029 Porn Battle Plan 02: Why Porn is so Hard to Quit

Porn isn’t just a bad habit—it’s a trained pattern thatrewires your brain, weakens your discipline, and dulls your spiritual sensitivity. But what’s been trained can be retrained. Maybe you’ve been to the point where you’ve said, “I’m done!” And maybe you’ve meant it. But somehow… you end up right back in it. In this episode, Joey asks the real question: Is this problem you’re experiencing a lack ofdiscipline… or is something deeper going on?

Transcript

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Porn isn't just a bad habit, it's a trained pattern that rewires your brain, it actually weakens your discipline, and it dulls your spiritual sensitivity. Now we're gonna get into all of that, but before we do, I want to ask you this question. Once you have been trained, can you be retrained? 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. All right, welcome back. Thanks for coming back. We are on episode number 29, and we are continuing on with the porn battle plan. Today, this is our this is our second uh lesson in the porn battle plan, and I'm talking about rewired. I'm using the word rewired because I think it's important for us to have this understanding of the brain or the mind being rewired. Because whenever we have been involved in something especially as toxic as pornography for so long, uh our mind is wired towards doing the wrong thing. And we want to know can we actually rewire it and get it going in another direction? I think we can. I believe we can. And so I'm gonna talk about today why porn is so hard to quit. Because when we're talking about rewiring and getting ourselves in a new uh frame of mind, so to speak, we need to know why it is so hard to get us there. And maybe you've been to the point uh in your journey. I know, I know I have. I I had been to this point in my journey where uh I just got sick of it, right? I got sick of the routine, I got sick of the cycle, and I would say, man, I'm done. And I meant it. You know, I wanted to be done, I meant it, and maybe you've even meant it. You really meant what you said, but somehow you just ended up right back in it, right? You just kind of went right through it again. You went right back into the cycle, you got right back into the same old thing. Uh, but I want you to ask yourself this question, and this is a real question. Um, is this here's a question. Is the porn, is, is the problem, the is the porn problem you're experiencing, is that, is that a lack of discipline, or could it be something deeper? Is there something deeper going on? Now, if you don't understand what porn is doing to you, you are going to consistently fight it in the wrong way. There is a right way to fight and there is a wrong way to fight. I fought the porn addiction, um, my porn addiction for a long time before I finally learned how to fight it the right way. And I'm not gonna tell you that I will be able to um unveil every every detail of how I fought began fighting it the right way in just a couple of episodes. It's gonna take us a few as we keep stacking these on top of each other. But I learned how to fight the right way. And today I don't want to waste any of our time, you know, talking about things that don't work. I want to cut to the chase and I want to see if we can't probably maybe turn the ship around or at least start getting to turn the ship around, okay? So I'm gonna hit you with five things today, and uh, and then at the end, just like I told you in the last episode, I want to bring, uh I don't want to just tell you what not to do, I want to tell you what to replace it with, okay? So let's get on, let's get into this, all right? Point number one: porn trains your brain for immediate gratification. And I think this is something that we uh all understand. If you if you have had any kind of addiction, I don't care if it's drug addiction or a food addiction, uh, whatever, uh, porn is an addiction and it trains you to want immediate gratification. Here's a simple breakdown of it. Your brain is wired to reward behavior. That's just the way it is. Even if you look back at psychologists over the years, where the brain would work in regards to the rewards that it would get, um, and the body would react to the rewards that it would get. Um, I'm I'm not gonna be able to remember his name, but the psychologist that um actually did the study with the salivation with the dog, whenever he would uh ring a bell and then he would give the dog a treat and ring a bell and give the dog a treat, it taught that dog uh that every time the bell rang, there was going to be a reward. But instead of the psychologist giving the dog the reward, he would just ring the bell. And because the dog had become used to uh the reward coming after the ringing of the bell, his mouth would just start salivating because he was expecting the reward. And that's the same thing that porn is doing to us. Porn is training us to get instant gratification. And that's why you have a fast dopamine rush, you