032 The Porn Battle Plan: 05 Relapse

Most of us have experienced a relapse at some stage in our lives. Relapse is often associated with alcoholism or drug abuse, but the truth is that relapse is a word that describes a return to, or the recurrence of some condition after a period of improvement or recovery. In this episode, Joey will discuss the difference between shame and guilt, and how to get back up without quitting. Relapse doesn't have to define you, but how you respond to it will.

Transcript

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Relapse is a real thing, but most people associate real relapse with uh things like alcoholism or maybe drug abuse. But the truth is that relapse is simply a word that describes a setback. Relapse is a return to or a recurrence of some condition after a period of time of improvement and recovery. And if you think about it for just any little bit of time, you may actually discover that you have relapsed several times during your life because you have tried or you've wanted to change some things. But here's the good news relapse doesn't have to define you. Relapse does not have to be the defining factor in your life. But how you respond to relapse will define who you are. The difference between bondage and freedom has nothing to do with perfection. Instead, gentlemen, freedom has to do with persistence. 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. We are still in the Porn Battle Plan. Actually, this is going to be our last episode of the Porn Battle Plan. This is the fifth episode in this series, but today we've titled this one Relapse because when you get down to the end of anything, or I guess maybe, you know, I don't want to say that we're down to the end of it, but when you are trying to overcome some addiction in your life, when you are trying to beat the porn monster like what we're talking about, you know, overcoming porn, things like that, there's always that fear of what happens to me if I or when I fall off the proverbial wagon, right? Uh what happens if I relapse? Well, today I've titled this episode, Relapse: The Difference Between Shame and Guilt and How to Get Back Up Without Quitting. You have to be able to learn how to get back up after you've stumbled. The truth is, is that most of us we will experience stumbling uh and falling along the way. But I don't want to be unbiblical here because the Bible doesn't teach us that we must live in a life of sin. That's not biblical at all. The Bible actually talks about us, uh, it says, if we sin, we have an advocate with the Father and his name's Jesus Christ. And I'll get into that in just a little bit. But what I'm talking to you about today is the difference between shame and guilt because this has to do with relapse. It has to do with how far you will travel down the relapse hole. If uh uh if you're not sure about what you're doing here, if you don't know what steps to take to get yourself back on track, then you will you'll just throw your hands up in the air and you'll quit and you'll find yourself down the road maybe weeks, months, maybe even a year, before you ever really try to get some ground back under you again, to try to get your footing back about getting uh over this or defeating this um this problem that you have with pornography. If you're anything like me, or if your story sounds anything like mine, and you've and you've heard some of my story through this series of uh podcast episodes, um the you you've heard it you've heard enough about it to know that you you're kind of uh in the same situation like I've been, or your your story sounds a little bit like mine. Uh the the truth is that whether you have a story that's exactly like mine or not, our stories are very much similar simply because we're dealing with some of the same stuff. But this is what I'm trying to get to the point of is that if if you're anything like me, you've probably experienced um this routine right here. Like you were doing good for a while. It seemed like you had some momentum because everything was going good. You know, I haven't I haven't watched anything, I haven't, you know, looked at porn in a while, whatever, but then all of a sudden that day comes, that thing happens, that emotion strikes, whatever it is, and then you slipped up. Right? I'm gonna repeat that. You're doing good for a while, you feel like you have some momentum, you feel like you're strong, you feel like you're doing well, and then you slipped up. Does that sound like you? Does that sound like anything that you've experienced before? I would be willing to bet, if I were a betting man, I would say, yes, that sounds exactly like your situation because that's what happens to all of us at some point. Like we feel like we're doing good, we feel like we have some momentum. I don't want to say we become arrogant and cocky or whatever, but we feel pretty good about ourselves, and that's where uh the momentum comes from, and then all of a sudden that something happens. It doesn't matter what that something is, it could be you you are either arrogant, you feel uh like you can do this on your own, something bad happens, um, you you let your guard down, whatever it is, and then you slip up and you mess up. The question that I want to ask you is what happens next? Whenever you slipped up, what did you do after that? How did you respond? Because for most men, you have you have this pattern that one failure turns into a weekend, or one weekend turns into a full week, or a full week turns into you saying, Oh, the heck with it. I'm not gonna deal with it at all. I'm not gonna try this anymore because I've gone so