Forgive me for being late in getting this issue out! I wanted to make sure this issue had the focus and polish it needed to shine. It wasn’t quite there by Friday morning last week.

If you usually enjoy these as a bright spot on your Friday mornings or over the weekend, hopefully this can now brighten up your start to the week instead!

All the love and appreciation,
Addison.

John messaged me late one night.
Said he’d been walking in freedom for years.
No more porn. No more secrecy. No more pretending.

But lately—when things slowed down, when he had time off work, when the house was too quiet—old thoughts started coming back.

They rarely lead straight into porn though.
Typically just the kind of shows that made him feel something.
He hoped they’d help quiet the longing for intimacy,
maybe even the ache for a marriage partner.

They didn’t.

A few nights of that, and John would find himself back on the types of websites no one has any business visiting.

“I don’t get it,” he wrote.
“I know better. I love God. I know He loves me.”
“Every time that feeling hits… why can’t it just stop?”

I told him I understood. Because I did.

We like to think we’ve graduated from dealing with these types of temptations once the behavior stops.
But the truth is, the chemicals behind the feelings don’t just disappear.
Your body still reacts.
Your mind still receives the signal.
And you’re left with what feels like a binary choice:
fight it or give in.

John was tired of fighting it.
Tired of apologizing.
Tired of losing the same battle over and over.

As I sat there thinking of my response,
I actually felt the same longing rise up in me —
the same ache he was trying so hard to silence.

I didn’t fight it.
And I wasn’t about to tell him to either.

That never works…

To try and prevent sexual sin, you attempt to stop the feeling itself.
You try starving it.
Distracting it.
Shaming it into submission.

Maybe God has blessed you with a marriage that can give you an outlet for the feeling,
so you try channeling it into that instead.
And these efforts seem to work…
until it comes back.

And you’re right back on that website.
Right back in that fantasy.

So you make plans.
You promise God this time will be different.
You set up accountability, filters, disciplines, boundaries.

But hunger doesn’t die.
It's still there.

And when the next quiet moment arrives,
it surfaces again — the same pull, the same path, the same emptiness.

This was the cycle John was stuck in, one I knew all too well.

What if I told you you’re not supposed to kill that desire?
What if even sex in marriage isn’t the answer?
What if you’ve been taught the wrong way to handle this your whole life — by culture and religion?

The truth is, you’ve been fighting the wrong battle this whole time.

Lust isn’t your enemy.
It’s just the wrong destination for the right feeling.

God made desire.
He designed it to pull you toward intimacy: first with Him, then reflected through others.
But somewhere along the way, the enemy changed the signage.

Now everything that was meant to draw you to love looks like it leads to lust.
Culture turned arousal into entertainment.
Religion turned attraction into shame.
Both put sex on a pedestal.
And both worked to strip desire of its holiness until we stopped trusting it altogether.

That’s the trap.
If you can’t trust your desire, you’ll spend your life fighting the very feeling that was meant to bring you home.
You’ll call what God designed for connection “dirty,”
and when you finally cave, the guilt will drive you even further from Him.

Those waiting for the correct spouse find the longing nearly impossible to shove down.
And those having sex discover it isn’t the silver bullet they were sold.
As long as you keep thinking sex is intimacy, you’ll never look for intimacy in the One it was meant to reflect.

God made desire in your body as a mirror of a deeper truth:
that your spirit longs to be known.
Fully. Safely. Completely.

The world cheapened that mirror — made it mechanical, transactional, something you consume instead of something that consumes you.

But God wants to redeem that part of you.
To teach you how to feel again without being ruled by feeling.
To remind you that what you’re really craving isn’t release,
its relationship.

How do you redeem that desire from lust?
How do you stop letting it rule you and start letting it restore you?

You do it the same way Jesus did with the woman at the well.

She came thirsty — trying to fill herself with the same water that always ran out.
Jesus didn’t shame her thirst.
He redirected it.

He said, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again,
but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst.”

That’s what He’s saying to you.

Your body’s desire and attraction isn’t evil.
They’re evidence that you were made for living water.

The next time that pull comes, don’t fight it.
Redirect it.
Let it draw you back to the Creator, not the created.

Allow that moment of attraction to become a moment of honesty.
Tell Him, “I’m being drawn toward this.
This feeling isn’t wrong, it belongs with you.”
And then follow God where He beckons,
not where lust would distort His calling.

You’re not running from sin anymore.
You’re running toward true satisfaction — not in a pixel, a body, or a fantasy,
but in the presence of the One who made you feel in the first place.

Only when desire meets divinity does it finally rest.
Only then does it stop hungering for substitutes.

You were never meant to live numb.
You were not created to suppress the desire God placed in you.

You were made to feel, to ache, to long, to love,
because all of it points back to Him.

The next time you feel the ache, don’t run from it.
Don’t fear where it might lead.
Don’t call it dirty.

Bring that desire to Christ.

The Bridegroom whispers your name.
The One who formed you delights in you.
He is calling you to the secret place even now.

Go to Him.

Until next time,
Addison