The Exorcist's Bestiary

Part of the reason demons are so powerful around the topic of lust is because society does such a good job of reinforcing their lies. For example, when I was growing up, I was told that men think about sex every three minutes. Others proclaimed that “blue balls” were a real and painful medical condition and that you had to relieve yourself to avoid it. Someone also once told me that men basically feel stocked up every three days, which makes them feel the dire need of release.

None of this is true. But because these lies are so loud and so dang desperate, they become self-fulfilling prophecies. It’s the perfect mental space for the demonic to step in and start pointing us toward desperate and addictive answers to solve the lies: sex, masturbation, pornography, etc.

The church’s purity culture movement hasn’t been overly helpful with any of this. They, too, enforce the lies. Rather than help us understand that we’re stronger than lust, they taught us to save lust for marriage, where we’d have smoking-hot sex with our smoking-hot spouse on our smoking-hot wedding night (another lie). And as though the lies weren’t strong enough already, we were also told that if we weren’t successful in this endeavor, our bodies and our worth would be tainted and God would be ashamed of us forever and we’d never be able to fix it.

Women were handed their own set of lies, being told that they really didn’t have a sex drive at all. They would basically have to put up with their nagging husbands who would always want more, creating (at best) a poor sex life or (at worst) marital rape. Many women have been taught that they’re things instead of people and the church has reinforced it with misused Scriptures and insensitive and faulty purity teachings. These lies have made things so backwards, that Christian women who have healthy sex drives feel dirty and start to believe that something is wrong with them.

There are proper and improper ways to be sexual beings, but it’s often hard to discern it all because we come to the table with so much cultural programming. Some come for deliverance feeling stuck after years and years of porn use have driven them to hopelessness. But the simple truth Jesus sometimes needs such victims to hear is that they have more freedom than they think.

It almost feels insulting when you hear that still, small voice at first. Many people with sexual addiction feel like they have done everything they can to get out of it: recovery groups, accountability partners, books, podcasts, etc. (These are all good efforts and should accompany deliverance.) Who does God think he is, telling us we have more freedom than we think? If that were true, we would have been out by now! Wouldn’t we?

But sometimes spiritual warfare is as simple as erasing the lies you’ve been told, which is fuel for the demons. God designed sex to be good. The image of God is sexual. You are not hopeless. You don’t have to think about sex that much. You won’t get blue balls if you don’t find release. You can survive this life without ever having sex. The desire for sex is not dirty. Having a sex drive is normal. Lust is not inescapable. You don’t have to have release just because you have an erection. Your spouse doesn’t have to have sex with you just because you want it. You don’t have to appease every last sexual desire.

You are in charge of your genitals, not the other way around. And when you start to take your power back in this way, you give the Holy Spirit control to teach you about your sexuality instead of demons. As people renew their minds to the truth, some participants are surprised to find that sexual compulsions leave with a demon, and they feel more sane and normal. They realize they’ve been under a haze of lies for a long time.

But before that moment comes, we often need to believe the truth and allow the Holy Spirit to show us what it is that we’re looking for in sex in the first place—because many of us are unaware that our sexual addiction is less about sex and more about self-medication for a deeper issue. As you sort those things out, continue to find help in therapy, accountability, and recovery groups, which will all lead toward the same point of deliverance and freedom.