031 Porn Battle Plan: 04 The Discipline Blueprint

You will not beat this enemy without a plan. You can have the best of intentions, but if you are unwilling to put those intentions into action, you will fail. Discipline is key. In this episode, Joey offers a blueprint to help build discipline in your life that will help defend your heart and mind against the attacks of the enemy.

Transcript

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Freedom isn't built on motivation. It's built on the daily disciplines that you're willing to work on and develop each day of your life. You don't win this battle just in a moment. You have to have this situated in your mind that you're going to work through every single day of your life. So if you're not going to win this battle in a moment, you must come to the understanding that you will only win it. Listen to me, you will only win it in your routines. 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, wealth, 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. Welcome back to the podcast, everybody. We are on episode 31, and we're continuing on through the porn battle plan. We're on the fourth, uh, the fourth episode of the porn battle plan, or I should say maybe the fourth lesson. And today we're actually going to talk about what I've called the discipline blueprint, talking about daily habits that will build freedom. And I'm not just going off of just some random idea here. I mean, this is something that I've worked on for quite a while, uh, not this episode, but just this lifestyle, uh, the the habits of building freedom. Because you have to have things in your life that are habits or disciplines. If you plan on defeating this problem that you have uh with pornography, you see, most men are waiting to feel um strong before they actually change. What I mean by that is that we have this tendency to um want to think or believe that there's some magic potion out there waiting to be drank that will um offer this instant protection from the mysteria the mysterious porn monster. And the truth is that strength does not come first. Um the the truth is that discipline comes first. And without discipline, you're never going to be able to develop any type of habit that forms the strength that you need to overcome this problem. There's too many of us uh nowadays, especially, I think, that are looking for an easy way out while resisting all the things that are proven to work. We resist these things because they are hard. And I and you have to remember what I've told you. You must learn how to do hard things. Guys, whenever I talk about this, that men are looking for the easy way out, not just men, this is women, this is across the board, um, just say humanity, people. We're looking for the easy way out. This this means um uh with with like trying to defeat porn or trying to get rid of the habit of smoking cigarettes or alcohol or losing weight or whatever, whatever you think that it is. I mean, we want crash courses um that give us uh kind of like the the cleft notes of everything that that we possibly can so that we can quickly achieve the goal or just get the certificate, if you will. And so we resist the things that are proven to work because the the things that are proven to work are hard, they're difficult, and we've not trained ourselves or disciplined ourselves to do hard things. But what you have to remember is that you will only rise to the level of your intentions, but you will you will fall to the level of your habits. You you can have good intentions and and you'll rise up to that level of your intention. But whatever your habits are, it really doesn't matter what what what your intentions are if your habits do not align with your intentions. I want you to remember when I shared with you the Randy Travis song that uh is titled Good Intentions. In that song, uh Randy said the road to hell is paved with good intentions. And the problem uh is that without discipline, you will never act on your intentions. You can have all the best intentions in the world, but if you don't discipline yourself to deal with those things, you will never act. So if you want freedom, you don't just need desire. You can't just say, whoa, man, I want to be free from this. I want to overcome this. You need a blueprint, you need a guideline, you need practical steps that are gonna help you win the battle. And that is what this episode is all about. So let's not waste any more time. Let's just jump into this with point number one. You win your day in the very first hour, okay? And whenever I say the very first hour uh that you win your day, I don't want you to uh get it down to like a literal first hour of your day kind of thing, because it it actually takes place in um in several hours of your day. I don't want to say several, but the first few hours of your day. But that first hour, the point that I want to get across to you is that the first hour of your day is extremely important. And I'm gonna spend just a little bit of time uh talking to you about this because this is the principle I want you to receive from this. The way you start your day sets the tone for everything else that follows. And if you've uh been practicing practicing this for uh any amount of time, you know that what I'm saying is true. I want I want you to think about your morning routine for just a moment. And if you've tried to uh do different things in the waking hours of your day, you should be able to identify some of the patterns that work well for you or