have this good feeling, right? And then you have uh the acknowledgement and the understanding that, well, I got that fast dopamine rush with zero effort. So I got a good feeling at the touch of a button, no strings are attached. I don't have to talk to the girl about my emotions. I don't have to go out and buy her uh supper. I don't have to take her out on a date. We don't have to pay for a movie. Man, there's zero effort in this. So you have the fast dopamine rush, you have the zero effort, and then you have the instant reward. So you have the good feeling, the no strings attached, and I get what I want. And I want you to notice how that whenever you start going through this, your brain, your brain starts preferring uh the easy over the hard. I mean, and when you really think about that, come on, who wants to do the hard work if it can be done easier, right? I mean, that that's just, it seems like nowadays, that's just the human way of doing things. Find the easiest way, stick to it, and and just just do the easy over the hard. But then what also happens is that your brain starts referring the fake over the real. Well, I mean, who cares if it's fake, if you get the pleasure from it, right? It doesn't matter if it's if it's fake. I mean, you have to think that what's on that internet or what's in the video reel, that's fake. What's real is the thing that you can touch, the woman you can touch, the woman you can speak to, the one you can share your emotions and your feelings with. But what porn does is it begins to get your brain to preferring the fake over the real because it seems easier at first. And then it even steps over into having instant pleasure over earned pleasure. And this mentality, I believe, uh is destroying men. And I think I could write a handbook on all the guys that I've counseled who thought they should have everything their parents had, uh, even at such a young age. But you have to understand your parents worked hard for what they have and they earned it. And this mentality to where I should just have instant, instant things, overearned things, it pours over into every area of your life if you're not careful. Porn doesn't just tempt you, it trains you. This connects directly to episode one uh that we've already shared with you in the porn battle plan. You have junk food, you have junk food coming in, there's junk cravings. But whenever and whenever you have porn, you have instant gratification, and and you get the instant gratification of these cravings. And so uh whatever you put in the body is what you're going to get out. This is a biblical principle that Jesus taught his disciples. If you put trash in, you're gonna get trash out. If you put porn in, you're gonna get trashy stuff out because it's junk food and it's gonna constantly give you junk cravings. All right. Let's move on to point number two. Repetition is going to build strongholds. And it doesn't matter what this repetit, what the repetition is, whether it's repetition on good things or bad things, it is going to create strongholds. It is, it's just it's just an uh it's understood, okay? What you repeat, you reinforce. If you keep repeating things, you reinforce those things. So every time someone gives in uh to the to the temptation of porn or whether it's to the temptation of drinking or drugs or whatever it might might be, it doesn't matter. We're just talking about the porn thing right now. Every time someone gives in, the pathway gets stronger. In other words, it gets easier to do that. In my an example that I'd like to give you in my Bible reading that I've been going through, you know, my morning daily devotional, I've recently been coming, um, I recently came through the book of Judges. And when you read Judges 13 through 16, um, you read about Samson, who was the strongman, the judge over Israel. And he and it seems like as you read his story, Samson becomes too reliant upon his own strength. And uh he thought that he could do whatever he wanted to do because he was stronger than every other man. Uh he was uh more capable, he had experience of using his strength to get him out of tough situations, but Samson had a weakness of women. And Delilah becomes this woman that he is infatuated with, gets in, you know, engaged to, and all this other stuff, okay, relationship stuff. Delilah wants to know what Samson's secret is for his strength. And so Samson kind of plays and toys with the idea. He toys with her until finally he became so comfortable in the situation that he told her his secret. And so this led to Samson being enslaved. He had his eyes gouged out. The Philistines took him and made him uh grind. He pushed the uh the big the big grind wheel like uh the mules or the oxen would do. Uh they used Samson uh basically as a trophy, and uh they used him for sport. And so the the point that I'm I'm trying to tell you is that um is is whenever you do something once, it becomes easier to do it twice, and especially whenever you're good at keeping it a secret. And whenever it comes to