028 Porn Battle Plan: 01 What You Consume Controls You

Have you ever noticed how you can crash a bag of chips and still be hungry when you're done? It's because the chips are junk food and they were never designed to satisfy your hunger like whole foods. Spiritual junk, like porn, will leave you the same way - unsatisfied and wanting more. In this series, Joey will begin to teach you how to change this bad habit in your life. It's not easy, but without a doubt, it is necessary. Get ready to dig in!

Transcript

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What you consistently consume, whether it be physically, mentally, or spiritually, it will determine what you produce in life. Habits come in all sorts and sizes, but today we begin talking about a habit that will not only ruin your life, but it will ruin your relationships and it will drastically stunt your spiritual growth. You want to know how I know? Just ask me. I've been there, I've done this. That's right. It's time for us to talk about how porn is wrecking your life. Let's take a little time. Let's talk about that. Welcome to the Iron Pursuit Podcast, where men are forged by the truth of God's word. As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. This podcast is a call to biblical manhood. Here, we challenge men to rise above comfort, reject passivity, and live under the lordship of Jesus Christ. Each episode is designed to strengthen your faith, sharpen your character, and equip you to lead with integrity, grit, and grace. So whether you're a husband, a father, a brother, or a friend, this is your invitation to pursue the kind of manhood that honors God and changes generations. This is the Iron Pursuit. Not only how it's affecting you as a man, but how it's affecting your family, how it's affecting your wife, your spiritual relationship with God. Man, I'm telling you one thing. If there is any subject out there that I can talk to you about, it's the subject on porn. Today we start what I have called the porn battle plan. And this is going to be a series of probably five or six different episodes. Not that that is going to be an exhaustive list of episodes, but there'll be a lot more. And what I'm hoping to do is I'm hoping to turn this into a workshop where I can go into more depth with fellow men where I can actually help you and counsel you and walk you through what it looks like overcoming and beating porn. Today, the episode that we're going to start off with, again, it's episode one. And I want to talk to you about why what you consume is what's controlling you. You know, this doesn't only come to affect us by looking at pornography, but I'm I'm wanting to kind of tie this together so you can understand it uh a little bit more. I think the reason why I'm using this analogy today is because uh of my weight loss journey, the things that I've been going through lately, the the way that I've been watching what I eat, the things that I consume, not only in food that I eat, but in what I drink. For example, right here, let me just take a nice sip of this dandelion tea. You heard me right. Dandelion tea. If you haven't gotten in on the dandelion thing, uh let me let me just go ahead and put a little put a little plug in for that. Man, it's so it's so good for you. And it tastes just like, well, I don't want to say it tastes just like coffee because I I'm a coffee lover. I love coffee, but I've come to find out that I'm drinking a little bit too much coffee. And and and I'm I'm fighting some blood pressure problems, right? Yeah, my blood pressure is not extremely, extremely high, but I am fighting some blood pressure problems, and I'm coming back to the point of where I'm realizing that, hey, I'm just drinking too much caffeine. So I've taken my caffeine in the evening time because I like a good evening cup of coffee, and I have swapped it over to uh dandelion herbal tea. And man, I'm I'm really liking it. Hey, cheers to my wife because she's the one that says, you need to get your your health in order. I want you to be around for a long time. I want you to be healthy, and I and and you know, is anybody else uh hearing what I'm saying, put what I'm putting down? But that dandelion tea is pretty good. Hey, I love my wife, and I'm so thankful that my wife has helped me um with my health because uh she she looks out for me. And I and if I if I would have if I was a betting man, I would be willing to say that those of you guys that are out here watching this episode, watching this podcast right now, uh, you have people in your life that really care for you too. And so that's why I'm starting off this episode with about things that we consistently consume. Because I have consistently consumed coffee for a lot, a lot of years, but I've gotten to where I probably drank a little bit too much of it. And therefore it's affecting my blood sugar, not my blood sugar, my blood pressure. And um, and I and that's how the Lord left me or led me to start this podcast off today is talking to you about the things that you consume. Because it's not only about the physical things or the mental things or the spiritual, it's all of it. Every bit of it. All the things that you consume determines uh what you produce in your life. And and this, and it leads to habits. So I want you to kind of just help me with this as I paint this picture for you and kind of get it going in your mind, help see if you can understand it a little bit better. Have you ever just crushed a bag of chips or crushed that number one burger deal