far that there's no coming back from me. Most men don't fall simply because of one mistake, they actually fall because of what they believe after the mistake. All right. Listen to that again, all right. Most men don't fall because of one mistake that they've made. The reason they fall, or I don't want to just say the reason they fall. I would I would say the reason that they they fail for a longer period of time is because of what they believe after they have made the mistake. All right. So let's just jump right into this. Uh, I've got I've got quite a few points, I don't know, five or six points that I want to go through here to help you with this idea of relapse. All right. So let's just jump into point one. Failure is an event. It's not an identity. Write that down. Remember that. Failure is an event, it's not an identity. And this is where I want to separate who you are from what you did. Remember that. Who you are from what you did. Too often we assume our failures as the man we've become, and that simply isn't true. You didn't become your struggle, you didn't erase your progress with your mistake, and you didn't go back to zero. You've gained some ground here, man. You have you have been putting in the work because you've been listening to what I've been telling you, the things that we've been talking about. You've been putting in the work, you've been going through this over and over and over. You know, you've been trying to break the cycle of the porn cycle. You've been doing all the stuff. You've found an accountability partner. You've been calling them, talking to them, whatever it might be. And you've gained some ground. So I want you to understand that the one mistake that you've made is not erased all the progress that you've made. You had a failure, okay? You had a failure, but you are not a failure. Even the wise man Solomon in Proverbs 24, 16, he says that the righteous fall seven times, but they rise again. Even if he's basically what he's saying is that even if a righteous man falls seven times, he rises again. So the righteous are not those. This is this is very important for you to get here, okay? The righteous are not the ones who never fall. That is not what scripture says. It doesn't say, well, if you're a righteous man, you're never going to fall. That's not what he says. The ones, the righteous ones are identified as those who get back up after they have fallen. And this is why I am so encouraged when I read the stories of men like Samson in the Bible, like Samson and David, Peter, these guys that God could have just omitted their stories, left them out of the Bible because he wanted to keep the Bible nice and tidy. But he didn't do that. He puts these guys' stories in the Bible to show us that these guys struggle, these guys had failure, and on and on and on, like they were, they were messed up dudes, but God included them to show us the victory that comes on the other side of us trusting him. And so if we can just trust him and give our lives over to him and trust our, even our struggles and our failures, trust our struggle and failures with him, then we too can be victorious on the other side of this struggle. Okay? So understand that your failure is not your identity. That was an event that is not who you are, okay? We all have events in our lives, but it does not define who we are. Point number two, shame wants to pull you back into isolation. Now, this this ties right back into episode number three. Go back and check it out. I say episode number three. I'm it's it's episode number three of the porn battle plan series, okay? You go back and look at that. But whenever, whenever you you think about shame, what shame wants to do is it wants to pull you back into isolation because shame says that you need to hide. Shame says, hey, don't tell anyone. Shame, shame says that, hey, you've blown it, and it'll never get any worse than it is right now. Shame tries to tell you that no one will ever understand this. And anyone that you share this problem of yours with, they will be fully judgmental against you and towards you. And so the cycle just restarts. You have you have sin and then you have shame and then you have isolation, and then you have more sin, more shame, more isolation, more sin, shame, isolation. And the cycle just keeps going on and on and on again. You see, shame doesn't just follow your sin. You know, of course, you have your sin and then you have your shame. So shame doesn't just follow the sin, it fuels the next sin. Whenever you look at, whenever you look at the the cycle that happens there, when you have the sin and then you have the shame and it pour, pulls you or pushes you into isolation, it just goes right back to another sin. Excuse me. So shame tries to, or it does, it's it's pretty effective at this. It fuels the next sin that that you'll that you'll uh perform. And so you need to understand that the effects of shame are fueled by Satan's attempt to keep you hiding and to keep you isolated and to keep you feeling that you are out there all alone without any help. And whenever you fall for this trap that the enemy sets for you, you you stay to yourself and you only receive your own counsel. And let me just go ahead and tell you your own counsel is not good counsel. You are going to counsel yourself to the point of saying, well, you know, you were feeling this way, and so we'll justify it because of this, or and you'll just keep giving yourself reasons of why it's okay for you to feel the way that you feel. And so you'll keep falling for the same lies that have kept you in bondage until now. But you have to fight the urge to