some of the things that don't work so well. And you should know kind of how uh they affect you in different ways. What most men do are, you know, I don't even want to just say men, but what most people do uh has become a habit in our in our life is that, you know, we wake up in the morning, first thing we do is we want to grab our front phone and we want to scroll social media, and then we want to react to whatever's going on in the world. But what a disciplined person will do, what a disciplined man will do, is that he will become intentional before they become reactive. They get intentional before they get reactive. And so I just want you to know I hate being reactive. Now, I I cannot sit here and honestly tell you that I never wake up first thing in the morning and then uh and then scroll on my phone because there's days when I have done that. Like I've um it's so easy to get distracted, and I and I catch myself doing it all the time. Uh, you wake up, you roll over, there's your phone, you grab it, what's the weather look like? And I'm telling, I'm telling on myself, okay, uh, what's the weather look like? I'll look at the weather, or I'll say, well, uh, let me check my bank account, make sure my money's still there and paying my bills and my bank account's not withdrawn, and I'll look at that. And uh before I know it, man, I'm on Facebook, I'm on Instagram, I'm on TikTok, I'm looking at YouTube, whatever it is, and and 15, 20, 30 minutes could go by. I mean, just like that. So we we do we do this in a way uh as of habit, but we're we're not being very intentional with our time. So whenever we do that, we're becoming reactive to the other things that are happening in the world. Our our life or our morning is going to be a reaction to what we've what we've seen uh on social media. So I think there is a better way to start the day. Uh now, now I'll I'll I may get into this a little bit more. Uh, but one of the things that Katrina and I have started doing is that we do not leave our phones in our bedroom anymore. And we've only been doing this now for um I don't, I don't know, maybe a week now or so. But what I have noticed is that I will read more now before I go to bed. And uh my phone is not there for me whenever I get up in the morning. I have to get out of bed and I have to walk to another room in order to get my phone. Um, but you know, that that may be another subject for another time. Just to kind of let you know uh that that we that we are in the Kennedy household, we are trying to put um many of these things into practice. And I'm just telling you now, it's not easy to do when you've been in the habit of doing other things for so for so long. So whenever I say I believe there is a better way to start the day, uh I want to give you this morning blueprint. And it's some of the things that, uh or a lot of the things, most of the things that I do in the morning as a discipline in my life. I'm not trying to tell you I'm perfect at them. They are things that I'm disciplining myself to do. So, number one, you need to get up with a purpose. You need to get to the point to where there are no snooze cycles. I remember uh setting my alarm clock, and man, I'd hit the snooze so many times, it would drive Katrina crazy. She would get mad. She's like, why do you hit the snooze so many times? You're just making yourself so restless. Why don't you just set the alarm? If you if you need to hit the snooze three or four times, uh just go ahead and set the alarm for that later time and just let that be what it's going to be. But I I I didn't do it. And uh I just keep hitting the snooze, and man, it it it just it just went on and on and on. It really drove me crazy. Uh but it but it was like I was too lazy to get out of the bed. And I'll be the first one to admit that uh it it's difficult not to hit the snooze button until you've disciplined yourself to get on up out of bed. But I want you to think about this how easy it is to hit that snooze button, especially on the days when you don't need to be at work or you don't have a meeting or you don't have somewhere that you need to be uh first thing in the morning. So when there are no early morning demands, it's much easier to hit the stoo the snooze. So this is what we have done uh to help eliminate the stoo, the snooze cycle and start with intention in the morning is that no matter what day it is, uh we have the plan on getting up with a purpose. Uh we have a plan that's gonna get us up out of bed. And the thing that Katrina and I have found uh to be the best thing is that we get up to read our Bible, which that leads me to my next point, which is get in the word. It doesn't matter if it's only 10 to 15 minutes of your morning. Um, every intentional moment matters, all right? Every intentional moment matters. Don't forget that. Every intentional moment matters, and it counts as you are building this habit or you building, you're building this discipline. As I've said before in the beginning of this discipline, reading your Bible is going to be like a duty. It's going to be a job, okay? It's a it's a duty. But the longer that you do it, it becomes a desire, and then it transforms into a delight. And you need to understand that this is not just checking off another box in your to-do list for the day. Instead, you are intentionally feeding your mind, your soul, and your spirit. And I don't know if this matters as much to you, but if I do not get certain things done in the morning hours, I will probably not get them done in