at the fast food restaurant? And in the moment, whenever you were crushing it, you know, eating it, just downing it because you you were just hungry and and and you have you were just like this, uh like this bear or this dog, and you just had this hunger, and you were just, ah, give me some food, and you just and you ate it. And and I mean, if it, you know, while you were full, you were full. But hey, give yourself a little bit of a time, a little bit of time, maybe an hour later, and there you are, you're hungry again. Do you know why uh you were hungry again? For a long time, I didn't know why. Um, because, you know, in the moment it tasted good. The junk food tasted good in a moment, but it does it didn't actually satisfy you. In fact, there have been scientists out there that are hired to build food and to manipulate food in such a way that there would be different textures, different tastes, different sounds whenever you bite into it to trigger things in your mind to make you want more of it. And so uh it's not something that satisfied you. Therefore, your body burned it off real fast, or it there was nothing sustaining there. And so you you weren't satisfied at all. Now, I want you to take that and I want you to compare it to a good meal that grandma cooked you. Now, if you grew up like I did, grandma would throw down in the kitchen. My mama throw down in the kitchen. So my mom would make real, real food. Like it was coming, it was there was always a good protein on the table because we were meat eaters. Uh, it didn't matter if it was pork, if it was beef, if it was uh uh venison, you know, deer meat. It didn't make any difference what it was. Uh you'd better watch out because there would even be some rabbit and some squirrel on the table at my house whenever we were coming up. Uh you you compare junk food to good solid food, mashed potatoes and gravy. I'm not saying it was all healthy, but there were more uh good whole foods in that meal that that whole food that would make you full. It would keep you steady, and it would fuel your body longer. Well, what's true in your body is also true in your soul. And that's the transition that I want to help you make here as we get started in this porn battle plan. And we're gonna go ahead and look at point number one, okay? Point number one, junk always promises satisfaction, but it never delivers. Junk food, whatever it is, junk, it promises satisfaction, but it never delivers. I want you to think about the junk food that our culture is littered with today. It can give you a quick hit because it's filled with sugars and additives and salts. And really what it's doing is giving you a dopamine hit. It's making you feel good for a moment and it's tricking your body into thinking that you have what you need. But the problem is that it leaves you craving more, not less. You know, whenever you suck this stuff in, it is designed to make you want more of it, not say, hey, hey, I'm I'm done and I'm full. That's why you can sit there and just crush a whole bag of chips and you get to the bottom of that bag and you're like, man, I am still hungry. And then you could just down a whole nother bag of chips. You see, the habit of eating junk creates a cycle of poor eating habits and poor behavior. And that in the end will lead to an extremely unhealthy lifestyle. So you think about that physically. Now, think about this spiritually. Porn works the exact same way. Porn will give you immediate gratification. Come on in. Just come on in with me right here for a moment. And let's be real. Porn gives you immediate gratification, guys. Do you know why? Hey, get in close to the speaker so you can hear what I'm saying. Those of you back there in the back, come on up a little bit closer. Let me let me let me whisper this in your ear. The reason you get immediate gratification is because the girl on the screen can't say no. I'll leave that with you. It's immediate gratification. Because you know the girl on the screen won't say no. And maybe your wife has. Maybe she has said no. I'm tired, I'm this, I'm that, and you haven't had the the sexual intimacy that you've wanted, and and after being turned down so many times, after um, after your wife just keeps pushing you off so many times, you're like, why try so hard whenever it's so easy for me to just pick my phone up, and I can I can type in that favorite website that I want to go to, and I can see a cute little thing and some good-looking lingerie and get naked and you know what are whatever. It is immediate gratification because the girl on the other side of the screen, she can't say no. Not only is it immediate gratification, but it's artificial intimacy. It is artificial intimacy because the girl on the screen, she cannot be intimate with you. You can't touch her, you can't share your feelings with her. I mean, you could talk to the screen if you want to, but it's just there's there's nothing there, right? She's she's nothing more than a toy for you at that moment. That's all that she is. You are abusing that person because they're nothing more than a toy for you. You just want them to fulfill your needs. Yeah, I'm being rough. I'm being harsh because you need somebody to talk to you in a real way. So not only are you getting immediate gratification, not only do you have artificial intimacy, but you have zero lasting satisfaction. Just think about it. Zero lasting satisfaction. Crushing that bag of Doritos, you go all the way through the bag, get to the bottom of the bag, and you want