesses disqualify us from receiving grace and power? Or are weaknesses the reason that God gives us grace and power and access to him? Really think about this.

If your weakness is keeping you from God, that is because you are not allowing yourself to be close to him. It’s not because of the weaknesses. The weaknesses never keep us from God. It is only us thinking that our weaknesses do that keeps us from him. Does that make sense?

You get to think about your porn habit any way that you want to. Any way that you want to. You can think about it, “Hey, this is fine and fun and I love it and I never want to quit and I think it’s a really good thing.” There are a lot of people who think of it that way. I’m not saying you have to or that you should. A lot of you might reject this idea, but it’s absolutely an option.

Or you can think, “This is horrible and it’s a sin and it’s a terrible thing and I’m not worthy because of it.” But those are two very opposite sides of the spectrum. What I want to offer to you is that there’s a middle.

Doesn’t it feel more true to think, “Hey, this is a weakness. This is lack of willpower. This is human limitation. This is lack of strength. This is something that I need to learn. This is going to make me stronger.”

And weaknesses do not keep us from getting closer to God. So, one last thought I want to leave you with today is, is the way that you’re thinking about your porn habit right now helping you get closer to God or further from God?

If it’s keeping you from God, I want to invite you to change the way that you think about it, change the way that you see yourself, and maybe decide to start thinking about your porn habit as a weakness. And guess what? Weaknesses bring us closer to God.

And if I’m to speak really frankly here for a moment – it’s my opinion, you can totally disagree if you want, but it’s my opinion that God gives us the Sacrament and he gives us the Temple and he gives us all of these opportunities to help us in our weaknesses.

I don’t think weaknesses keep us from the Sacrament, keep us from the Temple. Now, you get to decide how you view and think about that, but that’s my opinion there.

Alright, you guys, I hope that this was helpful for you. I hope you have a great week and we will talk to you soon.

If you’re ready to apply what you’re hearing in this podcast and finally overcome pornography for good, I’d love to be your coach. I’ve created a virtual program with the intent to give you everything that you need to quit. Once you join, you have lifetime access to the content and lifetime access to individual support through coaching calls and coaching boards. For more information check out sarabrewer.com/workwithme.