the later hours of the day because I'll be too occupied with other things. And however, whenever I was a young father, my day looked much different than it does today because children added to the equation. And whenever you have children involved, there are different things that are just going to happen. Your morning is going to be messed up, your evenings may be messed up. But even then, whenever I was a younger father, what I found worked best for me is to get up before the kids got up, before they started stirring and needing to get ready for school or whatever. And those moments worked best for me, even whenever I knew that I was only going to have a few of those moments. So, what I want to encourage you to do is to just do the best for you, what works best for you. And don't allow your circumstances to override your alone time with God. Don't forget what I just said. Do not allow your circumstances to override your alone time with God. Psalm 5, verse 3, David says this, Lord, in the morning you hear my voice, and in the morning I prepare a sacrifice for you and watch. I don't, I do not intend on allowing this to uh become a legalistic issue. I don't want to be legalistic about this at all about the morning time, but I'm just being honest with you. There is something about rising early in the morning to be alone with God. If you have not or you are not practicing giving the first part of your day to God, I ask you to consider this as your challenge, okay? So not only am I telling you like for a morning blueprint, okay, get up with purpose. You need to have a purpose for getting out of bed, whatever that is. Many times for us, the purpose of getting out of bed is our job or whatever, but find a way to get out of bed, okay? We we we established a purpose. I'm gonna read the word of God. That is the purpose. That's why I want to get up out of bed, and we're gonna we're gonna get into the word, okay? So get up out of bed with a purpose. The purpose is to get into the word of God. Number three, uh, what I think you need to do with that morning routine is move your body. You need to do some type of workout. You need to walk, you need to do something physical. Now, I'm not saying that that's what you need to do is uh immediately when you get out of bed, but I'm telling you, you need to add physical activity to your daily discipline, your daily routine. And I know right now you're probably gonna have some excuses. I've had excuses for the majority of my life, uh, but over the last year, I have really set this discipline into motion in my life. And many times now, Katrina actually is uh she's not shocked anymore, but for a while uh she was getting like, oh, you're you're you're getting up, you're going to the gym. Oh, uh you're you're going for a walk this morning. I'm like, yeah, I need to go ahead and get it done because if I don't go on and do it, more than likely I'm gonna push it off and I'm gonna find a reason um not to do it. Just like yesterday, man. I um I didn't I wasn't able to go to the gym first thing in the morning because I had a I had a full day uh doing doing things, doing some business. And and man, it it was way late whenever I got home. And so I just I missed the whole day um of being able to do the things that I would normally do. And sometimes you're gonna have those things that throw your day out of kilter, but you you the discipline that you have puts you right back on track the next day. So uh this point that I'm talking to you about about moving your body, you need to do the workout, you need to walk, you need to do something physical. And this is another thing, like I said, that I've added to my daily routine and discipline to help me keep my mind, my body, and my spirit in better shape. All of these things are helping me because if I can help train my body physically, if I can discipline my body, then my spirit benefits from that. So not only do I make a point to have quiet time every morning, I also have a time, a set time that I'm gonna go to the gym or I'm at least gonna go for a walk outside. So not only is moving your body a good morning routine, but if you're being tempted, this is the perfect way. It is a very effective way to distract your mind and to interrupt the cycle, the the loop. Remember the loop that we've been talking about in the last few episodes? This is a way to distract it because whenever the triggers start happening and the temptation starts coming in and fighting against you, if you can get up and walk, change the environment, you will realize that physical disciplines will reinforce your spiritual discipline. Discipline is the key. It doesn't matter if it's in the physical, it doesn't matter if it's in the spiritual. Discipline is the key. And if you will practice discipline, it will help you in multiple areas of your life. Okay? So that morning routine, okay, we have to get up with a purpose. We need to get into the word. We need to move our body, but we need to set our mind. Remember what I've already taught you uh in previous episodes. You must start identifying the triggers of your day, the things that trigger you, the things that um the situations that you'll face, uh, all these different things. And I know that that you're not able, you're not always able to um know what the day holds, okay? You're you're you're not you're not always gonna understand what the day holds, but you will um, you, you'll, you'll certainly never be able to hit a mark either if you don't ever aim for the target, right? Okay, so