Sobriety Is Not Freedom

"So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed." — John 8:36

Brother, somewhere around the six-month mark you start to notice the difference between two things you used to think were the same.

Sobriety is the absence of the behavior. No porn. No masturbation. No fall. The streak is intact. You are clean.

Freedom is the absence of the bondage. The thing no longer has you. You are not white-knuckling your way through the day. You are not pretending. You actually do not want it the way you used to.

A man can have one without the other. In fact most men in pornography recovery programs have sobriety long before they have freedom. They are still desperate for it. They are simply restraining themselves with great effort. The strain is exhausting. Most of them eventually break.

The B.O.L.D. work is not for sobriety. It is for freedom.

How can you tell the difference, in your own life?

Signs you have sobriety but not freedom:

• You count days. The number matters to you.
• A trigger walks past you and you flinch internally, because the desire is right there, just leashed.
• You are exhausted at the end of every week from the effort of restraint.
• You secretly fantasize about "having freedom" but you cannot quite picture what life looks like without the daily fight.
• The shame voice still has a microphone. "You are still that guy underneath."
• You are afraid of what would happen if you traveled alone for a week.

Signs you are walking in freedom:

• You stopped counting days because you stopped needing to count.
• A trigger walks past and you barely register it. It is just a thing you no longer want.
• The energy you used to spend on restraint now goes into your wife, your kids, your work, the kingdom.
• You can imagine, vividly, the rest of your life without this. It does not feel impossible. It feels normal.
• You actually like yourself. The shame voice is faint.
• You can travel alone and barely think about it.

Most men who are honest will see themselves as a mix — further along on some lines, still in the white-knuckle on others. That is fine. That is the work. Freedom is not a single moment. It is a settling-in over years.

How do you move from sobriety to freedom? Not by trying harder. By going deeper into the renewing of the mind, the healing of the wound, the speech of life, the community, and the surrendered union with the Spirit that Romans 8 keeps describing. The same five things we have been talking about for six months.

You did not pick up this work to count days. You picked it up to be free. Christ is the only one who frees, and He is doing it.

The Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. Not just clean. Free.