No Sanity Required
No Sanity Required is a weekly podcast hosted by Brody Holloway and Snowbird Outfitters. Each week, we engage culture and personal stories with a Gospel-driven perspective. Our mission is to equip the Church to pierce the darkness with the light of Christ by sharing the vision, ideas, and passions God has used to carry us through 26 years of student ministry. Find more content at swoutfitters.com.
No Sanity Required
Pornography | Commit to Christ, Renew Your Mind
What is shaping the way you view relationships and sexuality?
The world is pressuring students to figure out their gender identity. We need to seek Christ and show students how to fight sexual immorality. In this episode, Brody points out 4 things we can learn from Romans 12 that push us to commit to walking with Christ in this area of our lives.
Pornography and sexual immorality are heart issues. As we’re being conformed into the image of Christ, we’re going to make mistakes. But we can live in freedom because we have Christ’s Spirit living in us.
Brody also sits down with Spencer Davis to discuss what renewing our minds practically looks like. If we walk by the Spirit, we won’t gratify the flesh. Let’s set our minds on things above and rest in the freedom we have in Christ.
Resources:
- Romans 12
- Romans 7
- Snowbird Podcast Sessions
- The Griz Podcast
Please leave a review on Apple or Spotify to help improve No Sanity Required and help others grow in their faith.
Click here to get our Colossians Bible study.
Happy Monday everybody. Welcome to no Sanity Required. We told you last week that we'd be continuing our conversation with Jason George, but we're not gonna be able to do that. As some of you may know, especially if you listen to the Grizz podcast, jason has some chronic illness. He fights and struggles with Lyme disease or Lyme's disease. I'm not sure if it's Lyme's or Lyme's, but I know it's brutal and it's uh, it's very, um, it's overwhelming.
Speaker 1:So we started into our second episode, which would have been today's episode. We were hoping to get multiple episodes done and we got about 20 minutes into it. We're just starting to turn the corner and start getting to start to get it. We were here in Jason's story and we're gonna get into some practical things to just help uh live in freedom and victory. And and he man, he got so sick and he had to leave the recording area, go back to his, uh, his room, go back to his cabin and uh, he was staying in a local Airbnb. So he, he had it back and he was. He was in the dark, literally under the covers, for the next 24 hours and I was just checking in on him by text, but he ended up having to leave the next morning and get out of here, go to see his doctor. So hopefully we'll get him back, um and we'll have some more conversation. We'd love for you to hear from him. In the meantime, we're gonna have a follow-up.
Speaker 1:Today, as we said, we would Just won't have Jason. I am gonna bring Spencer Davis in um in the second part of the episode to talk through some points and uh and some some practical thoughts that come from, uh, some breakout sessions he has taught on this subject matter. So today we're gonna continue the conversation we started last Monday. We're gonna be talking about, um, just pornography as, uh, as it pertains to the believer, and how we might live in victory, not live in addiction, not live in defeat, not live in shame and guilt, um, but how we might overcome that as a temptation and as a as a real part of our lives. So thank you for tuning in. Let's get into it.
Speaker 2:Welcome to no Sanity Required from the Ministry of Snowbird Wilderness Outfitters. A podcast about the Bible, culture and stories from around the globe.
Speaker 1:I want to start with scripture and let me, just before we dive into this, let me say that today this is gonna be, I think, for a lot of us we've looked for, really you know, strategic ways to defeat pornography, and you're gonna hear over and over again today in this episode this is a hard issue. If I want to live in victory, I want to live in obedience, um, then I'm gonna set my heart and my affections on the things of the Lord and I'm gonna, I'm gonna fight the good fight. Now, that doesn't mean that I'm not gonna fall or fail or falter, trip up, stumble, lose some battles, but it means the trajectory, the uh, the arching trajectory of my life is going to be an upward trajectory where I'm defined more by victory and recovery from defeat than I am, from defeat and slavery to that defeat. So if you can imagine if I was drawing this out, if this was, if I was gonna paint a visual, you know, imagine an arch that's that starts low and goes high. Imagine you're looking at a whiteboard and we start at the bottom left corner and we draw a line that arcs up and then ends in the top right corner, and there are gonna be times on that arc where there's a little dip, you know, or there's a, there's a, there's a flat area where we fall or falter, but the trajectory is going to then continue on an upward trajectory.
Speaker 1:And, for the believer, when I fail or falter, whether that's pornography or um or some other addiction, or it's an attitude, or it's the way I spend my money, or it's um my thought life, or it's, you know, mean, mean or ugly words, hateful spirit towards people, bad attitudes, whatever it is, um, or you know, defeat, self-defeatism. You know where I, where I don't understand who. I am in Christ and I live with the defeatist mindset. That can either be a little flat spot on the trajectory that I recover from and bounce right back into God's plan and purpose, or it can be the kind of thing that turns into a downward spiral. And now you're looking at that, you know. Imagine we're looking at that whiteboard and you start at the bottom left-hand side and you start to climb, climb, climb a trajectory that's upward and then boom, it crashes right back down to the bottom in a spiral. You know, you go down a in a downward spiral.