your porn addiction, whenever you keep it a secret and and you don't expose it, you don't get it out, it's easier for you to keep that secret, and it's easier for you to go back, just you keep feeding from that trough over and over and over again. Not only uh does the pathway get stronger, but the response becomes more automatic. I want you to, and I want you to think about this. Whenever you give in to watching porn, the images that you see on the screen never leave your mind. Now, you might get your fix for a moment, but before long, your appetite will return. Your mind's gonna start scrolling through the images that you have in your mind. You're gonna go back to the screen, you're gonna hide, you're gonna take care of business again, getting your fix until the next time, and then that cycle is gonna keep repeating. And because you do this so naturally, you do this so often, and because it's so easy to obtain, you return to that feeding trough of pornography automatically. You don't even have to uh look it up on on uh on Google Maps anymore because you know where the address is. You don't have to try to figure out where it's at. Your vehicle automatically drives there. Why? Because it's easy. Remember, whenever you do this porn thing, it trains your brain to want the easy over the hard. You want the instant over the earned. You want to keep going back to this stuff because it's easy to do. And when something is easy, ask the question again: why do anything hard? Why do the hard stuff if you can get it easy, right? Why go through the trouble of a relationship? Because it's going to require something of you. But hey, you can you can go get that woman on the screen. You can go get that, uh, you know, look up that address on the screen, and you can watch all the videos you want with no strings attached, and it's completely easy. You can remain the passive guy that you are and just keep watching porn and never have the responsibility of manning up and holding on to a relationship, a valuable relationship, because it's so easy. And this is where I want to introduce to you the idea of this cycle or what I've called a loop in this pornography thing. Okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna put an image up here for you, and I want you to just check this out. So, this image uh gives us the the idea of the porn addiction cycle that we've called the loop here. I I typed all this into AI. AI is kind of cool sometimes, right? I type it into AI and I said, hey, give me uh uh an image, draw me an image, and this is what it came up with, and man, I really like it. I think it's I think it's pretty cool. I'll keep this and uh use it over and over again. But I want to start you out with uh looking at looking at number one, okay? Look at the trigger. Something happens. The trigger is is the something that happens that stirs the temptation inside you. You already know what your trigger is. It it doesn't matter um what what you know what you what you think it is, you know, it it don't it don't really uh matter in in that regard because um you you have a trigger, I have a trigger, everybody has different triggers. It could be being around someone, having a smell, going to a certain place. Um it makes it makes no difference at all. Sometimes simply being alone is a trigger that causes you to uh move to the next part of the loop, which is the craving. The urge builds, and then you begin to rationalize why you should or or why you can look at the porn, do the thing, whatever it might be. And then that craving leads to action, and you give in and you act out because the temptation is great. You refuse to find the window of uh of escape and and you just give in, and so you you get into action, you give in and you give out of it. And then there's step four of the cycle is regret. You're hit with shame, uh, you're hit with with guilt. Um I I would even say that you're you're hit with with self-hate. You begin to um talk about yourself, call yourself certain things, and you and you have this uh punishment of yourself, so to speak. And then you get to that last part where you just repeat it. Because um, this is one of those things that if that if you don't change what's going on, the cycle is just going to continue. It's just you're gonna get caught in the porn addiction loop and it's gonna go over and over and over again. Okay. So uh what started as a choice, it becomes a pattern. And this is the way it is in everybody's life. You have a choice, you make a choice, it can become a pattern. And even if it feels um like it's like it's natural, or maybe even if it's good, it doesn't matter. You make a choice for a good thing or a bad thing, and those things become patterns. Now, the way that we're talking about it with porn, we're talking about it being a bad thing. And so whenever you give in, when you make that choice, it becomes a pattern. And eventually, those patterns or those choices that you make, it eventually feels like chains of bondage. And this is what Paul actually said in Romans 