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In working Step Three, I am asked to make the decision to turn my life over to my Father in Heaven and to my Savior, Jesus Christ. I am asked to realize that the Savior not only will save me, but actually patiently waits for me to take this step so He can save me.

He longs for me to allow Him to do what only He can do-change my heart to conform with the principles of happiness and eternal life. He cannot force His will on me. He must wait for my decision. This surrender of my will and life to Him must begin with surrendering my addiction.

Taking Step Three will not be accomplished instantly, but I have become convinced I have no other option if I am to get well. I am finally willing to begin this process and to “give away all my sins” (Alma 22:18).

The Wrestle I Had Taking this Step

I am amazed at what a willful soul I can be. It’s easy for me to believe I fought hard for my agency during the war in heaven, considering how stubbornly I have insisted on doing things my way since I’ve come to earth. And now, Step Three asks me to surrender this hard-won agency to the Lord?

From another perspective, it’s been quite a struggle to admit to myself that if I don’t give my agency to the Lord, I’ll be automatically giving it to Satan. I see the words of Step Three. I know I should surrender, but my stubborn will resists, just to prove I am in control of my own life. I’ve come to realize this obsession with control has been one of the roots of my addiction, one of the excuses I used to justify my acting out.

When I was a young father, for example, I was sure I would be able to raise wonderfully obedient children, despite the fact that I was secretly disobeying God. Never mind the mismanagement of my own agency-as a father I was supposed to manage theirs. Imagine my frustration when they became teenagers and developed opinions of their own! And my wife-how often I have decided she shouldn’t feel the way she does! Then there’s my boss at work. He always has an opinion about how I should perform my job, and it’s not always the same as mine. And what about the weather, and the wars, and all the suffering that goes on in the world?

Is it any wonder-in the face of all I had to worry about and stay busy trying to control-I didn’t even notice when my own private, personal indulgences became an addiction that began controlling me.

In light of the mess the world was in, including especially the mess my own life had become, I was sorely tempted at times to wonder whether Heavenly Father’s plan to allow us our own agency was such a good idea. But, then I was reminded that Satan is the one who seeks to take control of our souls and destroy the agency of man. The plan of the Father, in fact, the very path to Godhood, requires the correct use of agency, not the destruction of it. I began to realize that addiction was one of Satan’s greatest tools against humanity, against me.

The Supreme Principle of Agency

Agency is such an important principle in the grand scheme of things that our Father in Heaven allows it to be the ultimate deciding factor in our lives. God respects our desires, our wills; that’s why He doesn’t step in and prevent us from making mistakes. How could we learn to properly use our agency if we never experienced the consequences of misusing it?

I think we sometimes underestimate the significance of the so-called “war in heaven.” We think of it as an historical event. “That’s when it was decided we would have agency here on the earth.” In truth, Satan has never stopped trying to steal our agency from us, and so, in a sense, the war in heaven is still going on-the battleground has just moved to earth.

At the same time, however, the Father and Jesus have never stopped respecting and honoring our agency. “The agency of man” (Moses 4:3) is an eternal principle that God continues to cherish and protect, placing it even above His own desires for us. Alma said:

Notice that what is “allotted” or given to us is according to our will, not God’s. In the Lord’s Prayer, we pray, “Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10), but the only way for that to happen is for our will to become one with His will, for He will respect what we choose. The Book of Mormon teaches this principle as the “doctrine of restitution”:

There are really only two choices open to us. We can say unto God, as the Savior did, “Thy will be done,” or we can wait until our chances for repentance are past and the Lord reluctantly says to us, “Very well then, thy will be done. If you insist on having evil and what evil brings, you may have it. The choice is entirely yours.” Thus we will find that the telestial kingdom is populated entirely by people who have chosen it.

I have always been impressed with the Lord’s powerful counsel to us in Doctrine and Covenants 121. He tells us in no uncertain terms that we are to lead only with “gentleness and meekness,” and warns us that power and influence cannot be maintained by the use of the priesthood (or any other position of power, such as parenthood).

I accepted that principle of priesthood leadership in the home, and although I didn’t practice it perfectly in raising my children, I believed it and tried to follow it. It was a great awakening for me, however, to realize that God follows the same principles in His interactions with us. Because God waits upon our will, He Himself follows the same standard to influence others:

Therefore, the Lord continues to wait for us to decide to serve Him with all our “heart, might, mind and strength” (D&C 4:2). And perhaps the greatest thing we can do to help “[His] kingdom come” (Matt 6:10) is to each bring our will into harmony with His perfect will.

Because the Lord leaves it all up to us, it is of utmost importance that we carefully examine our desires and motives. Our actions are one of the truest indicators of our desires, for our deeds spring from our desires.

One of the hardest truths I have had to face is the fact that when I was acting out it was because that was what in my heart of hearts I truly wanted. I told myself that I wanted abstinence, but my actions proved otherwise. What I needed was not a transplant of willpower, but a “heart” transplant. I needed a new heart, new desires, new longings for God, instead of for the pleasure or comfort of pornography. The only person who could give me those desires, in place of the corrupt ones I had, was God. He has promised us:

Addiction-Satan’s Enslavement of Agency

Addiction is “cunning, baffling and powerful,” as AA puts it. That is as true of sexual addiction as of any other addiction. So much of my battle has had to do with my desires-wrestling with the fact that at times I really want to sin. It seems insane to look at the devastation that addiction brings into my life and then say that some of the time I don’t want to give it up. It defies logic. It defies reason. That is what makes addiction so “cunning, baffling and powerful.”