Speaker 1:For the believer, it's not like we just have this flawless, perfect upward trajectory as we're being conformed to the image of Jesus. We're going to make mistakes, we're going to falter, we're going to fail. We're going to fail miserably at times, but we need to constantly be battling, to stand on our feet, to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, to keep our hand on the plow and keep moving forward. So today, as we unpack what it is to live in freedom you know, from pornography, just know this we are in an upward trajectory of pursuing the Lord, and if I will set my heart, my mind, my heart, my mind and my eyes on Jesus, then there's Jesus is going to give me victory. The overarching reality of my life will be that I'll live in victory. Even when there's defeat, there will be victory that comes out of that defeat, victory through healing and forgiveness and growth.
Speaker 1:And so I want to look to a familiar passage of Scripture, and it is Romans 12. First I want to read it in the ESV Romans 12, 1 and 2. You've probably heard this. I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing, you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. Now let me read that same passage in the New Living Translation, which is my preferred reading translation. So, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he's done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice, the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him. Don't copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God's will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect. I want to focus some of our time on those words in the New Living Translation Let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Now, when we look there in the ESV the first one we read, it says be transformed by the renewal of your mind. And so the idea in these verses that I want to unpack and then we'll jump into some conversational spencer after this the idea is that I live in a way that my mind is being renewed, my thought processes are being transformed and I'm learning how to control and surrender my thoughts to Jesus. I'm learning how to live in victory. I'm learning how to defeat everything the enemy throws at me.
Speaker 1:The weekend we've just come out of here at SWO we went through this was our pure and holy retreat. It's a retreat or a conference for students that focuses on biblical sexuality. We address sexuality, what the Bible teaches about sex and sexuality and relationships, and what the world is going to try to do to distort that or pervert that, what Satan has done to pervert that. One of the things we tell students is that we know the world is putting in an increasing pressure and an expectation on you to be in relationships and to embrace certain sexual norms. It's becoming sort of an expectation to be in a relationship. It's almost like even.
Speaker 1:I think there's two things that students are pressured with and pressured into often. One is you got to figure out your sexuality and we might say a sub point under that, but still under the same thing Figure out what is my sexual preference and or what is my gender. So you know there's this weird pressure to determine what my gender is going to be. Am I male or female, or am I they? Am I, he is she or are they? So there's that's. That's a thing like the world is pressuring students or teenagers to choose, you know, to figure out what your gender identity is. Well, that's nonsense. Your gender identity is male or female, based on how God created you. If God created you to be a male, then you're gonna have male genitalia and you're gonna be wired in the brain in a masculine way. That doesn't mean you're not gonna have strong feminine tendencies.
Speaker 1:Psychologist Jordan Peterson, who is, you know, one of the most well spoken and read thinkers of our day, he will say that, fifth, I think he says 10 to 15 percent maybe it's five to 10 percent, but I think it's 10 to 15 percent of men will be more feminine in the way that they think and process information and emotion, and he'll say that he's in that category. So he'll say I'm more feminine the way that I think. Likewise, he'll say that women those who are created with female gender characteristics, biology, genitalia and that who who are hardwired in the brain to be female are going to predominantly be feminine the way they think and process information and emotions, but that, similarly, 10 to 15 percent or five to 10 percent of women are gonna be more masculine in the way they process information and think, and I would say my wife falls into that category. My wife is. She thinks and processes information more like a man, the way she deals with emotion. She's very affectionate, she's got a very tender spirit, but she's just kind of tough and gritty in a lot of ways that she doesn't try to be tough and gritty, she doesn't just, you know, she's just kind of. She's just wired more like a dude, where I have family members and close friends who are male that are wired a little bit more in sort of a feminine manner. Okay, now, that's one thing that the world wants to do right now is force kids to pick a team, pick a gender, pick an identity, and it's like what we would teach as believers is no, no, seek out the Lord in His word and as he grows you and conforms you to His image. Your identity will be rooted in who you are in Christ. The second thing that the world applies pressure to our students and this is something we talked about this past weekend and that we talk about with students often is that there's just pressure to be in a relationship. If you're not in a relationship, something's wrong. That's crazy. It was just absolutely crazy. Even at a young age like kindergarten, first grade, second grade kids talk about boyfriend, girlfriend stuff, and that's just our culture sort of promotes that, and so there's this increased pressure to be in a relationship.
Speaker 1:What I think pornography does is it muddies the waters. It confuses. So much of that because it brings you into a pseudo or a fantasy world where you can kind of determine the outcome to some degree of the sexual experience. You can watch whatever you choose to watch and then you can, through fantasy and imagination, enter into this world where you can kind of be who you want to be in that make-believe world. But it's not real, and so it creates a lot of confusion. It disrupts reality, it confuses. You know, we saw in the numbers in the stats in last week's episode. It confuses people's sexuality in terms of sexual function, sexual desire, sexual appeal, sexual expectation. It puts pressure and strain on relationships.
Speaker 1:Marriages that have pornography introduced into the relationship typically struggle. It creates problems. It creates impotency in men, erectile dysfunction. It creates major insecurity and body image and disorient women, disorient women that struggle with pornography. And so what do we do about it? Well, we have to look to the word of God and learn how to think, and I think learning how to think and process rather than just feel and react. To not just live by impulse and just react to sexual urges or fleshly desires, but to say, okay, let me think about this. God put these desires in me. I need to think about what his plan is for me to to act out certain desires.
