What’s your secret sin?

Back when I first jumped on the hamster wheel of internet writing, I was trying to write engaging threads on X in the dad-o-sphere to get some attention and build a following. Maybe I didn’t pay for enough exposure or maybe my threads just sucked. Don’t know, don’t care.

As I was writing the issue on the Polarities that Clash for Power, especially at the point of thinking about Megan Basham’s post in regards to men making excuses for their porn use, I thought about this thread that I wrote a couple years ago.

For obvious reasons I didn’t want to put the terms in the search bar and hit enter, but I had it saved in my archives. I’ve retrieved it from the X dustbin, worked to cut out some of the engagement bait shock language I used originally, and polished it up for today.

In the year of 2026, sexual sin is no longer exclusive to men. This post in no way disregards that. I realize many women are struggling with secret sins, too. Self-indulgence is being sold to women under the euphemism of joy bringing self-care. While these truths were written with men in mind, they are universally helpful.

Ladies don’t let yourself off the hook if you’re struggling here (please reach out to your pastor’s wife and not me if you are), but I am going to write this from the perspective of speaking to men.

Ok. Dangerous waters ahead so prepare for bluntness.

Before we wholesale sold our souls to the digital age, sailors used to navigate by stars. Some still do. In your navigation, are you chasing a fantasy by sailing to stars that don’t exist?

I’ll cut the metaphors.

Do you think masturbating is merely a secret, quick release?

After all, according to Oscar Wilde, the only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.

A much wiser man, Thomas Brooks, reminded us that bait always has a hook in it.

Your brief pleasure and momentary release is an act of self-sabotage. Secret lust will eat away at your heart and soul, and shrivel you into a shell of who you were meant to be. Scurvy comes full circle.

Guilt doesn’t do much to motivate anything other than hiding.

Here’s 10 truths you need to know to regain your honor and fight Poseidon in the secret corners of a lusting heart.

When you have an orgasm, your body releases oxytocin, which is a hormone strongly associated with bonding, attachment, trust, and intimacy. A mother‘s body will release oxytocin during childbirth and when breast-feeding her newborn.

God designed intimacy to be more than to satisfy appetites. He created it to establish and strengthen profound levels of connection. 

Sex is way more than just a physical act. It shapes connection, desire, memory, and affection. When Jesus of Nazareth and the apostle Paul spoke about how two shall become one flesh (Gen. 2:24, Matt 19:5, Mark 10:8, Eph. 5:31), it wasn’t a shallow or casual statement. Sex reaches deep into the heart and soul.

Lust indulged in fantasy and pornography are never just “private” sins. They may be secret, but they are forming and shaping your heart and body beneath the surface. Every indulgence sinks a hook deeper into the heart.

The National Library of Medicine has an in-depth article on oxytocin if you’d like to dive deeper on it.

When you masturbate to pornography or indulge lust through fantasy, you’re training your desires toward whatever image you’re feasting your mind on instead of an actual person who is a wonderful mixture of perfections and flaws.

A deep path is cut into your mind as it learns to associate pleasure with consumption of an image instead of a covenant with a living and breathing person. Over time, lust stops being a quick visit and turns into an extended stay as it shapes you and changes your expectations and affections. You’re no longer curious. The hook has set and you’re attached.

This is the danger. You learn to pursue gratification without sacrifice, intimacy without vulnerability, knowing without being fully known yourself. You’re not connecting with another human being made in the image of God. You’re connecting with an illusion.

A man cannot repeatedly sail by the stars of fantasy and expect his heart to be anchored in reality.

Several years ago, I remember a guy bringing up the question in a group asking if it was wrong to masturbate if you were thinking about your wife while doing it. Even when your lust is focused on your wife, if you’re indulging it without her, fantasy still becomes a replacement illusion. A counterfeit version of her is being created in your mind.