6.16, because we always want to bring our foundation back to the scripture, right? So Romans 6.16, Paul asks a question: Do you not know that you are slaves to the one you choose to obey? You are a slave to the one you choose to obey. Now you must make the choice of who or what you will follow. The question is, do you want to be a slave to porn or do you want to be a slave of Christ? Paul says that he he he introduces himself as a slave to Jesus Christ. And I want to be a slave of Jesus Christ. And whenever you say being a slave to Jesus, it's not it's not the act of being a slave that is abused or anything like that. It is a slave of coming under the control of righteousness, the righteousness of Jesus Christ, and giving yourself to him and him leading us, guiding us, taking us to the places that we want to go, and we become a slave under his control. We come under the Lordship of Jesus Christ and we follow after him. So do you want to be a slave of porn or do you want to be a slave of Jesus Christ? I choose Jesus. Amen. I choose Jesus Christ, and I hope that you will too. Let's move to point number three. Pornography weakens your ability to say no everywhere else in your life, everywhere else. This is a big practical point that you must catch. You've got to catch this. Porn never stays isolated. Never. Porn is going to bleed over into other areas of your life. Listen to this. Porn bleeds over into your discipline. First of all, a man that's hooked on porn is a man who doesn't practice discipline because he refuses to tell himself no. If you can't tell yourself no, you're you are missing part of that fruit of the spirit that's called self-control. That's discipline. And I understand you may have a desire to practice discipline, but if you constantly give in to the porn cycle, discipline is lacking in your life. The lack of discipline, it's going to overflow into other disciplines of your life that should be there, causing a lack in areas such as your quiet time with God. It is going to overflow into the discipline of prayer. It is going to overflow into the discipline of accountability with your brothers. And I could go on and on and on. But if you are someone who's giving in to the porn cycle and you are not doing anything to break this, it is affecting your discipline because you're showing, you're proving that you do not have discipline at all. Not only does it affect your discipline, it pours over into your discipline, but it also pours over into your leadership. Whenever you are a slave to porn, your ability to lead fades. Okay? It fades. Let me give you an example of my own life. I remember uh giving in to the temptation of porn when my son was a young boy. That day, he had gotten into some trouble at school. They got conduct marks and he had to bring them home, and the parent had to sign for them. So I had to sign for uh the acknowledgement that I uh of his conduct marks, right? And so we had a deal that whenever they got, when Colson got um, or Kylie, it didn't matter which one, when they got conduct marks, then um we we did it we did some disciplines and um different things. And that day though, man, I had such conviction. Like the Lord was really, really dealing with me. And the guilt that I had from what I had done weighed on me so badly that I could not discipline my son. Instead of disciplining my son, I overlooked his bad behavior. I want you to just think about what I just told you, okay? I overlooked his bad behavior because of my bad behavior. Subconsciously, I think that I was hoping that my bad behavior would be overlooked as well. And, you know, and again, hindsight's 2020. And I think that this is the the beauty of the wisdom of scripture, where you have older men who can teach the younger men, and I'm an older guy in comparison to some of you guys. I'm a young guy in compared to compared to some guys, but um, the things that I've been through, I can help you. And I think now, me looking back, I was subconsciously hoping that someone would overlook my situation or overlook my um my my fall or you know, my shortcomings. And so I was overlooking Coulson's. And so whenever you are compromised, your leadership suffers. I kind of My leadership that day because I did things that I should not have done. Therefore, I could not discipline my son. I could not lead him in the way that he needed to be led that day. And it affected me. Now, if you if you do this on a regular basis, that guilt is going to build up, the shame is going to build up, uh, and you are going to overlook more and more and more things that your children do. Or other people, the people that you work that work for you, the people that you lead. It doesn't matter. If you are constantly doing things that compromise your leadership, you are going to overlook things that other people are doing who are under your leadership. Next, what porn affects is your marriage? Marriage is supposed to be a bond between a husband and a wife. And introducing anyone or anything else into that union, it