Power of Love


clbent04
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My sister came to visit me in April 2019.  She knew I had been really down about life and specifically not being able to quit my addiction to pornography.  We are fairly open and honest with each other.  I said to her sometime last year that I no longer see life in color, that everything seems to be in black and white (i.e., in terms of your passion for life).  From that comment alone, it worried her enough to where she felt prompted to visit me recently. She took a day off work and flew in to Arizona for 3 days over a weekend.

While here she really got upset about me being down and poured her heart out to me telling me how much I meant to her. As surprised as I was by all the emotion, it was that little push I've been needing this whole time to get my life back in order; to truly know there is someone in this world that genuinely loves and cares for me. And I know I feel the same way about her.  She even called Salt Lake and got the information of a weekly pornography addiction support group sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints just right down the road from me.

I doubt there are very many people that take their addiction to pornography as seriously as I do. But the Law of Chastity is in fact very serious.  And if you can't get over pornography despite confessing and repenting over and over again, was it ever true repentance if you never forsook the sin?  So if you're like me and always had it in your heart to settle for nothing less than the Celestial Kingdom, you might understand why this addiction has had the kind of toll its had on me.  

What I didn't fully realize prior to my sister's visit was my need to feel loved. And for me that has made all the difference these last 2 months just from her brief 3-day visit. She reminded me that I'm needed in this world for more than just providing a paycheck to my family.  She reminded me this world isn't all about greed where everyone is just focused on building their own little empires and who don't truly care for others. In a way her love for me stirred a remembrance in me of the love my Savior has for me.  Sometimes remembering the love the Savior has for us can be difficult when we only see this world through a lens of selfishness and greed. It makes you question God's creation of this Earth when you can only see in black and white.

She also told me how inadequate her boyfriend makes her feel when he looks at porn. She was so distraught and hateful towards women who are porn stars or strippers or anyone really that dresses immodestly or who might exercise in a provocative way at the gym. She had so much hate for these women for the way they made her feel inadequate and for the hold that pornography has had over me.  I tried calming her down with a more balanced perspective that it's really us men that create the demand leading these women to behave the way they do, so in a sense men are more guilty or at least equally guilty. But seeing the perspective of my sister who is on the receiving end of her boyfriend participating in these kind of actions was very eye opening for me.  I wanted to change not just for myself at that point but also for her to prove to her people can change for the best. I also want her to be able to have sympathy for these women who quite often are taken advantage of or are struggling with confidence issues and feel the need to dress for attention or what have you.

So honestly, that was it, that was the little bump I needed to get my life back on track to truly see in color again.  After a 3-year period of being in what I call a black hole, not going to Church and progressively becoming more imbalanced and unhinged from the feeling of hopelessness, I have had a truly transformative last 2 months.  I don't know if I've ever felt as spiritually grounded and positive in my life as I do now.

For the last 2+ months I've attended Church regularly. I'm wearing my garments again. I attend the addiction group every week. I follow the gospel as closely as I can with exact obedience. I even shaved my beard. I think my coworkers have finally accepted my new face. I don't cherry pick which pieces of the gospel I'm going to live. I've eliminated all the road blocks and excuses for disobedience in my life. I met with the Bishop and Stake President and have a temple recommend again. I went to the temple for the first time in a long time and attended an endowment session this last Saturday evening. For the last two Fast and Testimony meetings, I have been the first person to go up to the pulpit expressing my gratitude to my Heavenly Father for helping get me out of that awful slump I was in as well as His many blessings he has graced me with in my life. And all of this because of a little bump from my sister. That is the power of love. And with that I'm praying to God to help me love more freely so that I too may reach out to someone in need as my sister did with me. 

From the beginning of my participation with this forum, I have been concerned with some users' constant need to debate or prove a point rather than to base their posts out of a genuine care and love for those who participate on this forum.  I share my experience here hopefully as a reminder that sharing the gospel should be approached with love in your heart for your fellowman however different their perspective may be from yours.  If you're responding to someone just to prove a point rather than first having love in your heart, rethink what you're truly trying to accomplish.

Here is an example of how I have been guilty of this too.  I've done a disservice to my wife with my inactivity from the Church since my inactivity ultimately led to her inactivity. She didn't grow up in the Church but decided to get baptized when we dated.  We got sealed in the temple and attended church together for about 3 years from the time she was baptized. I then entered into my period of inactivity and my wife decided to follow suit since she still at that point hadn't been truly converted to the gospel with an independent testimony of her own.  I could have helped her get there a lot sooner had I stayed on track, but the motivation was just no longer there for me to go to church at that point.

