Take Your Burdens to the Lord

Maybe you’ve had this experience. You sit and realize that you have just done something that you hate and you don’t understand how it happened. Perhaps you spent an hour looking at pornography and the brief sexual pleasure you got from masturbating feels worthless compared to the regret you now feel. The bigger part of you actually finds much of what you looked at disgusting. Or perhaps you just had a crossdressing session that kept on escalating over your whole day off. You never planned it. In fact, you are quite sure you haven’t had even one thought about crossdressing for months. You had been enjoying living in freedom from sexual sin, had been feeling so much happier, and had been growing in your faith. Yet somehow you went back to your old sin. You sit and wonder, “how did I get here?” This post gives one answer to that question.

The answer is that many of us respond to suffering in our lives in a wrong and unhelpful way. Suffering, or more specifically depression and stress about what is going on in our lives, is one of the most common precursors to relapse into sexual sin. This is a common blind spot especially of Christians who may otherwise be doing well in their relationship with God, enjoying freedom from addiction, and finding they are able to say “no” to most sexual temptations. When we suddenly fall into despair about an issue in our lives, or we get stressed and worried about something coming up, we may seek escape through sexual sin and fantasy just like we used to do before we overcame our addiction.

This blind spot is one that I personally have to watch out for as well. This type of acting out is different from falling into temptation, because there was no prior desire for anything, but rather we are the ones seeking out comfort and escape. But we turn to sin instead of to the Lord. It reminds me of what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10:12 – “So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall!” You may have overcome your addiction, you may be feeling great, but you need to make sure you are prepared to respond in the right way to suffering or depression that comes into your life, so that you stand firm when it comes. Be sure that all of us will experience significant depression or stress at some point in our lives.

In this article, I’d like to help you get prepared to respond to depression in the right way. I will begin by explaining the two types of connection between depression and sexual sin. Following that, I will explain how to find comfort in the Lord when trials come into your life. Please post comments with further ideas that you have on this.

In recovery from sexual addictions, there are two ways that sexual sin and depression are connected. It is crucial to understand these connections so that when you find yourself in the situations I will describe, you will be able to identify the desires and feelings you are experiencing and respond appropriately.

First, there is a scientific connection between sexual addiction and depression. Let me use pornography addiction as a common example of a sexual addiction, though the same thing happens through addiction to trans fiction or sissy hypnosis. Pornography addiction leads many people to experience feelings of frustration and shame. But on top of that, pornography addiction changes your brain chemistry. It can make you enjoy other simple pleasures in life less, things like cooking a fancy meal, taking a walk with a friend, etc. And when you try to give up the addiction you may go through withdrawal symptoms including feeling down and depressed. Some people report feeling a bit low for weeks or months. But thankfully, our brains are amazing things created by God, and they have the ability to heal from the abuse we put them through. Over time, through abstinence, people’s brains can go back to a healthy state, the depression goes away, and people can enjoy life normally again even without sexual addiction. Please see this article for the details of the brain chemistry.

But it’s the second connection I mainly want to look at in this post. Depression and sexual addiction are also connected in that many people first sought out the sexual sin in the beginning because of feelings of depression or stress. Someone may have felt low self-esteem, or felt rejected by people at school, or felt lonely and longed for intimacy. So he sought out pornography to temporarily escape into fantasy, and to have sexual pleasure drown out the painful feelings. But for most of us here, it was not pornography that drew us. Perhaps you have autogynephilia or transvestic fetishism. So when you felt depressed or lonely, you repeatedly looked for escape through trans fiction, sissy hypnosis videos, or through crossdressing in your bedroom.

Repeating this behavior over and over is how addiction formed. Then people remain stuck in addiction even if their lives are great and they don’t have any depression or stress. And they remain stuck in the addiction even when the behaviors are no longer that sexually pleasurable or emotionally satisfying.

But now imagine that a person finally takes the very difficult step of reaching out for help and overcomes the addiction. We help a lot of people to find freedom from sexual addiction through our website and recovery groups. The important thing to recognize is that the connection between depression and sexual sin remains a danger even to those who have overcome addiction. After six months or a year, a man might have a bad fall, a relapse into sexual sin, and it’s not because of the power of the addiction per se, but rather because he got depressed and wasn’t prepared to handle the depression in a healthy way.

Let me paint a picture of what this might look like for one of the men in our recovery groups. He formerly had an addiction centered around his cross-gender desires which manifested in various ways such as buying female clothing, crossdressing, cross-gender fantasizing and masturbation, looking at crossdressing videos online, and long hours reading trans fiction stories. He reached out to help through our website. He made a firm decision to recover from his addiction. He found an accountability partner, joined a recovery group, and purged his female clothing and cross-gender online accounts. The withdrawal period was tough, and he had a few relapses, but now his brain has healed and he is happy.