Speaker 1:Sex is a beautiful and powerful thing. It's extremely when sex is experienced on God's terms and God's manner and God's way, god's design. It is extremely gratifying, it's extremely fulfilling, but it's also extremely spiritually fulfilling. There's a spiritual connection to the partner that you're with, where, if a man and woman who love the Lord are experiencing sexual fulfillment within a marriage, it grows you deeper into your relationship with Jesus. If you think about this, this is a stark contrast. It's the farthest extreme, in the opposite direction from what you experience when you, when you, consume pornography. Pornography leaves you feeling insignificant, dirty, shamed, like very ashamed and shameful. It leaves you feeling empty. It leaves you feeling this sort of the crash after this euphoric high. You know this, this high that you, that you might experience.
Speaker 1:You talk to people that have been addicted to this stuff and I think most people have looked at it or struggled with it or dealt with it. You know, those of us that grew up in the 80s, we I think we talked about this a little bit in the last episode, but you know it was it was you had to be sort of creative. I remember. I can't remember going to I've mentioned this, I did mention this before but going to a buddy's house when his mom was at home. His single mom had two boys. The older brother was like just out of high school and he was working you know local job and he would come home after work and he had a. He had a stash of pornographic cassette tapes, vhs cassette tapes which was a, you know a video that you would watch for younger listeners. You're probably familiar with it, but if not, it would be something like a CD. I mean a DVD, but it was. It was a way that.
Speaker 1:But you had to have a pretty good sized machine hooked to your TV that you would watch this with and then to stop it. You couldn't just delete out of it, you know X out of it. You had to stop the tape, eject the tape from the VHS player and then get it to wherever you were hiding it. It's a big ordeal and I can remember, you know, as a teenager, going over to my buddy's house and we would watch stuff when his mom we knew his mom was at work kind of had a window it was.
Speaker 1:It was like that and, to be honest, before I was a Christian, if I'm brutally honest, I did not deal with shame after I looked at it, like I remember it was, I would be excited and I would laugh and have a good time and we would, we would watch this stuff. And it wasn't until later, when Jesus came into my life, when Jesus came into my heart and my mind and and filled me with a spirit that I began to realize that was very damaging. It created expectations and and patterns that are that are, that are wrong thought patterns. And then, after I became a Christian, when I, when I did dabble back into that a few times, it always created a lot of shame and guilt that I had not experienced before as a Christian. So first I would say if you're a, if you're a believer, then pornography is going to have a different effect on you than it is a non-believer. So you can't expect unbelieving friends and family to understand why you deal with shame or guilt or why you think it's wrong.
Speaker 1:Even though, as we mentioned in the last episode, a lot of the scientific world you know, like this organization called fight the new drug or leading neurologists and brain, you know brain specialists are saying and, and psychologist and sex therapists are saying, oh, this is even from a non-biblical or Christian perspective. They're saying this is destructive, it's bad, it's unhealthy. Even though that's happening, people still who are not Christians, they celebrate pornography and they look at it as just a form of entertainment. It's just, it's consumption. Remember, I remember someone telling me one time it's just like eating or, you know, getting rid of waste, it's like going to the bathroom. You know what do you do every day you eat, you sleep, you go to the bathroom and then you express yourself sexually, you have sexual function. And for a non-believer that that that, for at least a while, might be true.
Speaker 1:Now, what we're learning in the scientific world now is that people are saying, no, this is long-term destructive, especially now that people are consuming it at such high volumes throughout the day. And so, with the Christian, we know that our mind needs to be renewed every day and that the renewal of our mind gives us both the ability to fight that temptation, but then the healing that can come after we've fallen or we've struggled with the shame and the guilt. So let me walk through these verses, get into this text what these verses are doing Romans 12, 1, and 2, they're calling us to biblical commitment. The world talks about commitment in a different way. Okay, so like the world is going to talk about commitment in a much different way than the Bible is going to teach about commitment. But in the Bible we learn that we are to commit ourselves, our lives, our bodies to Jesus and then, when we do that, we can commit to other things, other relationships and other people. So I commit myself to the Lord, I commit my ways to the Lord.
Speaker 1:Paul says to the Romans in a previous chapter from Romans 12, back in Romans 7, he says he refers to his members Spent your we'll talk about this when we have him on here in a few minutes about. Peter talks about this as well. But Paul in Romans 7 talks about the war in my members. This is my physical body and so I can't commit my physical body to the Lord or my relation. I mean, I can't commit I'm sorry like my physical body to purity if I'm not committed to the Lord. You commit to purity but you won't stick to that. You know I can't commit to other relationships and then get the maximum fulfillment of those relationships if I'm not committed to the Lord.
Speaker 1:So these verses laid this out for us First. They give us the basis for our commitment. It's not so the basis for. So this is important. The basis for my commitment is not determination. In other words, I don't commit to the Lord and build that commitment on determination. I'm determined not to look at pornography. I'm determined not to live in sexual sin. I'm determined not to do this or that. It's not my ability. God's gifted me and he's given me a will and he's given me stubbornness and strength. But that's not gonna be, that's not gonna always like. That can't be the basis for my commitment to the Lord.