stay isolated, and you've got to find someone to talk to. This is why I told you back in all these previous episodes the importance of finding accountability partners, okay? So remember, I told you in the beginning that I wanted to help you identify the difference between shame and guilt, okay? This leads me to point number three. Guilt can be good, but shame is destructive. The distinction between shame and guilt is very powerful. And let me explain this to you just a little bit different. I want to explain the difference between guilt and shame. It is good to know when you are guilty. All right. It's good to know that. The reason is that if you do not know when you are guilty, you don't know the difference between the right and the wrong. But when you understand guilt, you do know what what right is, you know what wrong is. Because now that you feel guilty, you know that you've done something wrong, you've broken the law, whatever that it may be, and that guilt helps to lead you towards recovery. All right. Think about this. This is guilt. Guilt says this I did something wrong. Guilt identifies the thing that you did wrong. And so whenever you realize that you've done something wrong, guilt then can lead to conviction. You have this conviction in your spirit. It can lead to repentance because the conviction is going to help you realize that you've done something wrong. Repentance is the thing that you've been practicing because you're a Christian, you're following Jesus Christ, and you know that his teachings taught us to seek repentance. And then not only is conviction going to lead to repentance, but repentance is going to lead to change. So guilt says I did something wrong, right? But on the other hand, shame says I am something wrong. Notice the difference. Guilt says, I did something wrong. Shame says I am something wrong. The problem is that shame leads to more hiding, more a feeling of more hopelessness and repetition. And if you keep hiding behind the bushes of your sin, if you keep feeling hopeless, you're never going to try to seek any help because you're going to have it in your mind because you're receiving your own counsel. You're going to say, Well, who can help me anyway? And so, since no one can help me, I'm stuck here by myself, I'll just go back to doing what I'm used to doing, and I'll fall right back into that repetitious behavior, and I will just follow through with the cycle again. I will sin, that leads to shame, that leads to isolation, which leads to more sin, shame, and isolation. And the and the pattern or the cycle just continues to repeat. I want you to think about this scripture in 2 Corinthians 7, verse 10. The Bible says, you know, the apostle Paul, he wrote this, he said, for godly grief, he he classifies grief. All right. You need to catch this. Godly grief produces repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death. Paul categorizes grief. He said there is a godly grief and there is a worldly grief. But the two different grieves, or if it, you know, grievances, or if I could say what one translation calls it, calls grief sorrow, a godly sorrow and a worldly sorrow, he classifies them and says that they lead to two completely different things. That godly sorrow leads to repentance, it leads to salvation, whereas worldly sorrow brings about death. Let that sink in. Let that sink in. How that godly grief, God won't, let's just bring it into sorrow or into uh guilt. Whenever, whenever godly guilt or godly sorrow, when God uses his Holy Spirit to point out the thing that you've done wrong, it leads you towards repentance. But when the world does it, the world points out shame. The world blames, the world throws stones. That's what the devil does, doesn't he? So guilt points you back to God, but shame pushes you further away from him. Because the world or the devil, he wants to make you believe that what you have done is so bad that God doesn't want anything to do with you. And that God's grace is not sufficient enough to save you or to forgive you. So guilt points you back to God. Shame pushes you further away from God. And it's important that you learn how to distinguish between the two. Next, you need to understand that what you do immediately after your relapse, immediately after your falter or your failure, matters the most. This is the turning point that I think. This is where it where it really begins to shift. Because I know in my own personal struggle, in my own experience, whenever I was trying to overcome the porn demon, if you will, in my life, I know that what I did right after my failure, or whenever I was convicted of my sin, the thing that I did next mattered most because that was going to determine whether I tried to hide it from my wife, who was my accountability partner, or if I was going to confess it with my accountability partner, which again was my wife. This is what I believe is the turning point because as I've explained before, there are disciplined responses that we have and there are undisciplined responses that we have. Now, which one do we want? You've been you've been listening to me. And if uh if you haven't been listening to me for very long now, you understand that I believe in discipline. I believe in doing things that will train a disciplined disciplined pattern in your life. And that doesn't matter if it has to do with what you uh what you do in the morning when you get up reading your Bible, uh, going for a walk during the day, the way you eat, whatever. Uh everything matters when it comes to to this discipline. And so uh, whenever you think about what you do next with when it comes to the porn