From time to time, he experiences temptations or random cross-gender thoughts and desires. While he is not perfect, and has given in to temptation on occasion, usually he is able to resist the temptations when they come and not give in to those behaviors anymore. He feels free from this addiction and praises God for his transforming work.

But unfortunately he has not worked through his old ingrained habit of using sexual sin and escape into fantasy to deal with depression and stress. Everything is going pretty well in his life until something happens: He gets chewed out at work. A girl he asks out says “no.” A parent dies. His wife refuses his sexual advances. It doesn’t matter what it is. There are a thousand scenarios. When the life situation comes in that causes pain or distress, or even just stress, he is used to his old pattern and habit of soothing the pain through dopamine release, sexual pleasure, and emotional escape. Before he stops to think about what he is doing, he acts out through crossdressing or creating trans stories and pictures with AI.

It’s really strange to consider, but he may have had absolutely zero cross-gender desire in his mind that day. He may not have any autogynephilic thoughts at all, even for many months. But suddenly he plunges into such content for hours, all as a response to the depression he felt. It had always been his go-to activity to deal with pain, and so now he lapses back into that old pattern. You see, this is different from a temptation that is based on strong cross-gender desire, like when he sees a beautiful woman and is tempted to give in to thoughts of envy, tempted to fantasize about being like her. This is different from seeing a television show that gave him a new idea for a trans fiction story that he would find really pleasurable and he feels strong temptation to write that story. Those are temptations. But what I’m describing is when there is zero temptation, but because of his pain and stress, he is seeking out something, anything, to help him with his pain. Of course he will go back to what he always used before.

What is the result? Well, first of all, after the quick pleasure, he feels much worse than he did before. Not only is the situation that caused his stress still there, but now on top of that he has let himself down (and his wife) and fallen in his sexual recovery process. Now he might get stuck in a pit of shame, guilt and despair for failing. (See Exiting the Shame Cycle). Hopefully, he will deal with the shame rightly, and ask for help from his accountability partner and recovery group. Hopefully, they will help him to remember who he is in Christ, and to rejoice in God’s grace and love, so that he can leave his shame and guilt behind and live a life of thanksgiving to the Lord.

The other unfortunate result of this pattern is that someone who has found great freedom from autogynephilic related desires and temptations may have totally reignited his desires again. He may not have been experiencing temptations to any of these behaviors like crossdressing or sissy hypnosis for months. But now, after giving in to crossdressing as a response to his depression, he has fanned into flame the old desires. Now he finds himself fighting tooth and nail against temptation over the next few days. Particular items of clothing, or particular fantasy scenarios with him in the role of a woman, constantly enter his mind. He keeps thinking up new things to try out with AI related to his cross-gender desire and that makes it feel so much more difficult to beat temptation than it did a week before. His life had felt peaceful before and pretty free of temptation, but now he feels like every day is a wrestling match. Thankfully after a few days of fighting and overcoming, these desires can drift away again, but it can be hard for a while.

Another very unfortunate result of all of this is that his temporary plunge back into the autogynephilic online content may have filled his mind with soothing fantasies that flare up his gender dysphoria in a serious way. He had become really content as a man, and was not having any issues with his identity as a man or with his body. But now after engaging in the stories or the crossdressing and imagining himself as a woman, his dysphoria comes back for a few days or weeks.

Let’s remember what started all of this. It was not autogynephilia or the cross-gender desires themselves. It was the depression or stress he experienced. The solution is simple, yet hard to remember in the moment. Instead of looking for escape into sexual pleasure or fantasy, we must take our burdens to the Lord! Once we are comforted in him and enjoy fellowship with him, we will not feel the need to escape into sin. For another good resource on this, see this article.

Going to the Lord for comfort

For this topic, there is a lot to say and I will have to try to summarize. Much of the Bible talks about finding comfort and refuge in the Lord. I believe that almost about every book of the Bible talks about suffering. Let me give a list of points for you to consider so that next time you are feeling depressed or stressed you are able to spend time with the Lord and find your comfort in him. Some of the points are specific activities to practice, and some are biblical teachings to keep in mind. I’m not intending to write these in an order that you should follow step by step as you respond to a depressing day in your life. They are general things to remember in your life as a whole, and hopefully you will call them to mind during times of stress and pain.