Speaker 1:The basis for my commitment to the Lord is God's mercy to me. Let me say it again the base I commit to the Lord based on Jesus' mercy to me. Here's that from there in Romans 12. I appeal to you, brothers, by the mercies of God, by the mercies of God. That's what he's saying. And he's saying I plead with you. I plead with you to give your body to God because of all that he's done for you. That's how the NLT says it Because of God's mercy, because of what God's done for you, then give yourself to the Lord.
Speaker 1:So, first, the basis of my commitment is not my determination. I'm gonna commit to not be sexually impure, I'm gonna commit to not look at pornography and I'm gonna be determined enough that I'm not gonna fall or falter. Well then, that's not enough, because at some point you'll fall and falter, but God's mercy never fails. What God's done for me never fails. So that's what I need to build it on.
Speaker 1:Second, in these verses we see the character of commitment. So we see the basis for my commitment, or the foundation for my commitment, and then I see the character of my commitment. What do I mean by that? Well, the nature and character of my commitment is that my commitment is total and logical, it's holistic, it's complete and it's logical. We'll go back to our verse.
Speaker 1:I appeal to you, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable, which is your spiritual worship. Which is your spiritual worship. I appeal to you to do this thing be a living sacrifice, because that's your spiritual worship. It's like saying because of what God has done for you, we worship Him. So the character of my commitment is it's a character of worship. I'm worshiping Jesus and my commitment is an act of worship. I'm worshiping the Lord and my commitment is an expression of worship. So I'm basing my commitment on God's mercy and all that he's done for me and to me and through me, all that he's given to me. And then the character of my commitment is it's total and complete and it only makes sense. He says this is your reasonable thing to do, this is the logical thing to do. The character of your commitment is that it's logical. And why would he say that? Well, it's logical because this is what God is. This is in reaction to what God has done for me, this is a reaction to what God has done to free me, to save me, to set me on a course of victory, and so it's logical.
Speaker 1:The third thing that he says, that he tells us, is that there are demands that come from my commitment to Jesus, like if I'm going to commit to Jesus to live free from sexual sin in this context that we're talking about today and you can apply Romans 12, 1 and 2 to every attitudes, anger, you know, addictions, spending, thought process, laziness, whatever. But in this context of sexual purity, we plug it in this way the demands of my commitment to Jesus is the third thing that we see, and those demands are twofold. First, I'm not to conform to the world and its demands. This means I need to be careful about what is shaping the way I view things who I am, who God is, relationships, dating, marriage, sexuality. What I'm pursuing with my heart, what I'm striving, it's what I'm seeking for fulfillment.
Speaker 1:Those are, those are, are those things that are going to be primarily driven by outside influence. They're obviously going to be impacted by what the world offers in outside influence. What I watch, what I listen to, who I'm surrounded with, the people that speak into my life every day, those things are going to shape and influence me. They're going to shape my patterns of thinking, my patterns of action, my patterns of doing. It's okay for me to be different from the people around me, but the big influence in my life has got to be the Word of God, by the Holy Spirit. So, first, I'm not to conform to the world and its demands, but second, I'm to be transformed by having my mind renewed by the Word of God, by the Holy Spirit, a daily renewal of my mind will give me strides towards victory.
Speaker 1:And I would say, if you're dealing with pornographic desires and daily, you know, struggling to not look at porn, or you're giving into that, you're looking at porn every day Let this sink in. You need your mind to be transformed and renewed. A new mind. What if you could take out all the thoughts and all the thought patterns and you could replace them with new ones? Well, that's what the Lord telling us. The Lord's telling us in this passage that we can be transformed by having our minds renewed. He says so in verse two. He's saying don't be conformed to the world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. So I'm not to. So the third characteristic here the demands of my commitment to Jesus, the demand that I not allow the world to conform me to its thought patterns, but that I allow my mind to be conformed to the patterns of scripture through a daily renewal. So we're at three things right now at this point.
Speaker 1:First, the basis of our commitment to not look at porn, to not live in sexual promiscuity, to be obedient to God and his design. The basis for that is not that I try harder, that I'm determined enough. That's important. I don't need to be determined and I need to fight the good fight. But what the foundation of my commitment has to be is God's mercy to me, a constant reminder of how much God loves me, what Jesus has done for me. It's the gospel. That's the foundation of the basis.
Speaker 1:Second, we look at the character of commitment. It's total commitment. This is a reference to the way a sacrifice was consumed on the altar, that second piece to present your bodies as a living sacrifice. How was a sacrifice consumed? Well, it was consumed completely on the altar. The sacrifice was completely consumed. So the character of my commitment is that it's total and it's logical meaning. It only makes sense. It only makes sense. It doesn't make sense that I would commit partially to the Lord.
