I think God asks certain things of us, and they all fall under exactly that, Obedience. Sometimes its not easy, but masturbation effects your mind, it is often done while viewing pornography (which is extremely demeaning of God's children, as well as adictive) and it effects the way people interact and the way you view people. I'm 17 and if anyone has "burning passion, it's a 17 year old, and I try to refrain from this activity.

j.thebeau:

The Spirituality forum is not one of my regular haunts, but I noticed that you were new to our support site and I just wanted to welcome you. I think that you will find us to be a caring and supportive bunch of guys. We are all here together trying to find our freedom from what was done to us as kids. We also have a teen support forum that you will need to ask one of our site moderators to access.

Again, glad that you found us. We are just here to try to help.

Mark

j.thebeau,

Welcome my young friend. It's good to have you with us. I hope that, you too, will find the clarity and some of the answers you're looking for through the posts here at MS.

Feel free to speak up and ask anything that you need to. We'll all do our best..........

I don't know if anyone is still reading/ accessing this thread or not, but it is an important thing for me right now. I too have compulsively masturbated, a lot. But I do feel that God, while having given us this method to perhaps reduce our sin by not involving others. Still sees M as a sin. As mentioned often by others God is forgiving and will forgive us all. But I wonder how someone would rationalize Pauls 1st letter to the Corinthians about not using your body for immoral purposes because your body is not your own it has been purchased at a price. ( just off of the top of my head sorry I didn't look it up). And yes I am Catholic. The other thing people are forgetting is God gives grace to follow his ways, but not unless you ask for it. I have read this entire thread because I had a very interesting breakthrough last Fri in therapy. I suddenly realized that pretty much all of my sexual relationships, including the one with myself have been heavily influenced by one of my two molesters ( one each a woman/ Aunt and a guy in the army, one when I was seven and one when I was nineteen). I have masturbated a lot as I said and the most intense is always relating a fantasy to the abuse. I came away from that t session feeling something I hadn't felt in a long time... hope. I had given up on ever finding someone to love. Because I had decided that everyone, absolutely everyone is a scoundrel. But now I realize that it isn't that everyone is a scoundrel. Its just that I have been looking for scoundrels to try to fix something that happened in the past. Something that can never be fixed. But maybe now I can quit trying to fix it and try to find someone who isn't a scoundrel to try to build something meaningful with. Sorry this is so long and maybe no one will ever read it. Maybe I'm even writing it for myself to help me clear my head? I suppose I should have just used my journal. But its really nice to have a place like this with people who, unfortunately, have had the same type of things happen to them. I am beginning to feel like this is one place where I can really be me ( if I can figure out who that is). Thanks .

Brother Dogman;

you put it in view posting to it ;-) I like the post and I can surely relate to reenacting my abuse, unconsciously, to come to an understanding of it. I have connected with my abusive fantasies as well as the pornographic stories I used to be drawn to as being reenactments... heck even my relations with my wife were sullied by my abuse history. It was truly liberating when I realized the connection, then I could process it and resolve the feelings.

As for Paul's letter to the church at Corinth, I have little recollection of it and will take your memory as being close enough. My God gave me the greatest gift there is, that being free will, and along with that her love for me is unlimited and unconditional... she loves me at all times even when I was acting out in my basest ways. She rejoices with each step of healing and recovery I make.

Love, Wes

wes
I have reeinacted abuse whilst masterbating
my T questions the accuracy of it
but it has sorted out my head
I feel I now know what happened when I was abused at the age of 2
some say we do remember everything
its just recalling it

I don't recomend it as I have other issues
and it can leave me with a messed up head for days
Nathan 5

dogman,

Great breakthrough - congrats! Now get out there and meet yourself that right person!!!

Thanks guys I'm starting to work on it. I really can't take another bad one. But my relationship with the Lord is what is making the real difference now I think.

Did we ever resolve this question?

What do we do about guilt feelings we have because we masturbate thinking of our abuse?

Didn't Jesus talk about (this is my paraphrase) if you look after a woman (or can we say man) with lust in your heart you have already done it.

So is that what happens in masturbation?

Allen

pufferfish

I've heard masturbastion likened to an act of sin against
1. The temple of the Holy Spirit
2. The "Image of God"

For me and I think many others it's foundation is definitely in a sinful act. Trying to take care of what ever it is going on inside us, on our own, with no reliance on God to do so. Be it an attempt to get rid of anxiety, or stress, or fulfill some missing need or deep longing in our heart that we don't know what to do with.

So I think the ultimate question is... how do we not do that? I mean take care of our needs ourselves? For me this is especially hard, as growing up, especially with my emotional needs, I had to take care of it all because my parents were completely emotional bankrupt. So how can I let go and trust that those needs will be met and not continually fall back into the same sin?

You're on the button with your paraphrase Allen. If you look at the statement that Christ made, it wasn't the look that was responsible for the sin, but the condition of the heart of the person doing the looking. I've heard many guys over the years say that "there's nothing wrong with looking..." but that's definitely not true for all people.... the real question is, why are you looking, and.... that goes straight back to a heart conidition issue.