Outside of the 6 days of creation, nothing just happens. Look around you. Your clothes didn’t magically appear. The device you’re using didn’t pop into existence. The picture your 3-year-old drew for you. None of it just happened. There was a process that took place which led to a result. The same is true of sin. Sin doesn’t just happen. A process takes place in our hearts which inevitably leads to sin.

This is crucial to understand as you battle against sexual addiction.

James lays out the process of sin vividly in chapter 1. “Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am being tempted by God;’ for God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death. Do not be deceived, my beloved brethren.”

The process of sin does not begin with temptation. The problem starts within us, within hearts prone to beat for wicked desires. For temptation to really grab hold of a person, it must latch on to the lusts and desires already present inside of us.

For example, think about those times when you felt like you had your sin under control. You believed you would conquer it until you caught a glimpse of skin, until you heard some vulgar music or watched a short you shouldn’t have watched. Even if it crossed your mind to fight it, years of giving in to sin has created a rut that’s difficult to escape. So you headed down that old, familiar path.

That’s when lust is conceived; when all your resistance has stopped. You enter a kind of trance and begin fantasizing about how satisfying it will be to get someplace secret and indulge in porn, or to cross boundaries with others you said you’d never cross.

Motivated by an insatiable energy, you maneuver around every obstacle and bust through every guardrail. The honor of your wife doesn’t matter to you. Responsibilities are easily pushed off. You begin to run the numbers to see if you’ve got the money and you ponder how to hide your trail.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer said that “At this moment God is quite unreal to us, [we lose] all reality, and only desire for the creature is real; the only reality is the devil. Satan does not here fill us with hatred of God, but with forgetfulness of God…The lust thus aroused envelopes the mind and will of man in deepest darkness. The powers of clear discrimination and of decision are taken from us.”

After all this, finally, comes the moment your heart has been craving! Your precious sexual sin is right there! For a moment, all feels well.

But you know how the story really ends.

Standing there, shaking your head, you wonder what in the world happened. You’ve reached the final stage of sin—death.  In Romans 6, Paul said, “When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the obligation to do right. And what was the result? You are now ashamed of the things you used to do, things that end in eternal doom…. For the wages of sin is death…” (Romans 6:20-21, 23 NLT)

How often has the result from indulging sin been something you were proud of? Once you give over, don’t you hear those taunts that say you’re pathetic? The enemy of your soul has shown his true colors. He takes off his alluring disguise and exposes his real intent – your misery, your shame, your death.

If all I’ve touched on describes you, there is real spiritual danger if you don’t do something about your spiritual condition. A lifestyle of habitual sin will lead to desolation and ruin. A Christian dominated by sexual sin is desecrating the very temple of God.

Maybe you’ve forgotten that is what you are…the temple of the living God. Some early Christians forgot this very thing as well. The Corinthian church was founded in a city steeped in sexual looseness. Corinth was so perverse and debaucherous that a Greek expression was coined to describe their very lifestyle, “Corinthianize.” The church of Corinth was filled with men and women stumbling their way out of sexual sin.

They had many setbacks, but this did not deter the Apostle Paul. He reminded them in 1 Corinthians 6, “…do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.”

If Paul saw hope for these Corinthian believers because of the blood of Christ shed for them, there is hope for you, too. Your defiled temple can be restored. The story of how King Hezekiah restored the Temple of Jerusalem powerfully demonstrates that.

Hezekiah was the 13th king of Judah, and most of the kings before him were labeled as “evil.” As they forsook the Lord, one calamity after another befell Judah. By the time Hezekiah came to the throne, God’s people had been mostly in a backslidden state for 250 years and the temple was in sheer disarray. Worship had stopped and the Holy Place was filled with uncleanness. The doors were shut and the lamps had been snuffed out. Hezekiah lamented: “…our fathers have been unfaithful and have done evil in the sight of the Lord our God, and have forsaken Him and turned their faces away from the dwelling place of the Lord, and have turned their backs.”

True worship of Yahweh, and the fellowship with Him and the glory of His presence were all gone. The unity with other believers and joy and peace which come from it had also vanished. These are the very things sexual sin steals from us. And it doesn’t take centuries either.

Growing up, the state of the temple must have broken Hezekiah’s heart. 2 Chronicles 29 details how on day 1 of his 29-year reign, His first order of business was to command the Levites to restore the house of the Lord back to its proper place. To get started, they didn’t wash the windows or fix the colonnade. They began with the inner part, deep inside where the true defilement was.

True restoration of your life begins deep within you. But if that sounds hopeless, hear this: God can and will cleanse the repentant heart.

First, you must be honest about the defilement and compromise that has been going on inside of you. Then you must invite the Holy Spirit into that inner sanctuary of your heart to expose what has been feeding your lusts. Then you must bring it all to the foot of the Cross with a broken and contrite heart, because that’s where sinners are washed clean. Even a wayward prodigal can return home and still repent, still seek the Lord’s forgiveness.

The Lord is rich in mercy, and He is abounding in lovingkindness. He wants to restore what the enemy has corrupted. He desires to establish His temple within you again. The Cross still stands.

If you’re reading this and you feel that tug in your conscience, don’t ignore it. Don’t put this off, because sin doesn’t take a break. This can be a turning point for you. Your temple can be restored.