Speaker 1:And then, third, what are the demands of my commitment? First, I'm not to conform to the world. Second, I'm to be transformed by the Lord. And then, fourth and final, the last thing we'll say about it is we will then see the effects of genuine commitment. The effects of commitment to Christ that are followed out in this pattern will lead to an understanding of God's will for me, which will lead to wisdom and discernment. He says that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. So I'll live in victory over sexual sin and promiscuity because I'll live with a discerning spirit. So, again so, my dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you, or by the mercies of God, based on all he's done for you, it's the foundation. Let's be a living and holy sacrifice. What is that? What is the sacrifice? It's completely consumed. Be completely consumed in your thoughts and your actions by the Lord. This is truly the way to worship Him. Don't pattern your life after the customs and behaviors of the world, but let God transform you into the person that he wants you to be by changing the way you think. And this, then, is God's will for you that you would be able to discern right from wrong, good from evil. Saying all that to say, the simple way to put this is freedom from pornography and all sexual sin is going to come through a daily renewal and transforming of my mind. It's a heart issue, it's a mind issue, it's an attitude issue. In Romans 12, 1 and 2 lays that out for us. Now let's jump into this conversation with Spencer. We'll consider that and we'll come back with some closing practical applications and thoughts and I'll give you some of those resources from Jason George.
Speaker 1:We've taught on pornographies, you know, so much through the years. We've done it with, we've done it in men's conferences or be strong stuff. We've done it on our, you know, with our Wednesday night stuff with guys and I feel like we've covered it from so many different angles and I feel like we've evolved in the way. And I remember I remember being so aggressive with guys because I didn't struggle with porn. I'd had years of freedom from it.
Speaker 1:And I remember, you know, preaching almost with that Mark Driscoll anger and then Feeling really convicted and then falling into some temptation where it's like, well, who am I to to be that aggressive? This was years ago Probably we're probably talking late 2000s. Remember just be early, early 2010s and being so just like. Remember the Driscoll, who do you think you are? Yeah, which is just so stupid now to think about, but I remember being Sort of in that mindset and now I think I've come to a point where I have so much more grace for people, partly because a lot of dudes now have never known life without access to 24-hour porn yeah.
Speaker 1:And as a dad it may.
Speaker 1:It scares me from a boy, you know, but I think when, where we've landed as a ministry, is what I like you speak to a little bit. The end of the day, how much do you want to pursue God? How much do you want to pursue the Lord, your pursuit of holiness, your love for Jesus, that's ultimately what's gonna. If you commit to love him more, then you love your flesh. If you commit to, if you genuinely seek the Lord more than you seek the pleasures of the world, you're gonna have freedom from this.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was trying to look back on how many different iterations of this breakout that I've taught over the years and it's, you know, teaching on sexual purity, particularly you know, pornography and lust, and I think it was seven different versions of it that I've taught. But, like so, I've kind of studied in this space for a long time and and Kind of what I found it in talking with guys over and over and over is Everybody knows it's wrong and that does nothing to empower us to fight against it.
Speaker 3:You know, everybody knows I shouldn't do this, and and there's no more power in knowing this is wrong, I shouldn't. And so, yeah, where I've, I've pivoted a lot from talking hard strategy to more talking heart change, Because one of the illustrations I use is like you know, we can. We can put up a lot of different roadblocks for for porn for.
Speaker 3:Sexual sin and things like that. But really any roadblock that we put up is more like a traffic cone. You know Traffic cones, out there, in the, in the parking lot, they'll stop the cars that want to stop. You know the rule followers, those that want to obey the rules, they'll stop folks that want to stop. And so, at the core, I think any roadblocks that we put up, they can be super helpful, but you can't. You can't fix an internal want with an external roadblock.
Speaker 3:You know what I mean it comes down to like it at the core, are your wants being changed to be like Jesus? Because you know, I talked to my kids about this. I'm like I talked to him about porn and I'm and I'll be like, hey, I got to be honest party, who's gonna want this party is gonna want to see things, I want to experience things. And that's where your own, you know, your own wants are at war with you. That's what first Peter says. You know, abstain from the passions of the flesh which war wage war against your soul. So I mean the scriptures telling us over and over and over it's a, it's a wants level battle. So, yeah, I think, I think teaching on that has pivoted a lot from just hard strategy to more hey. If we're not growing to be like Christ and our minds are being renewed to where we Want the things he wants and value the things he values, then any strategy we put in place it's just gonna be like a hey, you shouldn't do that, it's not, it's not gonna work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, remember I mean yeah all the iterations through the years of how to fight porn that we've done. Remember the first one in my mind was when we did that skit and we smashed a computer every week. The skit was we had. Was it Jeremiah vault that played the the part of the guy? I think?
Speaker 3:it was the first year. Yeah, I think you're right. I think it was so.
Speaker 1:That would have been like 2001 yeah yeah so we had a skit where guys sitting up on stages on guy night, so everybody in the room, I think we're, we're, we're dudes and this guy is looking, which we talked. We touched last week on the fact that it's no longer just a guy issue. 70% of men but over 40% of women deal with it. But in the skit, the guys sitting there looking at a laptop and he's facing the audience, the laptop is facing him, so nobody can see what he's looking at, but the glow you know His face is lighting up with the glow of the screen and then his eyes are getting big for what he's looking at. It's obvious that he's looking at porn and we were talking about fighting. See, I think the whole thrust was fight it, kill it, kill your sin. John Owen quote kill sin or sin will be killing you, yeah, yeah. And so then he stands up and he takes like a baseball bat from the corner of his room and he starts Smashing his computer.