compromises the stability of that union. And Jesus told us about the severity of committing adultery by pointing out that the Old Testament law condemned the physical act of adultery. And you can go back and read that in Leviticus, and Jesus points all that out. But Jesus raised the bar in Matthew chapter 5, okay? Every time Jesus tried to talk to us in the Sermon on the Mount, especially, I love the Sermon on the Mount. But when Jesus teaches that through the Sermon on the Mount, he mentions something in the Old Testament, and then he'll say, You heard it said, and then he refers to the Old Testament, and then he says, But I tell you. And then he raises the bar and he says, This is what it looks like now. So when it comes to adultery, Jesus says, You heard it said, and then he mentions the law in the book of Leviticus, and then he said, But I say to you, if you he raises the bar, okay, if you even look at a woman and lust after that woman, you have committed adultery with her in the heart. So Jesus says, I'm not even going to talk about the physical anymore. You already know that that's wrong. But we, we as followers of Christ, we as followers of the new covenant, Jesus is saying, if you're going to follow me, we're not going to do things the old way. Yes, the old way is good and it is a good foundation, but you know what? We're going to kick this up a notch and we are going to rise to the occasion. And through the Spirit of God living in us, we are not even going to allow our minds to go there because that is the same thing as adultery. Now, I haven't met any, any woman through through all my years of pastoring and counseling, all the things that I've done. I have not met a woman yet who is okay with her husband using porn. On the contrary, I have counseled more couples than I would even like to tell you who are on the verge of divorce because porn has caused such a strain on their marriage. Don't do it. Get rid of it. Do what you can to turn the ship around and rewire your brain. Take the things that I'm telling you in this episode and apply them to your life. Next, it also affects your integrity. Integrity is the quality of being honest, right? Having a strong moral principles and a consistently acting in alignment with your values and beliefs, even when no one's watching. So if you are good at running to porn to find your fix, you're training yourself to lose. And if you're training yourself to lose in private, guess what? You're going to struggle in the public. If you're training yourself to lose in private, you are going to struggle to lead in public. It's just, it's just the way that it is. Point number four, it dulls your spiritual sensitivity. Porn abuse, I I don't want to even just say porn abuse. Porn and just just porn. It dulls your spiritual uh sensitivity. Don't don't miss what I'm trying to tell you here, guys. When you become reliant on porn, there is a shift from your brain to your spirit. This is a spiritual battle because Satan wants to destroy your soul. And one of the most successful lures he has is porn. The longer you are a slave to porn, the quieter your convictions will be. I'm not saying that conviction will completely go away, uh, but I am telling you that it will get quieter. And I want you to think about it this way. If you have ever driven a manual shift transmission vehicle, you have done some gear grinding in your day. When you're trying to find a different gear, you're grinding those gears. And if you grind those gears too long, the teeth on those gears are going to get worn out. Now, I want you to think about your conscience as the gear and watching porn is the grinding of the gear. The more you grind that spiritual gear, the more the teeth on that gear are going to be worn out. And if the teeth on that gear, if that works as your conscience, and as that as that gear turns, that gear is just say it's inside your gut. It turns and it makes you feel uncomfortable. And that's what the conscience or the Holy Spirit inside of you is doing, trying to get you to understand that you don't need to do this. And before long, if you allow those gears to keep grinding, there won't be enough teeth there to engage you and to help you turn around. If you keep grinding the gears, eventually there won't be any gears to grind. Whenever you think about this, not only does your conviction become quieter, but the shame gets louder. So conviction drops the volume. The shame that you feel increases the volume. So you know watching porn is wrong, or you wouldn't be hiding it in the first place. And because you know it's wrong, you feel shame when you give in to it. I mean, after all, you're a man, right? You're supposed to be strong, and nothing's gonna take you down like that. I mean, I'm not I'm not gonna give in to those things. So why are you so easily taken down by something that seems so simple? I mean, it's just on the phone, it's just an image. I mean, you're just looking at something. You're not actually doing anything. You're not physically doing anything. You