another bag. There's zero lasting satisfaction in pornography. There's no lasting satisfaction because there is no intimacy. God created you to have intimacy with the person you are supposed to spend the rest of your life with. It's pornography is junk food. It's the feeling you have, this feeling that you have is a false reading of satisfaction. If satisfaction really is the result of feeding your life what is good, if satisfaction is the result of feeding your life what is true, if satisfaction is the result of feeding your life what is disciplined, like we've spoken about so many times on this podcast, then the opposite is not just dissatisfaction uh in a shallow sense. The opposite of satisfaction in this situation or in this case is deprivation. It's not just lacking pleasure, but being starved of what actually satisfies you. And whenever you are giving yourself away to pornography and and and it gives you the immediate gratification, it gives you an artificial intimacy, and it gives you zero lasting satisfaction, you keep giving yourself to that thing, it is starving you for what you actually need to satisfy you. So it comes down to this porn doesn't remove the hunger that you have, it simply trains you to constantly be hungry. Write that down and don't forget it. Porn does not fulfill, it does not satisfy your hunger. Instead, it trains you to always be hungry. How do you think they're gonna keep you coming back? These people know that your brain is wired this way. You are a visible being, you need to see things. And so they they target men with this stuff. And I know that yeah, uh the the statistics are showing that there's a rise with women uh in pornography abuse, but with men, I mean, it the it is astronomical. It's huge. Listen to what Proverbs 27 2720 uh says. She hole, sheol, which is another word, it's uh it's a Greek word or Hebrew word for hell and Abdon, which is the word for the underworld or destruction, are never satisfied. Okay, so I'm gonna say that again in a way that you'll understand it. Hell and destruction are never satisfied. I want you to just think about that for just a moment, okay? Hell, again, this is Proverbs 27, 20. Hell is never satisfied. Why? Hell is hot, hell is fire, you keep throwing things into a fire. What does the fire do? The fire consumes it. It consumes it. And it always needs more. If you want to stay warm with a fire, you have to constantly give it more wood. You have to give it fuel because it is never satisfied. Eventually it will go out if there's no fuel. All right. Abdon, which is another word for destruction, the world is the same way. They're never satisfied. But Proverbs 2720 goes on and says this, and never satisfied are the eyes of man. Let that let that sink in. The wise man Solomon is comparing the eyes of a man to the unsatisfied nature of hell. That is that is terrifying. He's telling us that the eyes of a man, the visible creature that God made us, that the eyes never satisfied. Robert Jameson, in his commentary of the Bible, he wrote it like this. He said, Man's cupidity, cupidity is a word for greed, is insatiable, is as insatiable as a grave. In other words, as much as a grave consumes, it kills, it destroys, a man's greed is the same way. When a man constantly lusts for something that is not his, he's not only breaking one of the ten commandments of God, which God said, thou shalt not covet what doesn't belong to you, right? It's not only that you're breaking the commandment, but you're highlighting the greed of your life because you you want to consume everything that's in front of you. You you constantly take all of this in, including these women who do not belong to you. It is a trap, guys, and you better be aware of it. It is a trap. And you want to talk about how strong you are, you want to talk about how independent you are, you want to talk about how uh able you are to control uh yourself, you know, to be uh led by your strength and your power and your ability to do anything and everything you want to do, but for some reason you have no control over this porn addiction that you have. I want you to reconsider just how strong maybe you are. I'm not trying to beat you down, but don't allow yourself to get too high and mighty whenever you really have this thing that is consuming you from the inside out. Your cupidity, your greed is insatiable. And just like hell and just like destruction, like it, you you want to consume everything. You have to get a handle on it and you have to practice self-control. That leads us into point number two. What you consume shapes what you crave. I want you to think about this. Whenever you eat junk food consistently, you just crave more junk food. Now, uh, Katrina and I have been on um, we've been eating healthy foods for a while. I know uh I've not always looked like I was a healthy guy. I just ate way too much healthy stuff, if that makes any sense. Like I'm a meat and potatoes guy. I'm not a real, I'm not a real sweet junk food eater. I I would just overeat on things that really would be good for me if I ate them in the right uh right portions. And and recently, you know, over the last year or so, I've really gotten a hold of that and and tried to do a lot better. But Katrina has been dealing with a lot more of this than me because she's had some gut issues and she's tried to figure out why her stomach was always messed up and giving her problems. And so we figured out that um that the things that that she was eating, it was it was making her a little bit unhealthy