battle plan, what you do immediately after your your uh relapse or immediately after your falter or your failure, it's going to be the turning point and how you overcome this and how fast or how well you overcome this in the future. So, what what's gonna what does it look like for an undisciplined response? Okay, here it is. Let's just play it out real simple. If you have, if you are undisciplined in this area of your life, you're gonna tell yourself, hide it, ignore it, be numb to it, repeat it. That's gonna be your response. We're gonna hide it, we're gonna ignore it, we're gonna become numb to it, and you're gonna repeat it. That's what an undisciplined um lifestyle looks like whenever it comes to trying to beat uh the porn uh issue in your life. But if you if you have a disciplined lifestyle, if you have a disciplined way of handling this and a disciplined response to what you do immediately after the relapse, this is what it looks like. And this disciplined response. Says four things. Number one, you own it immediately. You own it immediately. You stop trying to make excuses. A disciplined man is not going to try to make excuses for the things that he's done. He's going to, he's going to own it, and he's not going to make excuses, and he's going to stop trying to minimize the situation because this is serious business. We're not just going to try to candy coat this and make it look as innocent as it possibly can, but you must come to the place in your life where you understand that this is detrimental to your life. This is detrimental to your relationships. This addiction that you have to porn can destroy your marriage and it can cost you your soul. This is how serious it is. So number one, you own it immediately. This is what a disciplined response looks like. You own it immediately. Number two, you take it to God immediately. This is confession. This is James 5.16. You you James 5.16, this thing. You confess. You practice repentance because you must remember that we always practice repentance. I am sorry, Lord. I am sorry. Forgive me. Repentance looks like I'm going to turn from this and I'm going to go the opposite way. It is not a 360 turn. This is a 180 turn. I want my back to the porn. I want my the back of my head to the porn, to the darkness. And I want to be facing Jesus in the light because 1 John 1.7 says that if we walk in the like as in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another and fellowship with him. And that's what we want. So 1 John 1.9 actually goes on, and it says that if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. So you need to take it to God immediately. Don't hold on to it. Don't try to cover it up. Confess it, take it to him, receive forgiveness. Be cleansed from this so that you can move on, so that you can have your mind free of that. So your spirit can be free so that you can worship him and so that you can move on in your daily walk. Number three, you have to bring it into the light. You have to call your accountability partner. You have to tell the truth because if you have this delayed confession that you're used to, it's going to strengthen the pattern and you're going to feel like you are empowered to do it again. And you're just going to have the authority to just keep doing what you want to do. We don't want to delay this confession, all right? We want to take it to God immediately and we want to bring it in the light. If you take this darkness, uh this bad thing that you've got going on with porn and you keep trying to hide it, remember it is fueled in the darkness. It is, it grows in the darkness. But as soon as you shine the light on it, it exposes it and it helps defeat it. It takes the strength away from it. It just kind of pops the balloon of the power that it has. Number four, you have to analyze it. What triggered it? What time was it? What emotion were you experiencing? Remember, I've told you all these things before. Whenever you start noticing these triggers, um, you have to identify them, write them down, be aware of it so that you know that when this happens in your day or whenever you're around this person at work or whatever it might be, you're going to be aware of it. So you notice what triggered this response of yours or this relapse. You're going to know what time of the day it was because there's different times of the day where we are tempted to watch things that we shouldn't. It could be times whenever we're tired. Uh that's the that would be like more along the lines of the emotion. But are we just sitting at the house by ourselves? Is it is it a time whenever we get home and we're like, man, I just want to veg out for a minute. And you go and you dump yourself in the recliner or you go to the shop, maybe you're cracking a beer open, maybe uh beer eating your thing, but you're just drinking a Dr. Pepper or whatever, and you're just sitting down and you feel like you need to relax and you're isolated. You're you're not around the kids, you're not around the wife because you know you've had a rough day at work, right? And so all of a sudden those temptations start flooding and it hits you. You have to analyze it. All the things that I'm telling you, you have to analyze it. They may or may not be your problem. They may or may not identify your situation, but what is your situation? What does your situation look like? So don't just regret the fall. Don't, don't just say, well, man, I wish I hadn't done that. Don't do that. Study it and learn why and how it happened. Pay attention to yourself, become self-aware, and you can and you will beat this problem that you have. Let's go to point