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Dear Paul and Lori,
I am a Southern Baptist who does inner healing and deliverance ministry. Often I have had young men who want prayer to "cast out" a spirit connected with masturbation. I have colleagues who "cast out" a spirit of masturbation.

As I have struggled with this subject myself and with others who needed prayer, let me lend what little I have learned.

I had been masturbating since age 14, sometimes going a week without it, sometimes masturbating several times a day. When I was a freshman in college, I cannot tell you the relief I found when I read a pamphlet produced by Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family which said that the Bible did not say anything for or against masturbation, therefore, it must not be that important in God's economy of things. I continued to masturbate, and when a guy I was discipling who was a great-looking tight end on the college football team brought up these concerns about women trying to push his sexual butttons to get him to lose his virginity with him, I counseled him to masturbate before every date and it will "take the edge off" and leave you with more control to tell those girls "NO." Even if masturbation were a sin, (which I don't believe it necessarily is), it would be better than losing your virginity with a girl who only wants him for a notch on her gun.

But I continued to run into guys who felt guilty for masturbating. I never really did and did not understand why. Church leaders and responsible people who deal with the demonic were saying that masturbation was sin and participating in it would ruin your power in ministry, etc., like any other sin would.

So I tried an experiment. I speak across the country in mostly small conferences. I am now married but was single then. At one speaking venue, I would not masturbate for a week before speaking. I had great power and anointing in the pulpit. Many responded to the call of God. (When I finished and went back to the hotel room, I got naked and masturbated four or five times in an hour. Then got up, put on my suit, went back to teach in the evening session. I had great power and anointing in the pulpit. People responded greatly to God. I noticed *NO* difference in anointing. Furthere, those of us who do deliverance of demons from people know that "control" is an important issue in defining whether demonization has taken place in a person's life. For example, if I have no control over an area in my life like gambling, then I may have given control over to a demonic force. I had control over masturbation, could go a week without it or do it 5 times a day at my own will. Thus I was not under its control

BUT in my deliverance ministry, I still got guys who were under great guilt for their constant practice of masturbation. One of them, a close friend, was so concerned that he had marred his witness with the Lord over it. I told him what I told you above plus added what I am about to tell you in the next paragraph. His response? I wish you could could come and tell all the guys in my seminary what you just told me.

As I have continued to pray, search Scripture, and experience the liberation of people from the devil and past hurts, here's what I think about masturbation.

I believe it is a pressure valve to knock off the "edge" sexually in a man whom God has created to greatly pleasure his wife one day and have wonderful, Godly kids.

I do believe masturbation (like drinking) can be overdone. When I have to deal with masturbation in a person's life and question them enough to tell whether they think it is a problem for them (For example, does it stand in the way of your moving closer in relationship to Jesus Christ?) Then I deal with it. BUT I do not believe that masturbation is a sexual problem -- au contraire, it is a sign that the sexual part of that man is in tip-top condition.

I instead deal with addiction issues (as I would with alcoholism) if their frequency is such that they cannot stop, do not have control over it, and it is embarrassing in many situations to them. When I deal with a spirit of addiction and a "spirit" of masturbation which is not sexually derived but addictionally derived, that person has received relief. The other place where masturbation could be a problem (and it was with this seminarian I mentioned above) is a spirit of poverty. He wanted companionship so much that a spirit of poverty had taken advantage of him in this area. A spirit of poverty is a familiar spirit infecting successive generations, in this case of his family in financial and emotional ways as well as his problem with constant sexual manipulation of his penis. It was not a sexual problem. It was a need borne out of poverty of companionship. I had a similar issue in my own life. Now that I am married, the only time I ever want to masturbate is when my wife is away from the house and

I am still reading all you have written on the subject of masturbation on this site, but this is my small perspective on the issue.