Brother, you must fight sin when it is small, before it grows too big to confess. Call someone about wandering thoughts and drifting affections. Do not hide the second look. Expose it. Tell your brothers. Tell your elders. Let them hold you accountable.

In the summer of 1999, we had just returned from Turkey and bought our first house. I was working from home, as I usually did. Michelle had gone out to run errands, leaving me alone when our neighbor came to the door. She and I were about the same age. I do not even remember what her excuse was for knocking, but during the conversation in the doorway, she reached up, touched the scruff of my beard, and said, “You’re kind of cute.”

What started as cautious skies when I opened the door turned into a full-on tsunami warning in seconds. Alarms went off in my head and heart. God was kind to make my conscience scream. I shut the conversation down as quickly as I could. As soon as the dead bolt was locked, I contacted a brother I trusted. He needed to know what had happened, to pray with me, and to hold me accountable. And he did.

Now imagine if I had not made that call. Imagine if I had let my heart dwell on her touch and those words of affirmation. It is easy to see how the next time I saw her, I might walk a little farther into the surf, and the time after that, deeper still. It is not hard to see how something like that, left unchecked, could have swept me out to sea in adultery.

Carried by the Current

Another brother has fallen into sexual sin. Before you join the shocked and condemning voices online, walk a few minutes with me in his shoes. Is it really such a mystery how this happens?

No man is swept out to sea without first stepping in the water. You dip a toe. You feel the edge. It is just a glance. Just a passing thought. Then you are ankle-deep. You linger. You let your mind stay where it should not. You wade in farther. You justify the private messages, the emotional connection, the fantasies. The current feels manageable.

But sin never stays shallow.

You do not realize how far you have gone until your feet cannot touch the bottom. And by then, the tide owns you. You are not standing anymore. You are being carried. You find yourself beyond the reef, staring at jagged consequences. That is when the sin feels too big to confess. The shame is sharp, and the cost is high. So you stay in the current. You stay silent. James says it clearly: “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 sin, when it has run its course, brings forth death” (James 1:14–15).

You chose to get wet. You stepped in on your own. But what you didn’t account for was the current. You certainly didn’t factor in the reef of consequences. To confess now would cost you. Position. Esteem. Influence. Maybe even your marriage. So you keep silent. If you had only confessed when the water was at your ankles, it could have stopped there. But you didn’t.

I know men whose lust has swept them into unimaginable sin. Yes, physical adultery. Some also molested their children. Others hid years-long porn addictions. Some ended up sending explicit photos of themselves to strangers online. Some sought out homosexual encounters. None of them started with those ultimate actions in mind. All of them ignored early warning signs and refused early confession. The current took them farther than they intended, and at that point confession exposed too much. All of them wish they had confessed when they first dipped their toe in the water.

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