When you bring yourself to orgasm in an imagined scenario about your wife, built entirely around you and not at all about her, you’re no longer loving that aforementioned marvelous mix of perfections and flaws that she is. You’re attaching yourself to an image that’s not real. You’re not binding yourself to who she is but rather to who you wish she would be in that minds eye moment. 

The position you want but she doesn’t.

The performance you saw somewhere that you want her to duplicate.

The way you want her to act but she won’t. 

Fill in the blank. 

There’s no sacrifice. There’s no covenantal self-giving. There’s no patience. There’s no her before you. When your fantasy slowly replaces reality, you become attached to an illusion. It makes it dangerously more difficult to connect with the genuine article when you’ve connected so deeply with a mirage. You’ve been following a map to fool’s gold and you’re bound for shipwreck.

Sex within marriage was never meant to be reduced to a self-centered pressure release valve. God designed it to strengthen the union between a husband and wife.

To embark on the sexual journey as a solo act works against the very covenant it’s meant to draw together. Instead of building a bridge to one another, it builds a chasm between two who God said would be made to one. Instead of the genuine article of union, a fake intimacy is built in isolation. Instead of connecting, now you’re consuming. To paraphrase C.S. Lewis, even though he was talking about something different, you’ve developed a taste for mud pies in the slums instead of holidays at the sea.

You were meant for more.

Marriage is meant to call us out of ourselves to self-giving love for another. Lust turns us back inward. The counterfeit connects a man with a cardboard substitution which is far less than the glories of knowing and being known by his wife.

Before I go here, disclaimer: if you’re being a massive jerk and you smell like a mixture of cigarettes and vehicle grease while wearing boots without socks, you need to take a look in the mirror first. The pursuit of your wife also has to be more than fly by roaming hands and slaps on the behind. If you’re not colossally getting in your own way, which is a real possibility, and have provided for, dated, cared for, considered, and generally acted in a way that establishes safety for her, albeit in an imperfect way because who amongst us is perfect? That’s the context for this bullet point…

What about the objections: “My wife won’t have sex with me. What else am I supposed to do?!”

You’re still responsible for your own integrity.

Rejection hurts. The cold shoulder and silent mutiny hurt. A covenant between two people is not supposed to leave either one of you feeling crushingly alone. God said it’s not good for man to be alone, and your partner disagreed. Years of misunderstandings, poor communication, resentment, neglect, undealt with trauma, conflict and distance can create a wall that literally only the grace of God can break down.

However, one person’s failures do not justify your own. When you have to stand before God and give an account for your life, even if you’re covered by the sin-cleansing blood of Jesus, I doubt “She was cold to me” is going to get a pass any more than her saying “My nervous system needed to reset” is a pass for her when she is called to account.

When you took your vows, did you vow to have and to hold, to cherish, as long as your desires were fulfilled? In sickness and in health, for better or worse, whether the waters are warm and easy or cold and difficult, faithfulness requires us to stand firm and be steadfast.

If you’re going to win this war, you’re going to have to believe in something greater than yourself. If you aren’t who you want to be, you have to decide which behaviors are beneath the future vision of yourself. Then it’s going to take commitment and courage to fight against that behavior.

You were not created to chase orgasms and appetites from one moment to the next like some kind of animal. You were created for love, joy, peace, faithfulness, sacrificial glory, and self-control.

Holding the line means you’ll have to believe you can avert your eyes and busy your idle hands with good work instead of allowing them to become the devil’s playthings. Take every thought captive (2 Corinthians 10:5). Guard your eyes. Plant your face like flint and face the headwinds that would seek to bluster you down.

When the enemy sails towards you with a fleet and all you have is a ship with torn sails and broken mast, holding the line is going to be a righteous act.

You can drift about where the current carries you, you can be a coward and yield, or you can be resolute to not move.

This will likely feel like the fight of your life in the battlefield of your mind. You’ve gone down the self-indulgence path so many times, the muscle memory and knee-jerk reactions make it easy. You’re going to be fighting the current. No one knows how hard it is to paddle upstream until they’ve tried to fight it.

