Stephen Kuhn

Check out all the “One Thing” video interviews here.

Transcript

Steve: Hey guys! Steve here with Belt of Truth Ministries. I’ve got Jayson Graves on the line. Jayson is a Christian psychotherapist, pastoral coach, and founder of Healing for the Soul. He’s also the author of the new theology school course Biblical Sexuality in the 21^st Century. Jayson, thanks for joining us.

Jayson: Hey Stephen, thanks for having me.

Steve: Yeah. So what’s the one piece of advice that you would give to somebody struggling with porn addiction?

Jayson: The one piece of advice I would give to somebody struggling with porn addiction is actually a 3-in-1, so I’m kind of cheating a little bit. But if we had a theme verse for healing for the soul, counseling and coaching, it would be 1 Thessalonians 5:23, which says “be sanctified body, mind, and spirit.” Really, when it comes to growing through the things that are the roots of sexual integrity issues like pornography or even things like compulsive masturbation or acting outside of marriage sexually, all of those that just aren’t really consistent with God’s model of sexuality, there’s really three ways, if you will, we need to go about that in the sanctification process or the process of getting cleaned up and growing as believers, and it’s body, mind, and spirit. So body, alright we have a physical body. That means there’s physical implications for the recovery or the sanctification process. There’s physiological implications for that. So physically, we need to do things to keep our body in shape. One of the real simple ones is obviously exercise. Exercise doesn’t just keep us in good physical shape, but we emotionally feel good about the way we look. Plus, it gives us a physiological benefit in our brain, the brain is part of our body, obviously, because it gives us endorphins. We get feel-good neurochemicals where we need them and in ways we need them, which diminish the perceived need to get those same endorphins through acting out kinds of behaviors. So physical and physiological implications. Sometimes it’s things like we need supplements. Nobody has the perfect brain, and that the five main mood centers of our brain, if we have under-functioning issues or over-functioning issues, we need help to get stabilized so that we can function optimally. Beyond the body, there’s also the mind, or technically in the scripture it’s really the soul. So the mind or the soul is really more than just our thoughts. It’s our emotions, our feelings, what makes us unique in our temperament. So it has implications for not just emotionally but also relationally by extension. So in the sanctification process, we also have to do things that help us look at our emotional functioning. Sometimes, we do that through mental approaches or intellectual approaches like reading. A really great book is from a great mentor of mine named Gordon Dalbey. He wrote Healing the Masculine Soul. I highly recommend it. Another one is This Is Your Brain on Joy by another awesome man of God and mentor, Dr. Earl Henslin. Those are important, but also just checking in on a regular basis with our recovery partners on how we’re actually feeling, what feelings are going on in our hearts so we can keep those in the light, be real, be connected relationally because feelings and emotions are the stuff of connection in relationships that help us to go deeper and have viable, lasting, real, authentic connection with other believers. That’s when we can be known, when we can feel supported, when we can have space to just be messy and be real about both good or favorable feelings and not so good feelings. And then of course there’s the spiritual. The trick about spiritual part of sanctification is that it’s not just vertical spirituality, the things that are kind of the transcendent part of our faith or spiritual experience like the stuff that we call our relationship with God or the stuff that we experience between him and us on an individual basis like of our devotional nature, so reading the scripture, meditating, prayer. Those are all very important. We need to be just as engaged in the horizontal things of our spirit, the communal as opposed to the devotional. We tend to way over-emphasize the devotional. We tend to way over-emphasize the vertical. And sometimes that actually leads to something that’s a bit counterintuitive but it’s true – it’s isolation. So we need to emphasize and invest in the communal and the body of Christ connection of spirituality, just as much as the vertical or the devotional, and that means centering around Jesus together, taking time to actually be in his presence together, listen to his voice together quietly, use what he says in each other’s lives, to build each other up according to the way that he’s not only spoken to us but the way that he’s gifted us, whether that’s sharing the scripture that he gives us in that quiet moment, or a song. It might be a prayer. It could be a word that he’s gifted you with. It could be a dance. Who knows? Whatever. The Lord wants us to be each other’s mutual edifiers. And if we are plugged in at that level, oh my gosh, I mean think about how transforming that would be in our own lives but also to the body of Christ. So again, really the one piece of advice in all of that is be sanctified – body, mind, and spirit.

Steve: Right on. That’s a lot of great info crammed into one thing.

Jayson: Also, it’s not drinking from a fire hose but there you go.

Steve: That’s also why we transcribe this, so people can kind of go through point by point and all that. That’s a ton of great info. Thanks for sharing that with us, Jayson.

Jayson: My pleasure.

Steve: Tell people where they can find out about you and your ministry online.

Jayson: Sure. Healing For The Soul counseling and coaching is at healingforthesoul.org and we have both counseling and coaching, just like this over Skype all over the world or by telephone, and we even do professionally-facilitated recovery groups on a private teleconference system as well. So there you go, healingforthesoul.org.

Steve: Right on. Thanks again for your time and I hope you enjoy the rest of your day. Thank Jayson.

Jayson: Yeah, thanks. God bless.

Check out all the “One Thing” video interviews here.

Transcript

Steve: Hey guys! Steve with Belt of Truth Ministries. I’m on the line with Luke Gilkerson. Luke’s the education resource manager for Covenant Eyes, and author of multiple eBooks, including Coming Clean, Your Brain on Porn, and When Your Child Is Looking At Porn. So Luke, what’s the one piece of advice that you would give to someone struggling with porn addiction?

