Stephen Kuhn

“What’s the one piece of advice you would give
to someone struggling with porn addiction?”

Paul Robinson is an x3groups Zone Leader and xxxChurch.com blogger.

Connect with Paul:

Blog: www.paulrobinsonwrites.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/paulrobinsonwrites

Twitter: @paulrobinson33

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

Transcript:

Steve: Hey guys! I’m here with Paul Robinson. He’s an x3groups Zone Leader and a blogger over at xxxChurch.com. And Paul what’s the one piece of advice that you would give to somebody struggling with pornography addiction?

Paul: That’s a really good question. I think there’s lots and lots of things you can do if you’re addicted to porn. I think it’s really probably a combination of different things, but I think the one thing, and I’m speaking a lot from experience here myself that’s really helped me, is just being able to get to the kind of the root of the issue behind addiction, something like…stuff like accountability, stuff like that is really helpful for me. But I think ultimately what really bought me to freedom was kind of understanding the stuff from my past all the way to my present where it was kind of shaping how I saw myself, how I saw other people, and ultimately why that led me to look at porn and become addicted. I think my piece of advice would be to find people who are experienced with dealing with that kind of stuff, professionals who are experts of that and really help us kind of unpack a lot of that stuff most of us deal with from day-to-day. I think that takes a lot of time, a lot of effort. It’s not an easy fix, by any means. But I think it’s one of those things that when we do it right, when we do it well enough and commit to it, a real freedom is found.

Steve: Cool! Thanks for sharing that advice. Tell people where they can find you online.

Paul: Yeah. You can find me at my blog, which is paulrobinsonwrites.com and my Twitter handle is @paulrobinson33. Those are probably the best venues to find me.

Steve: Okay. Well thanks for your time. Thanks for sharing that with the audience here and good luck with your ministry.

Paul: Yeah no problem. Thanks Stephen.

Steve: Thank you.

“What’s the one piece of advice you would give
to someone struggling with porn addiction?”

Michael John Cusick is the founder and president of Restoring the Soul, and author of one of my favorite books on recovery, “Surfing for God.”

Connect with Michael:

http://restoringthesoul.com

Twitter: @michaeljcusick

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/MichaelJohnCusick

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

Transcript:

Steve: Hey guys! Steve Kuhn here with Belt of Truth Ministries. I’m excited to have Michael John Cusick on the line. Michael’s the founder and president of Restoring the Soul and author of one of my favorite books on recovery, Surfing for God. When I was halfway done writing my book, I came across Michael’s and for a second there I thought “hey I don’t have to write my book now because Michael’s already said everything that need to be said.” It’s a great book. I highly recommend it. With that foundation set, as you can probably tell I’m pretty excited to be on the line here and to ask you the question Michael, what’s the one piece of advice that you would give to someone struggling with porn addiction?

Michael: Other than read your book because you wrote your book in your own unique voice and even though we both have a passion for the heart and getting down to the heart of the issue, your voice is an important voice in all the books that are out there, so I’m glad that you wrote it. The one piece of advice is really what this problem is not about. It’s not do this or don’t do that, but rather it’s a way of thinking about how to frame the problem. To the one thing is that struggles with lust and pornography and sexual addiction and acting out sexually, habitual sexual sin and enslavement, they’re simply not about sex. As I say that in a number of ways and I’ve said that for 20 years all over the world, I’m always surprised to how surprise guys are by that idea that it’s not about sex. Really? What that means is it’s not about the physical release or the orgasm, it’s not about the size of the woman’s body parts or how hot she is, or it’s not about the new image that you capture. It’s really about something deeper. It’s about a deep spiritual hunger. The first thing is I’d want to point guys to Proverbs 27:7 where it says…I memorized this a long time ago but I’m going to use my cheat sheet and I’ll tell you that upfront as opposed to trying not to look; “he who is full loads honey but to one who is hungry, even what is bitter tastes sweet.” This has everything to do with deep hunger and desire in our heart and that desire is not unholy or bad, rather it’s just desire. It’s just is. It’s the engine that drives our heart for God. It’s what we do with that desire.