don't have to man up and do anything. And it's because the enemy of your soul, he casts more and more shame on you until you're unable to stand beneath the weight and you just crumble under it. And it even though it's easy, remember your brain is wired to accept the easy, reject the hard. And so you become lazier and lazier spiritually the more you give into this, because it's easier just to go with the flow than it is to swim against the current. Also, it distances um it, you know, it it it did the distance from God that you have increases. And and it whenever you constantly give in to the porn, the temptation of porn, it seems like God has distanced himself from you, but that's a lie. The devil wants you to believe that. But it's not because God has moved away from you, it's because you have replaced him with your new God. You've replaced him with your new idol called porn. And because of shame and blame and guilt, you isolate more and more. And before long, you pull away from every position uh of positive influence in your life. Uh, God becomes a passive thought. You reject other men who speak life into you. You don't want to hear it coming from your wife or your girlfriend. You reject all these things because you would rather have the easy instead of the hard. In Ephesians 4.19, Brother Paul said, They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. You give yourself over to these things, and whenever you do it, it completely destroys who you are from the inside out. And the more you feed the flesh, the harder it is to hear the Spirit of God. You have to feed the Spirit if you want the Spirit to be the strong one in your life. You have to keep feeding that spiritual man. You've got to keep feeding him. And that leads me to point number five. Freedom requires more than trying harder. Hear me, guys. Hear me. Most men try, they'll say, okay, well, well, I'll just, I'll, I'll try more guilt. Thinking that somehow I'm gonna punish myself. Somehow I'm gonna uh punish myself so that I can believe that I've paid for my sin, some kind of weird idea like that. And then they make like more promises. And well, I'll I'll never do that again. And and well, I'm just gonna be honest with you. I've been there and done that. And it's easy to say, I'm not gonna do that again right after a fix. It's easy to say, man, I'm gonna go on a diet and I'm not gonna eat that stuff anymore right after I've gone through a case of Oreo cookies because my body's not craving any of that stuff right now. It's easy to say that. It's it's easy to say, uh, well, I'll I'll use more willpower. Well, the point is that if you had willpower in the first place, you wouldn't be here right now because your willpower would have would have outworked the desire that you have or the temptation that you have that you have. Guys try all these different things and yet they fail time after time after time. I tried all these things and I failed time after time after time. The question is, why did I keep failing? Why did you keep failing? The reason you kept failing is because is because you cannot break a trained pattern with occasional effort. I'm gonna repeat this because you need to hear what I'm saying. You cannot break a trained pattern with occasional effort. I don't care if this is breaking the porn cycle, if this is breaking the weight loss cycle, if this is like the overeating cycle, if this is the cussing cycle, if this is drugs, or if this is alcohol, it makes no difference. You will not break a trained pattern with occasional effort. You are going to have to set it in your mind that I'm going to do this, come hell or high water, I'm going to do this, and I am going to set my face like a flint, like the Bible says. I'm going to set my face like Jesus, like a flint towards Jerusalem, where he said, I'm going to the cross and I'm going to do this, and there's nothing that's going to set me back. I'm not going to stop. Nothing's going to deter me. You have got to establish in your heart and in your mind that I am going to overcome this, but how? How? Here's the practical strategy that you need to start implementing today. I do not want you to think for a moment that you're going to do this by yourself. You're not. That's why I'm trying to put these episodes out on the podcast so that you can use this and I can help you overcome this. And maybe even possibly later, you come into my uh the porn battle plan masterclass that we're going to have to where we can work for an extended period of time together and we can help get over the hurdle here. So the practical strategy that you need to start implementing today is that if there's a pattern, remember, remember the loop, okay? I want you to remember this. Think about the loop here. All right. Let me let me put this back on the screen for you. Remember the loop, all right? You have the trigger, the craving, the action, the regret, and then it repeats. The trigger, the craving, the action, the regret, then it repeats, all right? This is the loop, the loop, the