and and kept her stomach uh pretty uneasy. And so uh we we kind of worked through all of that. And I started eating some of the things that she would eat because it I just found out that it was good. But whenever we talk to people about this uh about changing what they're eating, they kind of uh freak out a little bit because they're not used to it. They're used to eating all the junk stuff, and therefore they don't have any understanding of what else is out there for them to eat. So whenever you eat junk consistently, you crave junk and you don't really know what to do to change that because that's what you're simply used to eating. But if you were to eat whole foods, good foods consistently, you find that your body adjusts. Let me just give you an example of this. Uh, just earlier today, I was talking to my pops, and he's recently found out that he's got some blood sugar issues, and he's been dealing with that, and my mom's been helping him with that. And so he's not been able to eat as much sugar as he ate in the past. And now he tells me that when he has something with sugar in it, he can taste it and he can taste how unclean that it actually is, and he doesn't like the taste of it anymore. Because he's been eating healthier, he's been eating cleaner, his body adjusted to it. And now, whenever he goes back to try to eat some of those old things, his body wants to reject it. Now, you take all that however you want to. I'm this isn't a health food podcast, and I'm not trying to coach you in dieting. I'm just trying to give you an understanding that the things you eat, the junk food that you eat, it trains your body how to respond. And so the same thing is going to happen with you spiritually. If you feed your mind lust, you are going to crave lust. But if you feed your mind truth, your mind is going to crave truth. This is where, in my opinion, the rubber really meets the road. You see, you are not going to rise above your intake, you are going to reflect. Your intake. I remember when I first began my weight loss journey after my dad passed away. He passed away back in 2014. And I know I've told you guys this several times, and I don't want to just keep harping on this over and over again. But I lost about 100 pounds when my dad passed away. And I ended up gaining some of that weight back. And now I'm losing that weight again. But hopefully this time for good, because my mind really has changed on what I take in and what I leave out. But I remember when I first began my weight loss journey, uh I was working with a coach who I had to check in with every week. And in his office, there was a sign that read, What you eat in secret, you wear in public. What you eat in secret, you wear in public. In other words, you can try to sneak a couple of those snacks if you want to, but your waistline's gonna tell on you. And I found that out several different times. But this is the same thing with porn. Same thing with porn. You might be able to hide porn for a while. You might be able to get it on your phone, you know, after you leave your wife, after you leave for work, on the way to work, while you're on break at work, whatever it might be, you might slip in a video here and there. Uh, you may go take, go run to the bathroom, take care of business, you know, just you and your little phone and the little girl that can't say no on the phone. And you may hide it for a while, but before long, the truth is gonna come out. You know how I know the truth is gonna come out? Because if you're a man of God, if you really are a man of God, it's gonna bother you. And that bothering you is gonna keep rolling over and over and over in your head. And until something works out, there's going to be this strife between you and your fellow Christian men. There's gonna be strife between you and your wife. There's gonna be strife between you and your children, there's gonna be strife between you and other people in your life because this turmoil is happening inside of you. And so if you think for a moment that you are going to just simply rise above the things that you are consuming, you are a fool. Whenever you are consuming these things, just like it would be if I were eating tons and tons of junk food, my waistline, my clothes, everything would get bigger, and you would be able to notice it because you would see the effects of it in my body. The same thing is true whenever you try to hide this spiritual disease that is in your life that's called pornography. You might be able to hide it for a while, but the truth is going to come out. The truth is gonna come out with what you watch. The truth is gonna come out with what you scroll. The truth is gonna be told and what you allow your eyes to linger on. Whenever I agree to help a man with their porn problem, I recommend a book called Every Man's Battle. And if you have not read that book, I highly encourage you to read it. If you if you step into the porn battle plan with me and we start walking through this and we we have our uh we're gonna have some check-in calls um every week and uh on and on and on. And I'll let you guys know whenever I've launched that and and it's ready to go. And it's not gonna be free. I mean, I'm just telling you right now, it's not gonna be free. You're gonna have to put some skin in the game if you want to get in on this one because it's it's gonna take my time, it's gonna take your time, and uh, and I'm not gonna I'm not gonna give this, just give this away. I'm not gonna give my time away to you, not just because