number five. Build a bounce back system, a bounce back system. So I don't want you to just do the quote unquote try harder next time thing, all right? How about this? How about next time? Let's have a plan. Let's have a 24-hour reset rule. And and I want you to if you start writing this down or come back to this episode again and write this down. Uh if you email me at the IronPursuit79 at gmail, um, I'll I'll even send this to you. I'll send this to you written out. If you've got my my my phone number, whatever, text me, just say, hey man, I want the 24-hour reset rule. And I'll I'll I have it all written out. I'll send it to you. It'll be free, man. I'll I'll give it to you. But this 24-hour reset rule is the reason behind it is because you you're you're not from now on, if if you agree to this, you don't you don't get to spiral out of control, right? Just because you messed up don't mean that you can just be this little punk who just spirals out of control and then all of a sudden you just disappear. I cannot tell you, and it's this frustrates me, and I'm not I'm not trying to sound mad or angry because I know I know how this is because I've been there. I know what it looks like. And when it happens to guys, I see it and I understand that that they are they are struggling and they really don't know what to do. But they have these highs and they have these lows. And I mean, and they're just back and forth and back and forth. And whenever they're having these highs, it's when they're in communication with me or the other accountability partners, they're they're in communication with them and they've got all these grand ideas and everything's going good. They're sharing Bible scriptures on the internet, they're on Facebook, and they're doing um, they're doing all these uh uh like Bible studies with other people. And I'm not saying all that stuff's bad, but I'm just telling you that whenever whenever you're on that high, you're on that high, right? But then whenever you get tripped up and and that that thing happens, that relapse that remember what I said in the very beginning of this. You know, you you feel like you're doing good, you're doing good for a while, and you've got some momentum, and when that momentum's going, boy, that's when you're able to quote scripture. That's whenever you're able to say good things to other people, you're able to give encouragement, you're visible and you're seen, but then all of a sudden you stumble. And then whenever you stumble, you spiral out of control and you disappear. You know. But with the 24-hour reset rule, we can't do that no more. If you want to beat this, you must make a covenant with yourself within to say to say that within 24 hours, I will confess. I will confess. In 24 hours, I will confess. Sincerely seek God and your accountability partner. You have to connect with someone by practicing James 5:16. Confess your faults one to another so that you may be, listen, healed. Healed. Confess your faults one to another so that you can be healed. You need to practice confession with your accountability partner. It's easy for you to say, well, I prayed about it. It's easy for you to say, well, I went to God about it and I prayed about it. And you know what? You can lie to anybody. You can say, Oh, yeah, I prayed to God about it. But the thing is, is that you say, God forgive me, God forgive me, God forgive me, God forgive me. And you're practicing forgiveness, but you're not practicing repentance. And the Bible does not tell you in situations like this to practice forgiveness. Because whenever you're practicing forgiveness like that, all you're doing is say, God, saying, God forgive me until I do it again. The Bible tells us to practice repentance so that we will turn away from it and that we will go the other direction. And whenever you keep it a secret, you're able to hide behind it. But whenever you, whenever you make this uh 20, whenever you, whenever you set up this 24-hour bounce back rule, this reset rule, and you say, I, I do not, no longer do I have the right to spiral, no longer do I have the right to disappear. I'm going to confess, I'm going to connect with somebody by practicing James 5, 16. I'm going to reset my habits. I'm going to understand that it's a mistake that I made and it's not an identity that I've accepted. And I'm not going to allow that mistake to be my destruction. So now, whenever we've we've set this 24-hour reset rule within 24 hours of me messing up, I am going to pray. I am going to pray, but I am also going to connect with my accountability partner and I'm going to confess and I'm going to reset my habits. I'm not losing the ground that I've gained, but I have stumbled here and I'm going to admit that. And I'm going to, and I'm going to realize that I've done this and I've messed up, but I am not going to stay here because dead gummit, I am sick of living my life this way. And I am going to find someone that I can trust to share these things with. And I'm not hiding behind this anymore. And you, my friend, if you are willing to do this, you will find help. You will find victory. You will beat this. You will have success. Now that we've done this 24-hour reset, now we focus on the next right steps. The next right steps. We don't want to do the next wrong steps. We want to do the next right steps. You don't fix everything in one day because you know why? Because you, you, you didn't get messed up in one day. You didn't, you didn't get here overnight. You're not going to fix it all overnight. So again, you need to understand that you're not going to fix everything today. You're going to fix everything