The problem is so prevalent we have had to invent a new phrase for it: sexual addiction.  Men and women, young and old, are being swept into the compulsive behavior of sexual addictions at an alarming rate.  A recent survey of adults, ranging from ages 18 to 59, reported that 40 percent of women and 30 percent of men suffer from some form of sexual dysfunction.  And one the fastest growing dysfunctions in America is sexual addiction.  It is estimated that sex addiction affects 3 to 6 percent of our population.  Not surprisingly, this sexual epidemic has also lodged itself in the Church as well.  From youth pastors to seasoned missionaries, among both men and women, pornography has invaded our sanctuaries, classrooms, and bedrooms.  Whole ministries, as well as marriages, have reaped the whirlwind of this scourge and have gone down in destruction.  Those involved in marriage counseling are aware of the devastation sexual addiction can cause.

But what can we do to prevent sexual addictions from invading our lives and wiping us out?  Or, if we have been infected with the disease, how can we find the healing and deliverance from this sexual onslaught?  Once again, we need to go back and recapture the basic biblical realities of God’s perspective on human sexuality and how it has degenerated into its present state of affairs.  Jesus promised that if we would abide in His Word, we would become His disciples and that we would “know the truth, and the truth would set [us] free” (John 8:31-32).

First, all addictions, and sexual addictions in particular, are a judgment from God.

Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.  They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised.  Amen.  Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts.  Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones.  In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another.  Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.  Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, He gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done.  They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed, and depravity (Rom. 1:24-29).

The operative word in this portion of Holy Scripture is, of course, “God gave them over,” mentioned three times.  When we forsake God for other things, He gives us over to these things, thus creating a spiritual and moral vacuum in our lives.  All of nature loves a vacuum.  So it should not be surprising that something must rush into this vacuum.  In fact, it is not merely something—it is everything!