I'm your pastor and you think I owe this to you. It's not gonna be like that. If you if you want help, if you want my help, you're gonna have to put some skin in the game. And and we'll we'll look into that uh a little bit more a little bit later. But you can go ahead and get a head start on this. Every man's battle. That's written by Steve Altenburn and Fred Stoker. And in this book, these guys talk about how to train your eyes to look away. They call it bouncing your eyes. They talk about how uh that uh one of them was driving his car uh down the 101, I think, there in California on the beach, and there's this good-looking hot mama, right? She's running down the sidewalk. She's uh jogging or whatever, but she's in a bikini and she's jogging, and he turns and he looks and he ends up running into, he rear-ends the vehicle in front of him. And and it just taught him a lesson. He was like, why was I looking at her when I should have been paying attention to the road in front of me? He messed his car up, ended up having to get his car uh in the shop to get worked on. But that wasn't the most humiliating part. The humiliating part was is that he had to end up going and uh talking to his wife about it. But what you have to understand, uh, and and what the guys are trying to get you to understand is that you have to learn how to bounce your eyes and not look at the things that cause your mind to wonder. Because for a man, a man can just look at something. I'm not even gonna say a something. A man can look at a woman and immediately undress her and have an image in his mind of what she looks like, whether he's interested, whether he's not, what he could do with her, what he would not do with her, on and on and on. And if you you know what I you know what I'm talking about. Those of you who know, you know what I'm talking about. But you have to learn how to bounce your eyes and not look at the things that uh cause your mind to wander. Galatians 6, verse 7 says very, very clearly, do not be deceived. God is not mocked. For whatever a man sows, that is what he will also reap. So, in other words, if you keep sowing this stuff, if you keep consuming this stuff, if you keep planting the seeds of porn and lust in your life, those things are going to be reproduced. It is going to eventually come out. I really like this scripture from Job chapter 31, verse 1. Job was being basically tried by his friends, and he was being accused of all the sin uh that he probably committed because all this bad stuff was happening in his life. And he said this, and I quote, I have made a covenant with my eyes. How could I gaze upon a virgin? I have made a covenant with my eyes. In other words, he said, I am not going to look at things that I should not be looking at. And when you have made a covenant with your eyes, you are more likely to starve your eyes from the things that do not belong to you. And when I say starve your eyes, you starve your eyes from looking at other women that are not your wife. And if you're not married, you still starve your eyes from these women because they are not your wife. They are not your wife. She is not your wife. Therefore, you shouldn't be looking at her. You need to save your eyes for your wife. And for you married men, if you would start starving your eyes and not look at all this other stuff, whenever you got home, your wife could walk through the living room and look like Huda Funkett, and you would all of a sudden be like a tiger ready to pounce on his next meal because she's going to be beautiful to you. But the reason it's not happening now is because you're giving your eyes to so many other women who don't deserve your attention. That's right. They don't deserve your attention. Let's move on. Number three, real nourishment produces strength and stability. I want you to think about the physical side of this. Think about the whole foods. Now, whenever you're eating good, healthy whole food, let's think about proteins. You're eating meats, no matter, you know, good lean meat, a fatty piece of meat, doesn't make any difference. When you take that protein in, that protein gives you the ability to build muscle. It stabilizes energy. It sustains you for the long run. When you eat the carbohydrates, they give you the energy to be able to help you do the workout, help you do the work, help you run the race, whatever it is that you're going to do. And the fats that you eat, it helps stabilize your hormones and level out your hormones and all the things that goes into that. So whole foods help you do all of those all of those things, right? But when you think about spiritually and you you think about the whole food of spirituality, you think about God's word. Whenever you consume God's word, God's word helps you build discipline. God's word renews your mind. God's word strengthens your spirit. Now, if you were to try to contrast this and you think, well, what does this mean for me when it goes to uh junk food and and truth or putting junk in or putting truth in? Whenever you think about putting junk in, junk spikes. It gives you a spike. It's like whenever you eat sugar, it gives you this spike, but then all of a sudden you get a crash. And whenever you put porn in, porn is the junk, it gives you a spike. Right? Literally. It gives you a spike. But when it's all over, it's a crash. Think about it. But when you give truth the opportunity to grow in your life, it gives you steady growth. I mean steady every single day. There is no crash from truth. There is no