Brothers and sisters,
I encourage all of you to stay strong in your faith, concerning your celibacy until marriage -- including your fight against masturbation. As a young Christian man -- 22 -- I am going through this right now. But it isn't so arduous as it once was. I think the 'hardship of surrender' is in part at times a fallacy created by the enemy.
We have been created and shaped for total surrender to the One who carried a Cross and died on it.
These past couple nights I've been really tempted to masturbate to porn, but I have overcome through Jesus. I realize that when I fill my daily 'normal' life with Christ, then when the hour of temptation comes, no matter how consuming, I am not overpowered; I rise and laugh and praise God because Christ is living IN me.
I would admonish kindly and out of love those of you who believe that because we are saved, we can get away with sin, including fornication. I admonish you, because Jesus Christ through Paul has admonished me:
Romans 6:1-5, "What shall we say then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Chrst Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with Him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ as raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life."
If anyone encourages you Christians to fornicate, remember the words of John:
1st John 3:7-9, "Dear children do not let anyone lead you astray. He who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous. He who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil's work. No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God's seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God."
In Love,
youngnazarene