Speaker 1:It was, it was a good skit, was funny. People would be howling and screaming and I remember really then trying to drive and teach on the importance of Having that mentality kill your sin, yeah, but at that time a computer, a laptop in your room was the danger. Right, you had to go in. So we would say things like Only have your laptop on your kitchen table where your mom can see or where your wife can see. If you're married, dude, don't have a dark secret place that you that you allow yourself to look at that. And it's not that that was bad counsel. But that goes back to the road cones, yeah, the roadblocks, it's.
Speaker 1:It's, if you really want victory, then you're gonna take some of those, some of those measures that are gonna help you. Maybe it doesn't. It's not gonna change the heart issue, but it's gonna make you think about it. You've got to go into a strategy to overcome. It's okay If my laptop can only be on my kitchen table. Then I got to think about the process of moving it somewhere and looking at it. Well, you're giving them to the flesh and in your heart desires for that. Then you're gonna, you're gonna manipulate circumstances. How much more now? Oh, yeah.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah it's everywhere.
Speaker 1:Everybody's got a phone. The numbers we looked at last week were staggering, like One of the stats that I remember was 12% of all websites have pornographic content. 12%, so one one and a one one eighth of all websites are pornographic in content and nature. One 1.15 billion dollar industry more, more money Produced in the porn industry. Last year that earned 2017, then in CAA.
Speaker 3:And who knows what they're classifying as porn because, something that's Stimulating sexually might not even be in that class of pornography. Yeah, I'm thinking about, like Instagram fitness, you know stuff that might. They're not counting that, yeah, yeah so the what was that one quote, the the John Piper quote. He said so I'm a butcher, but something like a sandwich. Yeah, it's like it's easier to see sex than get a snack. Yeah, because you actually have to get up and go to the refrigerator.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it is man. You sit down your phone and I've thought often you'd be sitting in a In an airplane Airport terminal or the restaurant and you see dude over there with his Face to the room and his phone to his face. He's like what if I just looking at porn right now?
Speaker 3:right.
Speaker 1:Right, can't help but think it, because of how many guys we've talked to now that are, like I mean, deeply enslaved to it, and it really is every person's battle, every man's battle, but every person's battle. Yeah, so it comes down to the issue of the heart. What are you gonna? So? You said it best right there. Are you gonna renew your mind every day?
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I Do. You know, all of us are in this battle. None of us are immune to it.
Speaker 3:It's a battle we're gonna fight until the day we die and you know, if you really start thinking about how it's stacked up against you, it can be overwhelming. Because you know sex is so ubiquitous. You know it's everywhere, everywhere you look, every song, you listen to every ad, you see every. You know every account on social media. You know it's everywhere, everywhere and, to be honest, like your desires are pushing in that direction too.
Speaker 3:And you know it's just like how in the world am I supposed to live? Holy? And you know, I think the hope is that Christ is still at work. You know that. You know that Romans 8 passage, that if the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead lives In you, then he'll also give life to your mortal bodies. Like that, those promises are still intact for us, that if we walk by the Spirit, we won't gratify the flesh. So I think there's a lot of hope for guys out there and girls out there that are just under water with this temptation. It's just like hey, it's not like. The temptation has now overcome the word has now overcome the spirit of Christ. Like he's, he's at work. And the strategies and even the, the principles in the word of sewing and reaping, and I mean they're still in place.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because they aren't Mention there. They aren't natural desires. What we're talking about is natural desires. The flesh and Satan always appealed to that which is natural, but then to pervert or distort or twist it, and so it's also for the believer it becomes a supernatural but natural desire for holiness. It is supernatural work of the Lord, but if you're, if Christ is in you, you need to believe that your desires. You're in a divided mind. There's that spirit. Flesh battle, but the spirit is at work in you and so you do desire.
Speaker 1:Back to what you said from 1st Peter it does wage war against you, but the fact that the terminology of war issues that's different than the, the terminology of slavery when you were enslaved to sin, is a reference to when you're not a believer. So I think the word for that we have you Is for believers, that there is in you the power at work that'll give you victory over this. Yeah, it's, that's the reality. Jesus is at work in you. You can have victory over this. You have to believe that we walk by faith, not by sight.
Speaker 1:I think if I was gonna, if I was gonna break this down into a, you know a quick three-minute conversation with somebody that said, please like. You got three minutes and then, and I got to go, how can I, how can I have victory in this today? I would say Set your affection on the things above, think on things that appear, and right and good that, whether that's meditation on scripture, memorization of scripture, and then I would. I would think that we need to focus on the freedom that we have in Christ. We don't live as slaves, we live as those at war or embattled, and so see it as a fight and just be it. Be a war. And then the last thing is A lot of times it's the shame and guilt after a fall that then creates a cycle of defeat and you just live defeated. So get back up when you've messed up or made a mistake and Embrace forgiveness, but but commit to being the fight. Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. If I had to give my elevator pitch on On fighting against sexual sin, I would say if you want to fight against sexual sin, pause right there and take hope, because you didn't create that. That's the Holy.