trash. Discipline isn't built on hype. It's built on what you consistently feed yourself. And whenever you decide for yourself that I'm going to be disciplined and I'm going to say no to this stuff and I'm going to start working my way through this, then I'm going to start feeding myself truth. I'm going to find a way to feed myself truth instead of feeding myself junk. In Matthew 4, 4, Jesus said, it is written that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. That is the word of God. That is what we call the Bible. You need to be consuming that. And whenever you have this temptation to just go and just plunge yourself, consume yourself with porn, try to back away and open up God's word. Pray, get up, move around, go for a walk, do whatever. Because in the boring times, the bored times, the times where you have your idle hands, that's when bad things tend to happen. The psalmist David, he said this in Psalm 119, 11 I have stored your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. This is David speaking to God, and he's saying, God, I put your word in my heart, in my treasure chest, so to speak. Why? So that I might not sin against you. Because whenever the hard times come, whenever the things happen and you're being tempted, if you don't have a storage space of all the good things that can help you overcome the sinful things, then you're just going to stumble and fall every single time. Lastly, I want to tell you this. You can't outwork a bad diet, all right? I and I'm telling you this because, um, man, I tried. I tried. Look, I I was I was working out uh with a guy, and I mean, I was working out harder than I had ever worked out before. And I was trying to get my macros right. If you don't know what macros are, that's proteins, carbs, and fats. And there's a certain amount of each of those macros uh that you should be eating during the day uh to help you either gain weight, lose weight, maintain weight, you know, however. Um, and so I was really, really trying to get my get my stuff right. And I started dabbling a little bit with macros, but I didn't understand it. And guys, I was working out harder than I had been working out since high school. And I mean, I was I was working out hard, I was working out consistently, you know, every week, working out. And I ended up gaining weight. And the reason that I gained weight is because I could not outwork my diet. You know, they they say that weight loss has to do with 80% of what you eat. The rest of it, the 20%, um, maybe the workout, the physical activity, but it has mostly to do with what you're eating and what you're eating. And if you eat the right things, your body will take care of itself and it will metabolize, it will get things back in order, start running right, and actually start burning the uh the food that you are putting into it. So this is a this is a powerful practical punch in the face, in my opinion, because not only can could I not outwork uh my bad diet physically, but I tried to outwork my bad diet spiritually as well because I kept consuming porn. Even, I mean, in the early, early days of uh my marriage with Katrina is when I really uh was struggling with this. Um I tried to, I just tried to outwork it. You know, I would just, I would just read my Bible more, you know, and and I and I would think, you know, I can just I, you know, do a little bit of uh watching porn too and whatever, but it just it just didn't work because you can't read your Bible in the morning and then consume porn all day and expect for you to have purity at night. You just can't do that. You don't defeat porn with willpower alone. You defeat porn by changing what you are taking in. That's how you change it. You have to set up boundaries, you have to uh put yourself on the leash, so to speak, and and you have to start disciplining yourself. So I don't want to leave you uh on this podcast simply by telling you what's wrong, what you shouldn't do, without giving you something to replace the jump. I was literally uh just a few moments ago having a conversation with a man who was telling me that uh he's he's trying to quit not only drinking beer, but he's trying to quit smoking uh cigarettes. And he said, you know, I've got to get something and put it in its place, something that can keep me busy or occupied so that I don't have the habit of wanting to put that cigarette in my mouth. So I I don't want to just say, hey, take this away and not give you something to put to put in it. All right. So understand this. Here, here are some practical steps that you can start taking right now. And remember, um, we have we have a whole lot more information that's coming. I cannot give you everything that I want to give you right now. And even with the five or six episodes that we'll do here uh in the porn battle plan, there's so much more that I have to help with, to help you with, to develop this outside of that. That's why I'm really uh I really hope that you'll consider uh joining the porn battle plan with me and uh and working through this with me. I'm not trying to just advertise for it. I really have a burden to help men overcome this, and I want you to get involved with this so that we can step by step help you gain the victory uh with the help of the Holy Spirit. Amen. So, number one, what do we do? Number one, you have to cut off the jump. You know, you've heard the cold turkey saying, hey, you want to just quit, you got to quit cold turkey. Cut off the jump. You have to unfollow that stuff on your social media. Those girls