It’s not going to be easy. Many men don’t realize how much strength is in that current until they try to go against it. Waves of temptation will come. Old habits will whisper in your ear after a fight or hard day at work or some other stressor you just want to stop thinking about. Like the demon in a bottle, the empty promise to wash all your cares away in a sea of forgetful indulgence will entice you.

The siren song of “just one more” will try to weasel a foothold on you to regain more strength. It’s negotiating with the very thing that’s trying to master you and it will change tactics to receive the downfall it wants.

As John Owen said, “Be killing sin or sin will be killing you.” The pride crushing reality is that battle can’t be fought on bootstraps alone. You can’t pull yourself up high enough to win.

Your mind is gonna fog over. Pray for clarity. Your vision will darken. Pray for sight. Your vision is going to wane. Ask God to keep the prize of righteousness before your eyes. You’re dealing with way more than a behavioral problem. You’re dealing with the heart, which is why Scripture is so important here.

The Bible is called the sword of the Spirit for a reason. Memorize these two fighter verses so when the battle starts raging out of nowhere, there’s a sword in your scabbard and not just weak Pollyanna reframes:

“For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” 2 Corinthians 5:21 

“…sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it.” Genesis 4:7b

You are not destined to fail. The power of God is on your side to seek repentance and faithfulness through reliant prayer and dependent discipline as you learn to stand instead of surrender.

Your son will grow up in the same storm you did, if not worse. He’ll be tempted. The sirens will call him, and his desire will sing to him even more loudly than they will. The world will do all it can to train him up in the way of impulse driven response to lust, consumption, gratification and self-indulgence.

He needs his dad to be a conqueror, not conquered. He doesn’t need you to be perfect; he needs you to be awake and willing to fight. He needs you to do more than talk about integrity. He needs you to never surrender.

If you aren’t able to learn how to fight the battles of lust, how will you be able to guide him in the battle? The habits you’re indulging in private can wreak devastation on the legacy that follow behind you.

A legacy of repentance over secrecy, discipline over indulgence, and conviction over compromise is one that will throw a massive millstone into the chaos waters of this world.

Faithful doesn’t have to be perfect. You’ll mess up, but your sons need to see you at the helm and working to turn the ship a different direction.

This is a hard battle. You’ll gain scars. You’ll be haunted by the shame of past defeats. You’ll be tempted to give up and give in.

It all starts with a decision. Today is the day to stop compromising, stop negotiating, stop justifying, and stop drifting towards whatever appetite is calling you to obey it.

Today is the day to take hold of the helm again.

Brother, you were made for more than consumption and private indulgence. You were made to love fiercely, lead courageously, walk with humility, and walk with integrity before God and those entrusted to your care.

You won’t be able to do that if your soul is still chained below deck. You were not made for dungeons of gloomy darkness.

Today is your day to come to the light, breathe fresh air again, and with fear and trembling take hold of the helm you’ve been called to.

Turn the ship around while there is still time.

He’s been pretty quiet for a while, but back in the 2000’s and mid-2010’s, Jimmy Needham was an honest voice in music. I rarely heard him on the radio, so perhaps his transparency and lack of vague wrestling was what kept him out of real mainstream traction. He did leave music for ministry, too. Life changes.

Jimmy was open about his past struggles with lust and pornography, and his song Before and After was all about it.

One of my favorite lines is, In the darkness of the room to came up next to me. You put Your hand upon my wound and whispered, “Rest in Me.”

So good. You’ve gotta listen to this one.

The seriousness of the offenses must not be glossed over, either. We’re going to have to give an account for our lives. The reality is, before we even read these verses, we’ve already fallen.

Yet, the good news is that when we have to give that account, when the verdict of guilty is read over each of us, for those who trust in Jesus of Nazareth for the forgiveness of their sins, the sentence has already been finished by his life, death, and resurrection.

I understand sharing this kind of victory story isn’t exactly something you might want to share in an email or DM to someone writing a newsletter. I’ve shared my story at men’s meetings and around campfires, and maybe if we’ve shared those spaces, you’ve heard it. That speaks to the truth is that there IS power in story.

