By Lynn Fredrick
Looking back at my own battle with sexual addiction, the second step, of the 12 Steps, “came to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity,” loomed in front of me like the climbing of Mount Everest. I had tried for 28 years to overcome my childhood sexual abuse and secret addiction to pornography by my own power. I excelled in high school athletics and popularity; I did the same in college. I pushed myself for a double major in theology and psychology, graduating with honors. I was a pastor my last 2 years in college. Surely, I was equipped to overcome addiction on my own. All my efforts did was complicate things and deepen the shame of who I knew myself to be. The sermons I preached, the papers I wrote, all indicated that everyone, including myself, needed to trust God for forgiveness and reconciliation through Jesus to have hope of salvation. I prayed frequently for forgiveness of the sins I committed and that I struggled to stop. I prayed often for God to take away my temptation to look at porn and my inevitable inability to do so.
While in college, I was blown away by my research into the modern-day archaeological uncovering of the walls of Jericho, I still am. There were two 30-foot-high brick walls running parallel to each other, 12 to 27 feet apart. The inner wall was 11 to 12 feet thick; the outer wall was 6 feet thick and at frequent intervals the two walls were tied together by other ...