The second thing is that with that deep hunger in our heart, God created us for connection and for attachment. And when we take our desire to connect, our desire for intimacy, our desire for attention, affection, affirmation, all that good stuff, when we take that desire to something or some person or some substance or an image, like pornography, and we give our heart to it, we attach to it. And the reason for that is God made us that way. So attachments to God and all of his good gifts are things that we’re meant to experience. But when it’s something that’s not God and one of his good gifts, i.e. something that is bitter even though it tastes sweet because we’re hungry, what happens is we become attached to it and then we can’t break free. And there are emotional and psychological attachments. There are neurological attachments. And there are, as you know because you emphasize warfare a lot as I did in my book, there are spiritual attachments and strongholds. And to undo those, we don’t try to undo those attachments and satisfy that deep hunger by trying harder, but we ultimately need to learn to rest in Christ. I think both the hardest commandment in the bible to obey and the one that’s most relevant for recovery from sexual sin is Psalm 46:10, “be still and know that I’m God.” For me that’s actually the hardest commandment to obey. I’ll often ask men “what’s the hardest commandment for you to obey?” And if you’re in a conversation with guys about sexual struggle and sexual sin, it always comes up “don’t look at a woman lustfully” or it’s one of the passages in the vice list in Paul’s writings or something. And people need to think outside of the passages about sex and to this deeper hunger.

It’s not about sex. It is about a deeper hunger. It’s about attachments at the soul level where our desires get misdirected. What then it needs to become about is about learning to rest deeply in Christ where we’re actually beginning to feed our soul from the tree of life and not just at the tree of knowledge, of good and evil.

And then finally to connect with other men in community. I know that’s 4 separate things. It’s about hunger. It’s about soul attachments, that we need to learn to rest in Christ and that we need to be connected with other men in community, but those are all A, B, C, and D under the #1 thing of it’s not about sex.

Steve: I think that’s excellent advice. Thank you so much for sharing that with us, Michael.

Michael: My pleasure.

Steve: Tell people where they can find out more about you and your books and ministry and all that.

Michael: My ministry website is restoringthesoul.com. It’s soul not sole. That’s a shoe repair shop; restoringthesoul.com and then michaeljohncusick.com. You can find out about our resources, our programs, etc. at either of those websites.

Steve: Okay. And we’ll be sure to have all those links in the show notes below. Thanks again for your time, Michael. Thank you for your ministry. I know your book has been very helpful in my life and I know in a lot of other lives as well. Thank you again for that and for your time.

Michael: You’re welcome. Thank you. Take care Stephen.

Steve: See you Michael.

“What’s the one piece of advice you would give
to someone struggling with porn addiction?”

Carl Thomas is the Outreach Pastor, X3groups Network Director, and site manager for xxxchurch.com.

Connect with Carl:

Twitter: @carl_t

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

Transcript:

Stephen: Hey guys! This is Stephen Kuhn with Belt of Truth Ministries. I’ve got Carl Thomas on the line. Carl is the Outreach Pastor and Network Director for X3groups. Carl, I just wanted to ask your real quick, what’s the one piece of advice you would give to somebody struggling with pornography addiction?

Carl: There’s so many different things out there, so I wouldn’t say this is like the most important thing because I don’t know if there is one single important thing, but u would say that the one thing I would highly recommend is community, which is just a churchy term for having a group, having a team, having a tribe. I think that’s super important. Pornography addiction is one of those things that’s tremendously isolating. I know when I dealt with it; it was not something you want to share with people. Obviously it could get a little awkward at times. Pornography traps you into this belief that you’re all by yourself and you’re not. We run a small group recovery program online through XXXChurch. I’ve led these groups for like 2 years. Not only do I run the program but I lead a group. The change I’ve seen in some of the guys in these groups has been amazing, and I honestly think for some of those guys, that was like the missing component in their life. They had the individual accountability. They had filtering. They had all these different things. They have read the books. They’ve done the workshops. But one thing they never did was open up to a group. They just kept it all bottled up inside and maybe only shared it with like 1 or 2 really close friends. It’s something really freeing in being able to have a group or a tribe that supports you. There’s a ton of benefits a community. There’s group accountability for one versus individual accountability. It’s kind of like “I’m not just doing this for me. I’m doing it for my team,” which is not something we tell people. We don’t say “hey may, when you join our group, don’t you look at porn because you’re going to let us down.” We don’t tell them that, but it’s one of these things where people just naturally, like I’ve had guys come on and say “this week I struggled a little bit” but then what happen they develop this team mentality. The encouragement’s huge because let’s be honest – porn is one of those really shame-ridden addictions. We are always kicking all our own asses all the time. Can I say that?