Andrew Peterson once said, “If you want a person to know the truth, tell them the truth. If you want a person to love the truth, tell them a story.”

I did hear this story once. I saw Sleeping Giant play in Greenville well over 15 years ago, and the singer Tommy Green told the story about how his lust set off a chain of events that led to someone else’s suicide. I found a video of him sharing that story again, though this wasn’t the event I was at.

If you’re struggling with anything on this post, and you’re a dude, reach out to me. Reply to the email. Send me a text if you have my number or drop me a DM if we’re only connected on socials. Whatever pride you’re laying down to confess isn’t worth hanging onto. You can’t fight Poseidon alone.

Lust is a snare. Whether you’re a man or woman, it doesn’t care. Lust can be conjured up in the heart with visuals or emotions, comparing what you don’t have to what you don’t have. Fanning the flame, lust dwells on what it can NOT have, and then thrives in secrecy.

It’s a small thing, but here’s a phone lock screen for you. Think of it as a way I can support you in some of your most tempting moments, and bolster your resiliency in moments of calm.

Hold the helm, my brother.

Stay Anchored and keep fighting the good fight,

~ J.P. Simons ⚓️

PS: If you found this newsletter beneficial, forward it to the one person you thought of while reading it who may find a nugget of help from it.

My first book, Pray Then Plow: Practical Steps For Men Who Won’t Give Up, is now available on Amazon in paperback or Kindle format, as well. Tap here to check it out.

I started writing this post last year and left it alone for a while. While I have stepped away from slowly going through Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices in the Deep Dives here, I do want to harken back to one of the most influential portions.

If you want to read all the remedies Brooks give for the device, you can go back and read the article Fortunes, Forecasts, Lucky Charms. I even kept the Mad Max Fury Road GIF.

There’s always a hook in the bait.

SATAN'S DEVICES TO DRAW THE SOUL TO SIN

DEVICE 1: TO PRESENT THE BAIT AND HIDE THE HOOK

Satan's first device to draw the soul into sin is, to present the bait—and hide the hook; to present the golden cup—and hide the poison; to present the sweet, the pleasure, and the profit that may flow in upon the soul by yielding to sin—and to hide from the soul the wrath and misery that will certainly follow the committing of sin. By this device he deceived our first parents, "And the serpent said unto the woman, You shall not surely die—for God does know, that in the day you eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened; and you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil" (Gen. 3:4-5). Your eyes shall he opened, and you shall be as gods! Here is the bait, the sweet, the pleasure, the profit. Oh—but he hides the hook—the shame, the wrath, and the loss that would certainly follow!

There is an opening of the eyes of the mind to contemplation and joy—and there is an opening of the eyes of the body to shame and confusion. He promises them the former—but intends the latter, and so Satan cheats them—giving them an apple in exchange for a paradise, as he deals by thousands now-a-days.

Satan with ease pawns falsehoods upon us, by his golden baits, and then he leads us and leaves us in a fool's paradise. He promises the soul honor, pleasure, profit—but pays the soul with the greatest contempt, shame, and loss that can be. By a golden bait he labored to catch Christ (Matt. 4:8, 9). He shows him the beauty and the finery of a bewitching world, which doubtless would have taken many a carnal heart; but here the devil's fire fell upon wet tinder, and therefore did not ignite. These tempting objects did not at all win upon his affections, nor dazzle his eyes, though many have eternally died of the 'wound of the eye', and fallen forever by this vile strumpet the world, who, by laying forth her two fair breasts of PROFIT and PLEASURE, has wounded their souls, and cast them down into utter perdition. She has, by the glistening of her pomp and preferment, slain millions; as the serpent Scytale, which, when she cannot overtake the fleeing passengers, does, with her beautiful colors, dazzle and amaze them, so that they have no power to pass away until she has stung them to death! Adversity has slain her thousand—but prosperity her ten thousand.