uh just to kind of give you a little bit of an understanding about what I mean here, uh I had to have my coach, and you guys know my coach, I've been telling you about Colby, uh bouillon. He he's he's a good friend of mine now. He's my coach. He uh helps keep me in line with the things that I eat, my physical exercise, and all these different things. He's he's a disciplinarian for me, and he helps me uh stay in line. Well, uh there was there was one day where um, you know, I'm I'm on a certain eat meal plan and I'm eating a certain amount of macros, which um I don't want to get into a health food talk here, but a certain amount of macros every day. But uh Katrina and I uh we were just at home one day and and the kids were gone, and uh, which Colson, he's already moved out, but Kylie was gone. She was staying somewhere else. And Kylie, Katrina was like, hey, why don't why don't we go out on a date? And we hadn't been out on a date in a while, and uh schedules have been real busy, and and so we were gonna just go out on a date. Now you have to understand, I've been eating a certain amount of uh calories through the day uh to help me lose the weight that that I'm I'm wanting to lose. And so I had already been eating some of those calories through the day because I'm we're sitting here at about three o'clock in the evening, and I've only got really one more meal left on my meal plan. And so I'm like all of a sudden excited because she's like, Hey, you want to go out on a date? And I love taking my wife out on a date. It's just exciting for us to be alone and we get to enjoy some good food. We're foodies, uh, we we enjoy good quality food. And so uh we we go out and oh boy, what did I do? Well, in one meal, I ate enough for my entire meal plan. Well, the next day, I get up every day, I weigh myself, my my weight was up, and immediately Colby saw it because I share my weight with him. He he's able to go in and see it, and uh, and we talk back and forth, and he coaches me. Immediately he was like, What did you do? Because there was a significant change in my weight from one day to the next, and I had to tell him, and he told me, he said, you always need a plan. You have to plan. And I and I kind of, you know, I ain't gonna lie, I kind of got offended. And I was like, Colby, come on. Uh, you you can't always plan everything. We didn't plan that date. It just happened. It was spur of the moment. And he said, So you think you got where you are right now uh without a plan? You think you got here without a plan? Uh no, you didn't. You got here with a plan. Then he was like, well, but I mean, if you feel like you can go on and do this without me, I mean, that's fine. You can you can go ahead and do it without me. But you asked me to be your accountability partner, and I'm telling you that you have to plan. You've got to have a plan. You can't just go out there and just eat anything you want, whenever you want, or you're going to gain all that weight back again. Just remember where you came from and you have to have a plan. What Colby was trying to tell me, and what he he ended up telling me later on, he was like, This is what you ate. And I ate a big old fat ribeye, guys. I ain't gonna lie to you. I ate it and I enjoyed every bit of it. But he said, You went out and ate this big old ribeye, you had this, you had that, and you know as well as I do, Joey, there were better options on that menu. You could have enjoyed the the date with your wife, had good food, and Still been in your calorie uh limit if you had followed the plan. And you know what? He was right. He was right. I didn't follow the plan. I did something different. It affected me. And it took me almost two weeks to get back on track where I needed to be because it threw my weight kind of out of out of out of alignment. And so what I'm trying to tell, I'm using that little health journey that I've had with you to help you realize that if you don't have a plan, you're never going to hit the mark. You're not going to have a target. If you don't have the target that you you're shooting at, you're never going to know if you hit it or not. So if you're not planning your day, your day is going to plan you. And so you probably know for the most part where you will be, what you will be doing, who you're going to be around, and how all those activities or those people, how they're going to affect you. Because you've been practicing identifying your triggers. If you're doing what I've been teaching you, you've already been practicing identifying the triggers and you know where they are and you know when they come. And this is why you're going to be able to avoid them by planning. And if you will build a plan, if you know what your plan is, if you will set your mind and have a plan, you will be better prepared whenever this stuff comes your way. Listen, you are not supposed to just drift into your day. You're not just supposed to drift along. You have to plan your day, lead your day, and attack your day every single day. Don't just drift in. Have a plan, stick to it if you want to beat the porn monster. Stick to it. Let's go to point number two. Control your inputs throughout the day. This ties back to episode one. And the truth is that all of us, we are uh constantly feeding our mind, especially nowadays, whenever we have all these uh electronic devices, we are on social media, we are engaged in conversations, text messages, emails, entertainment, you name it, we are wrapped up in it. And because of this, again, you know