porn addiction loop. Now, whenever you are are thinking about changing the pattern or interrupting the pattern, you have to identify those triggers, okay? There's gonna be a time of day, there are go, there's going to be uh emotional states, you're gonna be, you're gonna feel bored, you're gonna feel stressed, you're gonna feel tired, there's gonna be all of these, all these things, but you you have to identify these triggers, okay? What is it? Is it a certain time of the day? Is it an emotional state? Um, was it because I was highly stressed out? Uh, did I get in an argument with my wife or my girlfriend? Maybe my kids are uh stressing me out, whatever it might be. You don't stumble randomly, guys. You stumble predictably. And if you if you will search this out, you will actually identify the things that are becoming the stumbling blocks in your life, that are becoming the triggers, and you can find that pattern and you can change it. So find those triggers and interrupt the pattern. So you have to start. Number two, that was number one, interrupt the pattern. Number two, you have to starve those old pathways. You have to cut access aggressively. You've heard the old saying, cold turkey. I quit it cold turkey. You have to do this. You cannot wean yourself off of porn. You can't wean yourself off of it. It has to be cold turkey. I'm doing it today. No matter what, I'm doing it. But how do I do it? Cut it aggressively. Cut out your access. You know you've got access, easy access on the phone. It's right here in front of you all the time. You need filters on your phone, okay? Whenever I was trying to quit porn, there there were no phones. There were desktop computers. I don't even know that laptops were all that popular at the time. Certainly there were no iPads, you know, like tablets and things like that. Um and so we didn't we didn't really have the filter stuff, okay? I think there was the Maccabe or the McAfee uh filters for the for the desktop computers and stuff like that, but whatever. I I knew enough about a computer back in those days where I could just get around it. It was a lot easier to get around it back then. Uh no matter what was on the computer, I would get around uh the firewalls or or the blockers, the filters, whatever they call that stuff. Um so what I would do or what Katrina and I did is that we would literally unplug the modem from the wall. The computer, uh, you know how how it would come in, the modem, that, all that stuff, uh, where the access to the internet came into our home. We unplugged that from the wall, put it in Katrina's car, and she drove away with it for the day. I did not have access to it. It only came out and was plugged up whenever Katrina was in the house. The computer was in the living room where we were, where we were together, and um, and that was part of my accountability. Now, later on, as I uh grew a little bit more and more and more, uh I had accountability partners. And if you're watching this right now, some of you guys, you you know exactly who you are. One of you in particular, you know who you are. Um he was my he was my very first, still is my accountability partner. And we talk about things a lot. And so you have to have those things. Well, later on, um after I had really, I don't, I don't, I don't ever, I never want to say that I that I beat porn, that I've overcome the temptations, all that, all that stuff is still temptations. In my mind as a man, I mean, I'm tempted with things. I still have eyes. I can see a beautiful woman. And I still have uh the devil uh on on one shoulder, kind of like the Tom and Jerry commercial uh cartoons, where you've got the devil on one shoulder and the angel over here on the other shoulder trying to talk the good and the bad to you. I mean, that happens to me. Just because I'm a pastor and just because um I'm I'm uh a spiritual influencer or whatever, it doesn't mean that I don't have all of these uh same temptations like you guys have. I have them too. And so what I'm trying to tell you is that uh even now today, I have accountability software. Well, I I don't I don't have it on my phone now because we we're actually in the process of um changing from one to another. And I should have made a list so I could give you guys these. Uh if you're interested in them, email me or text me or whatever, and I'll get some of this stuff to you. Uh but accountability software uh that I started using, it actually, if if I were to go on my phone and look up something that was related to porn or whatever, it automatically sent my wife an email or a text. And so she knew that I was doing things like that uh on my phone. The reason that we brought that in later on is because our children had devices and we did that to help protect them uh from the exposure to porn. So this is a discipline, okay? These things that I'm telling you, they're they're disciplines, they're not weaknesses. And you're trying to protect yourself. It's just like you buying a vehicle that has airbags in it. The airbags are not