Anyway, she has since been exploring spiritualism and meditation. She talked to me this last Sunday about how she thinks God is neither male or female but rather just an energy or something to that effect.  She also raised other doubts about the Church.  This to me was very frustrating to listen to considering how much ground it seems like she's lost with her spiritual knowledge. At this point she will more readily accept a random internet blog's opinion on who God is rather than have an open heart to the gospel. And it was so frustrating to me that I started to debate her. I started to feel angry. I wanted so badly to prove my point over hers to get her back on track. I know what I know in my heart about the gospel, but I'm not going to get anywhere with my wife if she doesn't know where I'm coming from is from a place of love.

So as with my wife, I hope to from this point forward share the gospel in the love that Jesus intended us to share it with as He said in John 13:34-35, "...love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another."

As with any comment you make, it can be one bump forward or backward for a person in need.

Edited by clbent04
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6 hours ago, CV75 said:

Praying for charity has been an incredibly powerful key in my becoming the kind of man the gospel is designed to make me. Moroni 7:48, D&C 121:45-46.

That's a good quality to pray for. Having charity seemed overwhelmingly monumental to me before that I just gave up praying for it. Developing charity for others can be a daunting task for those like me who don't let the Spirit work within them. I'm just barely starting to focus enough now where each prayer I pray is meaningful and sincere. The amount of focus required to let the Spirit work within us to develop such a trait as charity is tremendous, although not impossible as we invite the Holy Spirit into our lives to help lift us up and give us the hope we need to become who we are meant to be.

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17 hours ago, clbent04 said:

That's a good quality to pray for. Having charity seemed overwhelmingly monumental to me before that I just gave up praying for it. Developing charity for others can be a daunting task for those like me who don't let the Spirit work within them. I'm just barely starting to focus enough now where each prayer I pray is meaningful and sincere. The amount of focus required to let the Spirit work within us to develop such a trait as charity is tremendous, although not impossible as we invite the Holy Spirit into our lives to help lift us up and give us the hope we need to become who we are meant to be.

What I discovered is to simply pray for it with what (little) energy and attention I have, and not wait until i think I've progressed enough.

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5 hours ago, CV75 said:

What I discovered is to simply pray for it with what (little) energy and attention I have, and not wait until i think I've progressed enough.

It requires significantly less effort on your part to pray for something like having charity when you've given your heart 100 percent to the Lord. That's when He and the Holy Spirit can really work with you and elevate you to spiritual levels you could never reach on your own. What I didn't realize before are the areas in my life that prevented me from truly giving my heart over to the Lord (e.g., not praying sincerely with every prayer, not staying as far away from the edge as possible...). So developing charity for someone like me that didn't realize how much focus I needed to truly turn my heart over to God turned out to be an impossibly difficult task. Truly opening my heart to Heavenly Father this time has allowed Him to build me up spiritually in ways I've never experienced before. My struggle before was I only knew how to run the 100 meter dash. I could be exceptionally on target for these brief spiritual bursts of energy I had, but I never learned or realized what it took to run the marathon. And without truly living the gospel and inviting the Holy Spirit into our regular, everyday lives, we will fail, and any spiritual aspirations we have will be in vain as I have so thoroughly learned.

Edited by clbent04
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1 hour ago, clbent04 said:

It requires significantly less effort on your part to pray for something like having charity when you've given your heart 100 percent to the Lord. That's when He and the Holy Spirit can really work with you and elevate you to spiritual levels you could never reach on your own. What I didn't realize before are the areas in my life that prevented me from truly giving my heart over to the Lord (e.g., not praying sincerely with every prayer, not staying as far away from the edge as possible...). So developing charity for someone like me that didn't realize how much focus I needed to truly turn my heart over to God turned out to be an impossibly difficult task. Truly opening my heart to Heavenly Father this time has allowed Him to build me up spiritually in ways I've never experienced before. My struggle before was I only knew how to run the 100 meter dash. I could be exceptionally on target for these brief spiritual bursts of energy I had, but I never learned or realized what it took to run the marathon. And without truly living the gospel and inviting the Holy Spirit into our regular, everyday lives, we will fail, and any spiritual aspirations we have will be in vain as I have so thoroughly learned.

I would say that this (opening my heart to Heavenly Father) is charity, or a least a function of it.

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