how these different things affect you. You have to be ruthless with what you watch. Whatever you allow yourself to watch, you have to be ruthless. If you are not constantly uh, I mean, if you are, I should say, if you're constantly seeing things whenever you're on social media or involved in conversations or whatever it may be, and these things are causing your mind to drift, you need to cut it off. Okay? You have to cut it off. You you can cut it off by limiting the mindless scrolling that you're doing uh without even thinking about it. You know, um, and well, am I the only one uh who can confess this? I hope that all of us can confess this at some degree. But I have noticed, I've caught myself many times. And I I try not to catch myself doing it anymore because I I'm trying I try to discipline myself not to just mindlessly scroll on the phone. But man, I can remember when I would just be sitting there mindlessly scrolling on the phone, just scrolling through social media or watching different reels or whatever it is. And I, and I know, I know what it is. Uh, you know, I like to use the excuse of, man, I just need a break because, you know, honestly, um, I spend a lot of time searching, researching information, uh, preparing for sermons, preparing for podcasts, um, you know, um, prepping for uh men's retreats or or different events or marriage counseling. It doesn't matter, uh, whatever it is. I'm uh I don't want to say I'm always doing it because that's not true. But guys, I I have to be honest with you, a lot of my time uh is spent in preparation for other things. So um there's times whenever I just want to break, and I'll use that as an excuse. I'll say, man, I I want to break. I want to rest. I I want to just have a you know, like a timeout for a minute, and I want to find it um as a way to just be be mindless just for a little while. But what I find is that I'm easily tempted during those times to watch things that I don't need to watch. Because whenever I'm not focusing in on things that are are pertinent or important uh to accomplishing another goal, then it's easy for my mind to wander. But mostly I find that um we become addicted to watching or hearing or participating in something. It don't have to be necessarily good or bad. We are just addicted to having something to do. We have this idea of what's next all the time. What's next, what's next, where are we going next? We're and we're not very good at just being present, right? Think about it. We're we're not good at just being present. We want to chase the what's next. So we have to try to replace all that noise with something else. Excuse me. You have this buzz of things that's just going through your head all the time, like come on, listen to this or watch this, and we have this information overload. But what we need to do is try to replace some of that noise with things like the word of God, with scripture, maybe, maybe worship music, edifying content, things that are gonna promote good, uh, let me just say good vibes, if you will, in your mind. Instead of setting yourself up for failure, set yourself up for success. And remember, you can't go you can't binge on garbage all day and then expect to have purity at night. You just can't do it. So you have to shift. And if you uh just like any addict will tell you that if you're addicted to one thing over here and you're trying to break the cycle of that, you've got to find something else to replace it with. All right. You have to, you have to swap these things out. Get rid of the bad, replace it with something good so that you are not tempted to keep going back to the things that you are, that you are familiar with and the things that you're comfortable with. Okay. So try and do your best to control the inputs, the things that you feed your mind or the things that you expose your eyes to during the day. Let's move to point number three. Let's kill the triggers before they become a temptation. This is a a tactical method here, okay? You have to do what I've been telling you for the last few episodes, and you need to identify your patterns. There's going to be a time. The patterns, what these things that are that are triggering you. What what's the patterns? Do you do you notice the temptations coming late at night? Or are they uh during during a certain time during the day? We where? So it is it where's the place? Is it in bed? Uh whenever I'm sitting there mindlessly scrolling right before I go to bed? Is it on the couch? Is it when you're alone? Um, what is it? So when's the time? When's the place? What's the emotion? Are you feeling that you are stressed out? Is it uh is it boredom that drives you to want to watch pornography? Is it frustration? I can say yes to all of the above. I have been in the, I remember uh whenever I was tracking these things in my life, um, whenever, whenever I would get stressed out about things, that it it was almost like, oh man, I can go and decompress or de stress and and I could watch porn. But but also if I found myself to be bored, I'd be like, man, what what can I do? Oh, oh, I can go and watch, and then my mind would just go uh haywire. And then I could be frustrated, I could be upset about something. And it's almost like no matter, no matter what your emotion, the devil gives you this idea that you can go and decompress on porn, and it just fixes all of these things. But we know that the opposite is actually true. So um, whenever we're we're trying to uh figure this out, whenever we're trying to kill the