that want to just post little little pictures, little pictures that they're they're skimpy, they're whatever. And if you're a girl, you're a lady listening to this, you need to quit posting pictures like that because you are causing people to stumble. But guys, you can't leave it in the girls' court. You cannot sit there and think, well, they shouldn't be dressing like that. If they didn't dress like that, I wouldn't be looking like that. No, you need to be controlled enough to where you don't look. You bounce your eyes. You you you see it, you don't, that that's not what I want to look at. You turn, you bounce your eyes, you look the other way. You have to unfollow those accounts. You have to filter your devices and you have to eliminate the triggers. The things that are triggering you to go that way, you have to eliminate them. You need filters on your phone, you need accountability on your computers, you need to put uh blockers on your devices so that if you were to look at things, and I and I have lists of uh of different things that I can help give you. I should have, I should have put a list of them on the board here. But uh you need to put these divide these these blockers on your phone so that if you look at something wrong, it will automatically send your accountability partner uh a text or an email and say, hey, you need to check so-and-so's phone so that so that because they're looking at something, they shouldn't be looking at it. Let me give you an example here. Early on, uh we didn't have, we didn't have the smartphones back whenever I was coming through this and dealing with it. We had dial up internet. You know, yeah, it took a long time for the internet, internet to come up, but the thing about it was is that it still came up, and it didn't make any difference uh how long it took to dial up because if Katrina was gonna go to work uh one day and I was off and I was home, or if I got home before her, guess what? I'd go to the computer, I would sit there and I would watch stuff on the computer. I I would look at porn. I'm just gonna, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna uh candy coat it. I would just uh look at porn. So the way that we started doing it was is that whenever Katrina left the house in the morning, we unscrewed the modem, we unplugged the modem, we put it in her car, and she drove away with it, and there was no chance that I was gonna get on the internet that that day. You need to be that serious about quitting this trash. You need to be that serious about stop taking in the junk and start taking in the truth. So, number one, cut off the junk. Number two, replace it. Don't just remove it. You can't just take something out without putting something in. Whenever you pull something out, you create a vacuum. If you do not put something in its place, it is going to suck something into that place. So, what are you going to replace the junk with? Replace it with scripture, replace it with some podcasts, replace it with some brotherhood, some accountability. You have to get to where your want-to' change. Change the want-to. Whatever you're want-to-you want to go do that. Well, change that want-to to I want to go do this. You have to change it. Next, build a new diet. I could not lose weight. I could not get healthier if I kept eating the same old diet. It just didn't work. So I had to build a new diet. I had somebody that helped me, Colby Colby Bouillon. The guy helped me build a new diet. Now I know how to I know how to structure a diet. I know how to plug foods in. I know how to eat the right amount of things. I know how to eat the right things. Uh, I had somebody help me. This is what I'm trying to do for you. I'm giving you free information. I want to help you to build a new diet. So, in other words, take in the word of God daily. Have a daily intake of the word of God. You need consistent prayer. If you're married, you need to be praying every night with your wife. You need to be 100% honest with her, tell her what you're struggling with, and allow her to come alongside you and pray with you. You need to have an intentional thought life. The Bible tells us, Paul wrote 2 Corinthians 10, 5, that we are to take every thought captive and make it obedient to Christ. You have to have an intentional thought life. You just can't go through the day just thinking that everything's just going to work itself out and everything's going to be hunky-dory. It will not. So replace the stuff that you're taking out with something that's good. Now, let's bring all that back full circle. If you are consistently consuming junk, don't be surprised that your life is going to produce junk. All right? But if you start feeding your mind truth, if you start feeding your mind discipline, if you start feeding your mind God's Word, you won't just feel different, you will become different. You will act different. You will be a different man. So, today, your homework assignment is take a hard look at your intake. Because what you put in today is shaping the man who you're going to become tomorrow. Hey guys, thanks again for listening. Remember, share, like, and subscribe. If you think this podcast could help someone else, please share it with them. Check us out on Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook at the IronPursuit. If you're interested in my personal or marriage coaching, send me an email at theironpursuit79 at gmail.com. Thanks again for listening. And remember, never run from the clashing because that is where the iron is sharp.