Speaker 3:Spirit that's doing that in you. So take a minute and realize, oh, I want to fight against this, this evidence that I'm in Christ and there's hope that he can do it, and you know. Then the second thing I think I would I would Point someone to is that, you know, godly sorrow leads to repentance. It's going to happen, but there is a bit of like not just confessing but forsaking that has to go there, like you got to put in. There's all kind of language like yes, the Lord does it work. He's changing our desires to want to fight against this and he's also called us to fight against it. So you got to battle, you have to say no, you have to avoid, you have to not just confess Was it Proverbs 28? Not just confess but forsake. We have to, I mean, say no to these things, to avoid them, to train our self for godliness, and that starts with with godly habits, which, to me, primarily, is studying the Bible. Like that to me is the. Is the the baseline of the fight? If you're not studying the word, you are going to lose the battle period. There's their strategies. You can say no, you can avoid it, you can look away, but the baseline of the other battle is the word. And then you know the third thing. I think it's just like it's the hope that Christ is within you, that Christ is going to do it. The one who Started this work is going to bring it to completion. If he's created this desire in you, he's going to. You know, help you fight against it.
Speaker 3:Now I think in some cases fighting is winning, you know, because, no, a lot of people be like man. This isn't working because they're expecting perfection. But I think if you're striving to be like Christ, you're gonna be looking like him more every day. You're gonna be desiring more like him and you're gonna mess up sometimes and there's forgiveness in that. You know, kind of teaching them. The whole council of we're pursuing the Lord were imperfect, but our eyes on the prize. So yeah, I think that's it just kind of hope at the beginning, hope at the end. If this is what you want, god did that and if God's doing that, he's gonna bring it to completion. And now you got to fight like heck. You got, you got the forsake. You have to say no, put these strategies in place, but the only work as the Lord's transforming our hearts through the word.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's good. And that's the thing that we've taught more on at slow, far more than we've taught on pornography is the importance of the word of God in your life every day. We have you can go to. You can go to the SW outfitters website, sw outfitterscom, and you can, which we have a new website launching in April. That's gonna be a lot more. It's gonna be a lot faster, more efficient, user friendly, but even the one that's up now you can search by title and topic. And We've talked so much on the word of God and if you're, if you're kind of like man, I want to do that, but I sit down and read the Bible and I'm in Leviticus or numbers, and I'm just struggling.
Speaker 1:It's. I would say why don't you start by reading the New Testament and read through it a few times, 100%, yeah, and read it every day? Just create a consistent pattern of reading, the new type of reading the scriptures daily, and as you start to kind of grow and and come up to speed, then you start adding a study. You know, read through the Old Testament over a three year period While you're reading through the New Testament many multiple times during those three years, or whatever. Whatever works for you. I think the beauty of it is come up with what works for you. That's right. Yeah, have fun with it.
Speaker 1:I enjoy reading the scriptures in the morning, you know, and Right now I'm just going through the, the Bible. I'm just reading through the Bible the way it's laid out Genesis through revelation. It doesn't matter, read through. A lot of people do, like you read through the New Testament twice in a year and half of the Old Testament, and so it takes you two years, whatever, but read it, meditate on it and then that meditation. What that can look like is committing it to me, both memorizing verbatim scripture, but then also like like learning it, learning up from a passage of the main point and meditating on that point being. You think on it throughout the day. Yeah, and your phone's a great tool for that. Just set your lock screen to what you studied that morning.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know, set a reminder that has that, just that one phrase that pays from the verse you were studying.
Speaker 3:You know, and just oh yeah, and just stop and think on it throughout the day, and I mean it'll do wonders for resetting your brain throughout. I mean, even if you're in a habit of studying the word let's say you wake up at 6 in the morning, you're studying the word for 20 minutes, 30 minutes, well, 5 pm and that was a long time ago, you know, and like that can help, just to refresh your mind and keep it renewed, it's, and it's so many good nuggets out.
Speaker 1:This morning I was reading in numbers where it said it was this passage that said and I've heard JBaloo speak on this JBaloo's a missionaries moose. Our keyboardist, her brother-in-law, he and his family serve in Thailand and this is kind of like his life ministry passage, but it's in numbers and they say they're talking about these priests and they say when you become 25 years old, you enter into service. When you're 50, you're done. But if you live to be 80, those 30 years are spent basically meaning you're in a position to be a Christian. You live to be 80, those 30 years are spent basically mentoring younger priests. And so the nugget for me this morning was it's crazy, because I'm I'm gonna be 52 this year and I thought, okay, that's where I'm at. We just had a team travel for five days last week teaching, speak and minister and lead, and I wasn't on that trip. Now our ministry looks different. Now I used to we, you and I used to do all those trips. Oh yeah, so it's cool. This morning my mind was renewed with just this, oh, this thought of I'm in a different season of life as a 50-something year old dude Than I was as a 30-something year old. You know, the Lord's gonna speak to you through his word. That was in numbers of Passage on the Levitical priesthood right now. So trust that God's gonna speak to you and some days it may not be quite that clear, quite that evident, but but he's gonna speak to you. So Anyway, thanks for taking a few minutes. That's real helpful.