triggers before they actually become a temptation, we have to intentionally build interruptions. That remember, I told you we have to interrupt this, the porn cycle that I shared with you a few episodes back. Uh you have to interrupt the porn cycle. So let's build interruptions. Whenever the trigger hits, you have to have an immediate response. This is where I tell you that you need to get up. You need to change the environment, go for a walk, call a brother, call somebody, get somebody on the phone. Maybe you even call your spouse or you say, hey, I'm I'm having trouble doing this. I I just had somebody today. They they text me and they're like, man, this is this right here is going on in my life. And I just I need you to pray for me. And so that those are the things that that I'm telling you about. Like I practice them. Some of these other guys that I coach, they're practicing them too. But you you have to have these people pray for you immediately, or you need to be praying for you immediately. So what you need to understand is that temptation grows in hesitation. Don't forget what I just told you. Don't don't forget what I just said. Temptation grows in hesitation. If you hesitate, you are setting yourself up for failure. If you are if you are tempted, put it this way, if you are tempted with something and you hesitate, you are considering that temptation. You don't need to put this off. The longer you sit on it, the more comfortable it will become. The more the the easier it's going to become to just dabble in it. You have to kill temptation at the root. And you cannot wean yourself off a porn. Remember, this is a cold turkey fix. It has to be cut off cold turkey. You have to Barney fife this and nip it, nip it, nip it in the bud. Okay? So the longer you entertain the temptation, the stronger the temptation will become. Point number four, build non-negotiables. These are the standards of your life. All right. The non-negotiables. This is where discipline becomes an identity. You can talk about it all day long, but until you start putting this down as a framework in your life, you will not make it work. You will never build the wall of discipline. Do not say I'll try to do it. Don't say that. Instead, live by the motto of, I don't do that anymore. I don't do that. I don't live in that place anymore. I don't visit that place anymore. I don't do that anymore. This is the new identity that you should be taking. So remember, cold turkey is the only way it works. There's no phone in the bed, there's no media, no social media after a certain time, and there's no isolation late at night. None. No more. We're not doing that anymore. No phone in the bed, no social media after a certain time, and no isolation at night. If you want freedom for porn, you need to know that freedom grows where standards are enforced. Standards must be enforced. And if you want freedom, freedom only grows where standards are enforced. Remember what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 9 27, whenever he was using the analogy of sports and uh training and different things like that. He said, I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others, I myself should be disqualified. He wants to bring discipline into his life and keep himself under control so that other people will see that what he's preaching is actually working in his life. Because if you do not practice what you preach, other people are gonna automatically disqualify you. You're not gonna make a very big impact in their life. And then point number five is this end your day with an evaluation, not an escape. Most men like to end the day numb, like TV, scrolling, having other distractions, whatever it might be. Um, how many guys have just gone out and gotten themselves plastered drunk, they've watched porn, they've done their thing by having their fix and having their their release and then just pass out on the bed of instead of actually having a good evaluation of their day. You need to go back to point four of what I just got through talking about, if all of this um about ending your day, you know, with with evaluation, uh, go back and and if that's a question for you, go back there. So uh disciplined men will reflect on their day, disciplined men uh will evaluate their day, and then they're gonna do an adjustment of their day. And most of the time, this can be done simply just by calming your brain by reading about 10 pages before you go to bed. And I say reading 10 pages of a book, a book meaning a book that's printed with ink on paper, a hard copy book. That's right. No, we're we're not we're not talking about using Kindle, and we're not talking about reading on our iPad or reading on our phone. We're talking about holding a book in your hand and reading it, reading about 10 pages of it. And it will help you evaluate yourself, it will help you reflect, and it will help you adjust. And I want you to just think about this for a moment. And I'm not trying to tell you that this is something that you're going to easily do. This is something that you have to work into. But I want you to ask yourself, what if what if your night routine looked like this? What if, what if I asked, if I laid down in the bed and I started evaluating my day and I said, now where was I tempted? And I and I had a journal there and I and I wrote this down. Where was I tempted today? And then I was honest with myself and I wrote that down. I was tempted when I saw or when I went through the hallway at XYZ, whatever, I don't know.

