How can one overcome lustful desires? Eighty Three percent of college students and fifty five percent of pastors are said to be addicted to pornography. (link) Even the most Godly men, like David (OT) has been trapped by these desires. 

It seems that the more I try to fight these desires, the stronger that they become. It doesn't matter if I see a beautiful woman walking down the street or if I see an image on the internet, the passion inside of me begins to burn when I force myself to turn away.


  1 Corinthians 10:13 NIV   
  
  No temptation has overtaken you except what
  is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be
  tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will
  also provide a way out so that you can endure it.


In my opinion it's very likely that masturbation is a sin that leads to death. In this next verse, I take it very literally, I see Jesus talking about our lusts and possibly even masturbation.


  Matthew 18:8 NIV
  
  If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw
  it away. It is better for you to enter life maimed or crippled than to
  have two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal fire.


I do believe that if God says we are secure in our salvation, that nobody can change that. However I also believe that if God says we are no longer worthy of salvation because we have fallen away from the faith, then our security and salvation is lost.

Just before this verse above, Jesus was talking about plucking out your eye if it causes you to sin. I believe that Jesus is literally telling us that if we continue to lust and to gratify ourselves that we need to purge that evil from amung us and literally cut off your hand. I don't see this as a metiphor at all.

For those of you that will say you do not agree that cutting a part of your body off will solve this problem, keep in mind then that you call Jesus a liar.


  Hebrews 12:4 NIV
  
  In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point
  of shedding your blood.


He's right, I have not resisted to this point yet. So I want to know from the community, how do you resist temptation? How do you literally detoxify yourself from this poison?
I had reached a point after decades of struggling with this sin where I had just resigned myself to this being part of who I am.  I honestly figured I would just struggle with this sin for the rest of my life - I would take it to my grave.

For me, freedom came through Christopher West's teaching on Pope John Paul II's Theology of the Body.  The MP3 version is available for free download.  It's not possible to do justice to Chris' 12 hour summation of years of JP II's teaching, but I'll try.

As I have analysed what happened through that teaching, I conclude that among other nuances the change in my thinking was to see clearly what it means to be a person created in the image of God as a body and a spirit in one cohesive being.  Fundamental was the understanding that other people, being in the image of God, are worthy, nay fundamentally entitled, to be treated with the dignity commensurate with being in the image of God.

Heavily entwined in all of this is the idea that the incarnation was always part of God's plan.  That the incarnate Jesus (even post resurrection in his glorified state) is a mysterious combination of Spirit and Body.  This causes me to elevate my body away from the "shell I am waiting to escape in the next life" to being an integral part of who I am which will be glorified and redeemed in the next life, but not thrown away.  Thus my body needs to be treated with dignity.

Suddenly my body was not something "bad" from which I was waiting to be freed, but it was part of the image of God in which I was created as a person, which was created "good".

Somewhere in there, washed in the Word of God, my mind was renewed and my heart was changed in a dramatic way.  I no longer desired to be "that man" who used other people, including my wife, for his own selfish gratification.  I began to see people differently; I began to see myself differently; for the first time in my life I was comfortable in my own skin.  I just didn't want to do that any more.  One day, I realized that somewhere over the previous 6 months I had been set free.

I finally realized what JP II was getting at when said words to the effect of: Freedom from the law is not freedom to break the law, but freedom to conform to the law in all it's meaning because I no longer desire in my heart that which is contrary to the law. (And with Paul I then concur, "the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good." - Rom 7:12).