one step at a time. One right step at a time. Okay? So here's some examples. Like I've already told you, these things, they're not hard. I'm not, I'm not recreating the wheel. I'm simply going back and telling you, you have to get back in the word. Get back to your routine. Excuse me, get back in accountability. You have to do all of these things. If you want to set this 24-hour reset rule and do the right next steps, you have to get back in the word, get back into a routine, get back into accountability. Because you cannot take something out of your life that has been a habit, something that's been an addiction. You can't just take it out, leaving a void there without expecting a vacuum to suck something into it. If you do not intentionally put something in its place, like you remove porn, you have to have something to stick back in its place. And that thing that you're going to stick in its place is the word of God, a routine that you are going to sit down and write out every day. I'm going to do this. I'm going to get up out of bed at this time, and I'm going to read the word of God. And this is when I'm going to leave for work. And this is, you set it up like that and act like you are a child who needs to have this schedule in front of him so that he can be accountable. If that's what you have to do, fine. That's what I did when I was trying to beat it myself. I let my wife be the one who is my accountability partner, and I was the one who was treated like a child because I was sick and tired of being drugged through the ringer by this stuff. I don't want something controlling my life. I want to be controlled by the Spirit of God, not by the spirit of pornography. And until you come to that understanding, you will continue to relapse. You'll just go through it over and over and over again. But if you don't have a plan, my friend, you will plan to fail. Point number six: progress is built on consistency and not perfection. Freedom is only going to come with fewer falls. It's going to come with faster recovery. And it's going to come with stronger discipline over time. The goal is not perfection. The goal is transformation. Remember what Paul said over in Romans 12, 1. He said, do not be conformed to this world. Do not be conformed to the image of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Being conformed to something is a word that means simply being poured into a form or poured into a mold. And Paul is saying, don't be poured into the world's mold. Be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Let the Holy Spirit renew your mind. You will not overcome this problem you have with porn if you're not willing to do things that inspire transformation. You must be completely intentional about this, my friends. The Bible does not say that you will sin. I alluded to this in the very beginning of the episode, but the Bible doesn't tell us this. Instead, in 1 John 2, 1, uh the Apostle John says that if you sin, you have an advocate with the Father. That word if means that there is the possibility, there is the potential that you do not have to do this. You don't have to sin. The Bible doesn't tell you that you have to sin, but it says that if you do, you have an advocate. In other words, someone who will help you. So I don't want to speak negatively over you, and I don't want to speak these, I don't want to speak curses over you. I want to speak hope over you. I want to speak encouragement over you. And I want you to keep pushing forward through your battle. But what I know is that the enemy of your soul is relentless. And one of the strongest weapons that he has against men is pornography. Therefore, I would be, I would not be doing you a favor if I tried to tell you that uh you'll never be tempted again by this. The truth is that he's gonna tempt you all the time with this. He's going to try and bombard your mind with the images that you've seen, with potential things that you could dabble in. He's gonna continue to hit you with this. And so if you if you do relapse, the question I want to ask you is what will you do? Will you hide or will you fight? Because the choice is yours, and you'll be able to go and do whichever one you want. You don't have to try to overcome this at all, but I kind of get the feeling that if you if you've made it this far in this series, you you really want to overcome this. You want to beat it. You want to, you want to move on to the next stage of your life because you don't want to keep repeating this. But the choice is yours. And you have to decide right now what what you're what you're going to do. You have to decide right now who will be the person that you're going to call. You have to decide right now how you're going to respond. You don't need to wait until you fail how you're going to figure this out. You if don't wait until you fail to figure out your plan. Like that, that just don't make sense. That that would be just as foolish as you waiting to plan on how to defend your home when an intruder breaks in while the intruder is standing there uh in your house threatening your family. At that point, I mean, guys, it's it's too late. So you have to plan now so that you can win the battle later. So look, all of what I said comes down to this, okay? And I'm going to close with this final thought. You may fall, but you do not have to stay down. The truth is, is that you can get up, you can be honest, and you can get back in the fight. My prayer for you is that you'll do just that. You'll get up, you'll get honest, and you'll get back in the fight. Until next time, 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 sharpened.