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Where was I tempted? When next question Where did I win? When W-I-N.

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Where did I win? Because you know it's easy for the devil to point out all the places that you failed, the places that you lost, but you need to have some wins. Because when you stack up some wins, you have some motivation and you have a little you get the ball rolling a little bit more. Okay? So where was I tempted? Where did I win? But where did I slip mentally? Where did I slip? Where did I slip up? Where was it that I left myself unprotected? I wasn't thinking um the right way, or I allowed myself to go in a direction that I shouldn't have been going. But what if you literally evaluated your day and gave yourself a score on how well you did? We we will do things like this, um, what I'm talking to you about in the in the porn battle plan masterclass that I hope you're planning on being a part of. We'll do things like this, and I'll teach you how to ask these questions, how to answer them on a daily basis so that you can evaluate um the way that you are doing or how you are doing through the day. So you also need to need to pray, okay? So you need to practice some confession, you need to reset your mind, and you need to refocus on the fact that God's mercy is new. As the Bible says, God's mercy is new every morning. So you don't grow from ignoring your day. You're gonna grow by examining it. You don't grow um, you know, you don't get better at sports that you want to play or instruments that you want to play or programs that you want to do, games that you play online, whatever. You don't get better at those things without practice, practicing them. And if you begin to look at your day as something that you need to practice and get better at, you're not gonna get better if you ignore it. You're only gonna get better if you examine it. So talk to your spouse about it, talk to your friends about it, open up to them and help them or let them help you uh evaluate your day and see where it's at uh so that you can make the next day better. So the blueprint, okay? I want you to think about it just for a moment. Let me give it back to you. The blueprint that I'm trying to give you here. Number one, feed your mind. And this is in the morning, all right? Feed your mind, guard your intake. That's that's the daytime, all right? And then you interrupt the temptations. The moment by moment, you interrupt these temptations. Then at nighttime, you evaluate your day. Okay, so this is a four-part deal. Morning, day, moments, and then the night. Feed your mind in the morning. Make sure that you guard your intake during the day. You interrupt those temptations moment by moment, but then you evaluate your day at night by reflecting and resetting. So, guys, as I come down to a close of this episode, we have to always bring this back to ownership because freedom is not found in one big decision that you make. Freedom is built through a thousand small decisions that you're willing to make. And those decisions are made in your daily habits. If you start making new habits and you begin to work on your disciplines every single day, you are going to experience more and more and more freedom. So don't wait for a new week. Don't wait for a new month. Don't wait for a new moment. Start this blueprint that I'm telling you about. Your morning, uh, how you do things in the morning, what is your daily intake? How are you guarding your moment by moment, and how are you evaluating your day in the night? You start that tomorrow morning. And if you keep putting it off, you're only going to receive another lesson in procrastination, right? That's all that you're going to do. So set your alarm, open your Bible, move your body and take control. Because if you build the right habits, you won't just fight for freedom, my friends. You won't just fight for freedom. You will actually start living in freedom. And my prayer for you is that you will start living in freedom. 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 sharpened.