Luke: Well the one piece of advice I would give for someone who is really struggling with porn addiction would come out of a single verse in the Bible, 2 Timothy 2:22, which states “so flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart.” I think this verse is probably the most succinct strategy that is stated in the scriptures about dealing with pornography, dealing with lust. And it kind of gives a three-pronged strategy. And that three-prong strategy can be simply stated as run from, run to, and run with. I’ll unpack all three of those. What I mean from run from is it says flee, free from the catalysts of the problem. So that might be ditching the sources of your porn habit, changing the environment to eliminate both the external and the internal triggers for porn. Training your mind and eyes to have an escape plan when temptations come along, so whether that’s visually fleeing, mentally fleeing, physically fleeing. We need to get in the habit of anytime danger comes and anytime we find ourselves in like situation where there’s going to be insurmountable temptations that we need to look for the escape route that God has planned for us and that we had marked out and planned long before the temptation ever came along. So we need to get in the habit of fleeing. The second thing is we need to run to. He says there “pursue something.” You’re not just running away from something, you’re pursuing something. You’re not just emptying your heart of desire and emptying your heart of passion and emptying your heart of any sort of pleasure in your life. You’re actually pursuing something. You’re pursuing holy and wholesome habits that replace the addiction, so that’s engaging in new passions that trump the allure of sin. We should be engaging our souls and minds and body in prayer, in gratitude, in selfless service, all the things that pertain to what he says there – faith, love, peace and righteousness. We need to be pursuing those things. So we need to be giving ourselves the wholesome habits. Some of those habits can be even secular, in terms of whether it’s just exercise or reading or whatever, but those habits can also be thoroughly engrained in the work of the kingdom, so that’s going out and helping, serving, praying for others, meeting the needs of others, getting away from that habit of objectification that turn people into objects for your pleasure and move towards a kind of lifestyle that is serving others and helping others and giving real service to their lives or giving real value to their lives. That will be the second thing. The third thing is he says run with, where he says along with those people, along with those who calls the Lord from a pure heart, this is where we have to have companions who are relying on God for freedom. These could be Christian accountability partners who can not only call us out on our sin but can call us up to the people God is making us to be, to the people God has already made us to be in Christ. This means Christian discipleship, walking with those who are older in the faith, who can mentor us and guide us. It also means running with even perhaps someone who’s specialized in some of this stuff. If you find that the nagging habit of porn just doesn’t seem to want to break, walking with those, running with those who are either counselors or people who are wise in this area, who can help to unpack the things in your heart that you are either unwilling to see or unable to see that are driving the addiction of pornography, all three things I think are essential. We need to have all three things in place. Running from, the kind of that fleeing mentality is a sort of a first line of defense, a nuts and bolts strategy that says we need to have an escape route in place. We need to create an environment where we’re not surrounded in the objects of our temptation all the time. We need to treat them seriously. We need to treat temptation seriously. That’s that fleeing mentality. The second is that pursuit. If we don’t have the pursuit along with the fleeing, if we don’t pursuit something wholesome and holy to replace the pornography, then we’re just going to either go back to the porn or we’ll go back to some other socially acceptable sin. And then we have to have the running with. We have to be going with others who can help us. One of the greatest means of grace we’ve ever been given by God is the gift of the church, the gift of Christian friendships, the gift of accountability, the gift of discipleship, other Christians who can walk alongside of us and help us in the battle against temptations that we face, and it is a means of grace in order to do that. All three are really important and they’re all contained in one verse in the bible. I would recommend any person to memorize this verse, and then unpack all three of those strategies, one by one, and decide how they’re going to attack each of those things as they’re pursuing purity in their life.

Steve: Great! So run from, run to, and run with. I like it. That’s one of the most succinct summing up of recovery that I’ve heard. I like that advice. Thanks Luke. Tell me people where they can find out more about your ministry and what you’re doing.

Luke: Covenant Eyes is a software company. It’s been around for about 15 years now. Our goal is to change people’s lives through internet accountability, to give them a sense of freedom from the nagging temptations and habits that they can run into online, and to do so through redemptive relationships, to do so through accountability relationships. We do that by providing an internet report for those who need, well we’ll monitor all the activity that’s on your computer or your Smartphone or your tablet. Any devices that you use. We monitor where you’re going online. We compile all that information into an easy to read report that’s emailed to accountability partners that you choose, people you trust to help you. For a lot of people, the report is a great catalyst for conversation, which means if for some reason they just keep going back to porn again and again, the report is a great place to start in a conversation with the counselor, a pastor, accountability partner, to help to get to the bottom of what’s going on. And for a lot of people, the report or just the knowledge the report’s going to be sent is enough to keep temptation at bay. They think twice about where they’re going online, and they can kick the habit even without having to go to somewhere objectionable online and their friends finding out about it, that kind of thing. They just think twice before they go anywhere. And that is enough to keep porn and the temptation of looking at porn at bay. They can learn all about our services and what we do, as well as the dozen or so free eBooks that we have available. All is available at covenanteyes.com.

Steve: Great. And I’ll just add, if you want some practical tools to really help you with the running from and the running with, Covenant Eyes is a great resource for that. It helps with both of those. So Luke, thanks again for your time. I really appreciate your ministry. Keep up the great work.

Luke: Great. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Steve: See ya.