Stephen: Oh yeah.

Carl: Okay. But I mean we’re always getting our teeth kicked in, whether it’s by sometimes our spouse or whatever. But honestly, some of the people that are hardest on us are ourselves. We don’t give ourselves any grace. It’s good to hear from somebody else other than your buddy who you say “you’re my buddy. What else are you going to say?” That “hey man, this doesn’t define you. You’re still a good person. You’re still okay.” This is something we got to get rid off but it doesn’t lessen who you are. That’s not your identity. And also obviously the support is huge because there’s going to be those times where you really need it. You can learn from your peers. Sometimes you’ll see guys in group, they’ll hear from somebody else like “I never really thought of that” something simple like in Twitter because they see an image and then someone else in the group says “I just got rid of Twitter and it’s been better” and they go “oh I never really thought of that.” Like really stupid, simple things, but you’d be surprise. Some people need to hear it from somebody else where they say again. You’re decompressing these things. You get a chance to just kind of be you. One of the things about porn is like, at least what we tell people, is a lot of it has to do with the fact that we’re trying to be something we’re not and we’re trying to meet people’s expectations so we get all stressed out and that drives us to use porn sometimes because we’re trying to release the stress from trying to be somebody who we’re not. But in these groups, you can just be you. In my pastor’s group, when I get a new guy come in, I tell him. I say “hey man, I know this is a group for pastors, but please do me a favor – forget you’re a freaking pastor. I don’t want to hear any pastor-y talk. I don’t want to hear any church lingo. If your day was crap…” I actually would say if your day was shit, well whatever. I said “don’t put the pastor’s spin on it. Just be real. We’re not going to judge you.” For these guys, especially pastors, that’s huge. They’re like “wow! This is the only place I know where I can just be me.

I think community is super important for all those reasons and more. It’s biblical too. Ecclesiastes 4 it says, this is a really awful paraphrase. This is not like seminary-approved by any stretch of the imagination, but it basically says the guys who falls by himself, he’s in bad shape. But the guy that has a brother has someone to pick him up. That’s huge. It’s like I’m not in this by myself, so when I have a bad day, I got brothers I can fall back on who are going to help me out of this. I’m not stranded. For me that’s huge and I think that’s something that is honestly missing for a lot of people and a lot of people’s lives because it’s like that last thing. They get the accountability, but the hardest thing for a lot of guys to do is just step out and get into a community and just say “hey man, here it is. This is who I am. This is where I am and this is where I want to be.

Stephen: That’s awesome. Thanks for sharing that, Carl. Tell people where they can find you online.

Carl: X3groups is actually a part of XXXChurch Ministry, so best thing to do is go to XXXChurch.com. We have plenty of resources on there for men, women, spouses, parents, couples, everything from not only just to help with porn addiction or porn addiction recovery, but also like parenting, keeping the kids off porn, better marriages. We just released the course called Best Sex Life Now, which just help married couples find out what really great sex is supposed to look like. But X3groups, like I said that’s our small group recovery program. It’s a monthly thing. You meet every week though via video chat, kind of like right there at x3groups.com. That’s the website for that to sign up.

Stephen: Awesome. Thanks again, Carl. I appreciate your time and love what you’re doing. Keep up the good work.

Carl: Thanks man, appreciate it.

Stephen: Alright, see you later.

Carl: See you.