• • God invites us to look to him for comfort and refuge! Know and trust that he will welcome us when we go to him in prayer with our burdens. Talk to him. Go to him. Spend time with him.
    Philippians 4:6 – “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.”
    Proverbs 18:10 – “The name of the Lord is a fortified tower; the righteous run to it and are safe.”
    Psalm 34:18 – “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.”
    Psalm 46:1-3 – “God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging.
    Psalm 55:22 – “Cast your cares on the Lord and he will sustain you; he will never let the righteous be shaken.”
    1 Peter 5:7 – “Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.”

• • Pray lament prayers. It is okay to lament to the Lord. You can and should be honest with the Lord. He already knows what is in your mind and your heart. Pour out your burdens to him in prayer. You can share your pain with him. Tell him how you feel. Look at one example of a lament prayer:
    Psalm 13 – “How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me? Look on me and answer, Lord my God. Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death, and my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,” and my foes will rejoice when I fall. But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. I will sing the Lord’s praise, for he has been good to me.”
    When you lament, follow the example of the lament Psalms in the Bible. You can start with your complaint – the hardship you are going through and how you feel about it. Then ask God to intervene and act on your behalf. Then rejoice in the Lord, praise him, and commit yourself to him. Proclaim your trust in him. Whatever happens, you are committed to continue to trust in him and seek after him.

• • Pray with faith for God to work in your life and change your situation. Pray and keep on praying. He can do absolutely anything. He will answer our prayers according to his will. Be patient. Praying with faith means believing that God can do anything, and believing that God is loving and wants to do good to us. Even if you have barely any faith, like faith the size of a mustard seed (very small), God is able to do big things like moving mountains. But he will answer our prayers according to his will, sometimes saying yes and sometimes saying no.
    1 John 5:14-15 – “This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him.”
    Matthew 7:9-10 – “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!”
    Luke 18:1 – “Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up.”

• • Meditate on God’s promises in his Word and trust in him. Believe that he is good, loving, and all-powerful and so nothing will stop him from fulfilling his promises for you and for his people. Take time to read lengthy portions of the Bible, finding comfort in what God says to us in his Word. I particularly suggest praying through the Psalms when you are stressed or depressed. So many of them are perfectly fitting for today and beautiful to read. They can guide you to know what to pray when you feel like you have no words. Take time to chew on and rejoice in specific verses and promises you find, such as these:
    Isaiah 41:10 – “So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”
    Matthew 11:28-30 – “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
    Exodus 14:14 – “The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.”
    2 Corinthians 12:9-10 – “But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
    Psalm 32:8 – “I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my loving eye on you.”
    Philippians 1:6 – “being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”
    Romans 8:35-39 – “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written: “For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
    Philippians 4:13 – “I can do all this through him who gives me strength.”
    2 Corinthians 1:3-5 – “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ.”
    Matthew 6:25-34 – “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?  Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

• • Remember that the suffering we go through in this life is temporary. Jesus is coming. Jesus wins! The end of the story is a good end. We can endure the painful moments now, knowing that Jesus will fulfill his promise to come back and make all things new.
    Revelation 1:17-18 – “When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. Then he placed his right hand on me and said: “Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last. I am the Living One; I was dead, and now look, I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades.”
    Revelation 22:12 -13 – “Look, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to each person according to what they have done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.”

• • Remember that the Lord is with you at every moment. He doesn’t leave you alone in your suffering.
    Matthew 28:20 – Jesus says, “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
    Isaiah 43:1-2 – “But now, this is what the Lord says—he who created you, Jacob, he who formed you, Israel: “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.”
    Psalm 23 – “The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake. Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

   
   

  • Remember God knows the suffering you are going through. He knows how you feel. Jesus, God the son, became a human being and experienced rejection, suffering, and pain in this world. We don’t have a God who is distant from us. He understands our pain. Jesus lived through it. He is the one who comforts us in our troubles.
    Hebrews 4:15 – “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin.”

   
   

  • Rejoice in the promise that God uses suffering for our good and for good in this world. God is sovereign. He is all powerful and all knowing and nothing takes him by surprise. He knows the future. He has a good plan for this world. We may not always understand or know why God allows different kinds of suffering in our lives. For sure, we are left with many questions. But we can trust that God is our Heavenly Father who loves us and even when he allows bad things to happen in our lives, he is doing good things that we cannot see. Jesus’ death on the cross shows us the best example of how God can use suffering for good. He used the most unjust suffering ever for the salvation of all of us. If God can do that, he can make something good come out of my suffering as well. Even when God doesn’t answer my prayers in the way I want him to. I can still say, “Lord, I don’t understand why you don’t take this problem away, but you are good. I trust you. I trust your love for me. I trust in your good plan for my life. You remain in control of everything in this world.” Think about these passages:
    Romans 5:3-5 – “Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.”
    Romans 8:28-29 – “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.”
    James 1:2-4 – “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”
    Matthew 10:29-31 – “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.”