The truth is, addiction subverts our will, our desires, and our very agency. My desire for righteousness dwindled as my desire for the “rush” I got from pornography increased. I saw myself becoming dependent on those feelings. It would be naive to pretend there was no “reward” in these behaviors. If I didn’t get something from it, I wouldn’t continue these behaviors, would I? When I logically consider all that these behaviors have done to ruin my life, however, it clearly isn’t worth it. But how do I hold on to that rational perspective when I am in the throes of a very enticing temptation?

I remember a General Authority telling of a visit he made to a man in the hospital who was dying of lung cancer caused by his years of addiction to smoking. Even though the man had no more access to cigarettes, his habit of reaching into his shirt pocket for them was so strong, he had worn a hole in his pajamas by repeatedly reaching for the cigarettes that weren’t there.

The General Authority then asked: “When this man passed into the spirit world soon after my visit, do you think he still wanted a cigarette? Of course he did! ‘That same spirit which doth possess your bodies at the time that ye go out of this life … will have power to possess your body in that eternal world (Alma 34:34)’.”

Addiction to sensuality is no different. The addict continues to indulge, even though the enjoyment becomes less and less, while the craving becomes fiercer and fiercer. Soon the pain hugely outweighs the diminishing thrill. I can easily picture a person in spirit prison, wishing he could indulge in sexual behavior long after the chance to do so is gone. Even when the possibility of acting on his lust has disappeared, he would rather hold on to lust he can no longer satisfy than surrender it to the Lord and be set free. He is truly in prison.

As I struggled to take Step Three, I was amazed at the arguments Satan, the father of lies, used to keep me entrapped. For instance, I was tempted to see surrendering my will to God as just plain unnatural. I mean, isn’t it a natural and desirable thing for children to grow up and become self-sufficient? After all, I worked hard to become an adult, independent from my parents. If I hadn’t, I might still be living at home, using up their resources instead of earning my own way.

Under the influence of this way of thinking, I was completely distracted from the testimony of the scriptures concerning the degree of dependence I needed to have on the Lord:

Gradually, I began to realize Step Three was the step inviting me to finally heed these words from King Benjamin, to finally realize that, on an eternal scale, I am still a small child when compared to God. But still I resisted. I just could not find the desire to submit to Him in all things. It seemed all my desires were bound up in the shame and degradation of sexual addiction.

Becoming More Aware of My Desires

The human capacity for desire is perverted and corrupted by addiction. My addiction was no different. For many years I believed that the only way to overcome my addiction was to “stuff” my sinful desires as much as possible, to keep them contained or repressed. However, using this approach, I found myself virtually unable to resist a single urge to act out.

Because I refused to admit my desires, to acknowledge the warning signs that were happening in my heart and mind, I was oblivious to my own danger. I was set up to act out without warning, and then found myself asking-after the act-“How did I get here again?”

Bill W., the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, described this same experience in his battle with alcoholism. After a series of binges, he determined once and for all to quit drinking.

“Shortly afterward I came home drunk. There had been no fight. Where had been my high resolve? I simply didn’t know. It hadn’t even come to mind. Someone had pushed a drink my way, and I had taken it. Was I crazy? I began to wonder, for such an appalling lack of perspective seemed near being just that.

“Renewing my resolve, I tried again. Some time passed, and confidence began to be replaced by cocksureness. I could laugh at the gin mills. Now I had what it takes! One day I walked into a caf to telephone. In no time I was beating on the bar asking myself how it happened. As the whisky rose to my head I told myself I would manage better next time, but I might as well get good and drunk then. And I did.

“The remorse, horror and hopelessness of the next morning are unforgettable. The courage to do battle was not there.” (Alcoholics Anonymous, Fourth Ed., 5-6)

Paradoxically, the recovery process has led me to the understanding that rather than deny my desires, I needed to pay more attention to them, including and most especially the sinful ones. Before I could start getting abstinent, I had to “step outside myself” enough to take a hard look at the desires I was harboring and the choices they were enticing me to make. Concerning the importance of our desires, Elder Neal A. Maxwell said:

After a time of some bewilderment, I finally began to understand that if I was not willing to confront my desires, I would continue to be subject to their power to carry me away without my even considering the alternatives. It took a lot of prayer and surrender to the Lord before I could admit that at some level I did know what was happening, even though I desperately tried to pretend I didn’t. As painful as it was, I had to admit to my Lord that I had wanted sin more than I had wanted Him. Then I had to petition Him to change my heart, to give me the desire for Him and His way of life.

Only then could I start to change from the inside out. I had to stop and think about how fierce my craving for pornography had been at times, and realize that my desire for God had to be at least that desperate. I had to want God more than I wanted my addiction-but that desire was not something I could call up from inside me. The desire for righteousness was itself a gift from God.

The second half of this chapter will be posted next week.

Clean Hands, Pure Heart by Philip A. Harrison, and its companion LDS 12 Step book, He Did Deliver Me from Bondage by Colleen C. Harrison, are available at most LDS bookstores and can be ordered online at www.ldscloseouts.com or www.rosehavenpublishing.com