showing a sign of weakness for you, they're showing a sign of protection. And you you you are you you are driving a vehicle that has airbags in it for the protection of your life. And so this is the same thing that we're doing spiritually. We're trying to protect our soul from the forces of evil that are coming into our life through porn. Number three, you have to start building new pathways. You've had old pathways, and those old pathways, they they seem to be stalwarts. They seem to be like these things in our life that are just there. They've all they've been there so long that we don't know how to get rid of them. But as we start finding the triggers and we starve those old pathways, and we we say, well, we're not gonna give ourselves, we're not gonna let our eyes go and and look at those things anymore, we have to start building new pathways. And so you have to replace the loop. So whenever the trigger comes, instead of doing the other actions, because you're gonna have the triggers, the triggers are gonna be there. So before when the trigger happened, you would give in to the craving, right? Remember, remember the cycle. You have the trigger and then the craving and then the action. And so, in the temptation of that craving, um, the trigger led you, led you there. So whenever you had that trigger, you automatically did something. There was a there was an action there. And so you have to come to this place where you say, okay, here's my trigger. Now I'm gonna do something else. Instead of going and doing what I used to do, now I'm gonna, I don't know, let's pray. Let's let's have prayer. Maybe I'm gonna call up my accountability partner. I'm gonna call up my brother that's like, hey man, I am I am struggling right now. I need you to pray for me. And then that brother goes to battle with you and he starts praying for you, man. What how awesome would that be? What about? I mean, if you had the ability to, you got up and and went went for a walk. Got out, get out, get outside. Because if you're being tempted to go look at porn, more than likely you're by yourself, you're alone, you're isolated because you watch it in the dark somewhere, you hide. So instead of going and hiding somewhere, get up, go outside, go for a walk, go to the gym, go work out, relieve some stress and get out there and start sweating, and you'll find out real quick that uh all those temptations will actually dissipate and they will go away. Don't just remove a habit. You have to remove a habit by replacing it with something else. I remember Brother John McGregor, and I've said this before, but uh my pastor, he used to smoke a couple of packs of cigarettes a day, and he came under conviction, and he uh said he had a pack of cigarettes in each of his shirt pockets, and he grabbed one, threw it this way, grabbed one, threw it that way, and he never touched them again. But he said he would grab a toothpick and he'd put a toothpick in his mouth, and he replaced the cigarette with a toothpick, and that's what helped him overcome the addiction of cigarettes. Number four, bring it into the light. Isolation fuels addiction. If you stay by yourself, you isolate. Addiction is gonna just try to thrive in your life. But brotherhood kills it. You need to find a brotherhood. You need to find a group of people who will come along beside you and walk through this journey with you. James 5:16 tells us to confess our sins, pray so that we can be healed. You need to learn confession and you need to find brothers that will confess along beside you. So bring your stuff out into the light. These problems that you have, bring them out into the light, talk to someone about them, and let that man come along beside you and help you. Right now, you're either training yourself for freedom or you're training yourself for bondage. Which one is it? What do you think? Are you training yourself for freedom or are you training yourself for bondage? The question isn't do you want to change? The question is, what are you consistently practicing? Okay? You may really want to change. Well, no, you may really be saying you want to change, but the change is going to come by the through the proof of what you are consistently. practicing. What are you practicing? You see, you weren't controlled to, I mean, you weren't created to be controlled by the impulses that you have. You were called to master these impulses through the guidance and through the leadership of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the power within you to overcome these things. But what's being wired into you through your addiction to porn can be rewired through discipline, through accountability, and through the power of God's Word. But gentlemen, if you are not willing to put in the work, if you are addicted to the easy, you're going to reject the hard. And I'm telling you right now, if you want to overcome porn, you better be ready to do the hard stuff. Don't forget, I'm praying for you. God bless 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 sharper.