Speaker 1:I appreciate Spencer coming in and sitting down having that conversation. It's just a such a practical dude and Nonsensational is what I appreciate. It's practical. I think sometimes we try to sensationalize things. You know A lot of preachers do this. It's got to be this big sensational moment. It's like no, just just just practical. It's just one foot in front of the other. Wake up, open God's word, read it, study it, meditate on it, go to bed meditating on scripture.
Speaker 1:For me I I've started and then the last few weeks I've been listening to the audio version Of the line the witch of the wardrobe with with one of my daughters. So in the evenings just kind of lay down and play that while she falls asleep. She's been enjoying that, we both. I've read the book to him and I think we've listened to it before, so it's kind of a nice, familiar way to fall asleep. And the other night. I'm laying there and she's in her bed and I'm just kind of laying, um, sitting in the floor, laying the floor beside her bed, and we're listening to. You know I'll set a timer and listen to 10 or 15 minutes of it, but we paused it because we were talking about the gospel parallels, you know, as land, as a picture of Christ, and then just the struggle that we see in Edward. Um, anyway, cool conversation.
Speaker 1:So, thinking on things that are good, you know you'll see the scripture referred to our thought processes and how important that is. But, yeah, just appreciate Spencer's practical approach to eight. Put the word of God in your mind, on your heart, meditate on it, commit it to memory. And this is a hard issue what do you desire? Do you desire, holiness? Do you desire Not, what is your flesh desire? What do you set your mind to desire? And I think that's so encouraging and helpful.
Speaker 1:Last thing I wanted to do is give you some, some resources. Go over to, uh, look Jason George up the gris podcast. He's on social media. Um, I'm not, uh, I'm not real versed in social media, but I think, um, I think you can find him pretty easily, but the one thing you can find is through his website, do narrow trails ministry narrow trail ministries uh, narrow trail ministry, sorry. And through the gris podcast. Um, he links you to some some good resources.
Speaker 1:Uh, the one that might be very helpful for some of our listeners is you can join a small group. He calls them climb teams and it's a. It's a group, if I understand it correctly, and he was going to explain all this before he got sick, so I hope I don't mess this up and again. We'll have him back on here when you'd be praying for him, but, um, we'll get him back on here. But a climb team is just an accountability team, a group of guys that pray together.
Speaker 1:Um, unfortunately, right now, this is uh for men.
Speaker 1:Um, not unfortunately, but I just right now, there's nothing we don't have anything like that to to point out.
Speaker 1:Uh for women, um, because Jason's ministry is is primarily two men for men, um, but it might be something that the Lord might impress on one of our, our, our lady listeners, um, to start something like that too. And so these climb teams give you a place to to weekly just meet and pray together and seek the Lord together and help one another. And, confet, you know, the scripture says that when we confess our, our faults or our sins to one another, and then we pray for one another, that there's a lot of healing and freedom that comes from that. So um great resource, um that that Jason provides, and I'm thankful for that Um, but also just thankful for the practicality of what we talked about today. Hey, get in the word, spend time in the word, meditate on it daily. I believe that if you will open your heart and your mind to the word of God every day, that God will renew your mind and you'll begin to experience freedom and healing.
Speaker 1:You might, you might fall. You might fall, you might make some mistakes and and and crash a little bit, but you, you'll crash, but you won't burn. Uh, you have a little crash landing and you get that baby back airborne. You know you'll get back up and running. So, um, anyway, hope it's been helpful. Uh, I know it has been for me, just processing it and walking it out, especially that Romans 12, one and two, um, let us know what you think. Last thing today uh, this is uh, I know this is kind of extending our time here, but I wanted to read, um, I wanted to read, uh, some emails, one or two, let's see I've got like three or four, actually, all right. So this email is from, um, uh, a faithful listener that says I'm still enjoying listening to the NSR podcast. It is a regular encouragement on my walks.
Speaker 1:I really appreciate what you said about the spirit of Babylon and that it is incompatible with biblical faith. I appreciate what you said about Alistair bag and the important importance of not freaking out. I believe he's really awful in this one because it is lying about the legitimacy of a God made union and celebrating a sin against God's created order. Relationships that are preserved at the costs of lying eternally benefit no one. We cannot give the truth of better hearing by lying to our friends. Big is wrong on this one. But neither does it do good to rebuke an older man.
Speaker 1:Love to hear, uh, then, then, uh, this listener goes into some um recommended um, some, some requests for some content that will probably actually get into that one's about make one one about mega churches. Um, anyway, appreciate that comment and that email just saying, yeah, don't agree with what bag said um, but everybody's chill out a little bit. Um, and I do want to be clear that I don't agree with, with, you know, his counsel. I'm so grateful for him and uh, he's, he's, he's a faithful brother and I'm, I'm just I'm grateful for the influence he's had on my life. So, um, anyway, thank you all of you that listen.
Speaker 1:We'd love to hear from you and um yeah praise the Lord for you have an awesome week and we'll see you, lord willing, next Monday.
