Insights, Advice and Hope for Sexual Addiction Podcast Episode

Greetings and welcome everyone to Breaking Bread, a podcast brought to you by Apostolic Christian Counseling and Family Services. Excellent as always to have you along. My name’s Matt Kaufman. Jacob Feucht is with me today. Welcome, Jacob. Yeah. Great to have you here. Yeah. Great to be here as always, Matt. 

You’ve been on a few times, and we talk about sexuality, we talk about, in particular, sexual addiction. That’s where we’re going to go today. Yep. That is your expertise and your profession. A sexual addiction specialist, is that a fair title, Jacob? Yeah, it feels a little intimidating sometimes but that’s where I’ve landed, isn’t it? I think at the beginning here, I think we do need to just say what needs to be said on why sexuality is so important. Yeah. Why when this area of our life is disrupted by the fall and by brokenness, and when we struggle with these matters, it is a real insult to us and our humanity. 

All right. Pick it up from there. Yeah. It is just another aspect of how God created us to be human, right? And it is a beautiful aspect of how God created us to be human. Just like we enjoy food or we enjoy music or we enjoy these different beautiful parts of life, God created us to enjoy his creation and to take part in his creation, and I believe that sexuality is a part of that. 

He has given us specific boundaries of marriage and safety and trust within that sexual relationship. And so maybe we could say there are more ways to step outside of those boundaries than, say, with food. Obviously, food can go into gluttony. Yeah. In the same way, sexuality can go into a type of gluttony. 

And yet, I think we do have this sexuality as something glorified or horrified, and that we either run away from it or we lean far into it. And so being able to look at it as a beautiful part of our humanity, just like any gift that God has given us, we need to steward it. I really appreciate that, and what I hear, one word that surfaced in my own head as I listened to you explain that, is it is a super sacred space. 

It’s a super sacred space in our lives. And those things that are sacred are the places of deepest offense. Yeah. So, as an example, one’s ethnicity is a very sacred thing. And if you offend a person’s ethnicity, that’s an offense, right? For sure. The more sacred the space, the more leverage for offense. And might we see our current culture today and the upheaval and the fallout of sexual deviancy as being an offense. Is it just evidence more to the fact that this is super sacred? Yeah. That’s a very good way of putting it, that super sacred. 

Yeah. And when it’s challenged, when it’s pushed against, there’s going to be a lot of offense taken when it’s broken. Yeah. When it’s broken, it’s really broken. Yeah. And it breaks a lot of things. All right. So, this is the space that you live in and work in. Now I’m assuming men or maybe women as well.  

The majority of my work has been with men. There’s been a little bit on the other side, but not much. And we want to acknowledge that this is brokenness in both men and women. Yep. If wisdom is the compilation of experiences and life, you might have more wisdom than most in this area because not only do you have your own personal experience, but you are a part of the experience of many others. 

Yeah. Does that make sense? Yeah. So, I want to surface that here today. What are you learning in your experience now? Yeah. I think one of the biggest things that has come out of my experience is community, and there’s so many people I work with today that just don’t have that sense of community, and they aren’t willing to or aren’t able to or aren’t putting the effort into finding that community. If positive emotion is going to be made, community’s going to be a part of it. 

Is that what I’m hearing? Yes. Counseling is a very helpful and sometimes necessary part of the equation, and yet my work as a counselor working with people struggling in this area is not going to make ground unless that person is working outside of our sessions in community and working with others to be able to have the accountability and the support they need to find success. 

Okay. And so now I want to go into that community space. What about community makes the difference? We see very much in Scripture the idea of darkness being defeated by light, right? And one of the realities of this addiction space or this compulsion space is that we want to keep it in the dark. We want to keep it to ourselves, keep it secret, and when it is brought into the light, it doesn’t go away, but it makes us think more about it. It makes us realize how much it’s affecting our life, and we see how our actions affect those around us. And so, bringing it out into that community allows you to have accountability around how I am using this part of me, this piece of my identity of sexuality and of my expression of that sexuality, how am I expressing that? 

How am I living that out? And is it in a way that honors God? There can be a lot of shame around this space, and we’ve talked about that in previous podcasts, but it’s being able to bring it out into the light so that it’s not just this constant cycle of focus on my own desires or my own shortcomings. It’s creating space for community and focusing on something other than our own struggle. So, it’s turning yourself outward. It squares with Scripture. 1 John talks about walking in the light, and we will have fellowship. I think fellowship is part of that Scripture. It makes sense that the sin thrives in isolation, so for an antidote to be community makes sense. But here’s the challenge, Jacob. If I’m going to step into community with this, it requires cooperation with those that I’m stepping into. There’s a hurdle here, right? It makes sense why we would want to take care of this by ourselves, right? 

Yeah. Because that takes the cooperation of myself. But if I have to step into community, now all of a sudden, they have to cooperate. Yeah. And that’s a scary thing because what if they don’t want to, or what if they reject me, or what if they don’t know how, or what if they’re afraid of my darkness? Yeah. 

Those have got to be the forefront questions, right? So, speak to our community. Coach us. What does it look like to be a community that is going to be able to go the distance with each other in this way? Not too long ago, I had a client that I was encouraging to reach out to somebody, and they reached out to them and received rejection, right? 

And that feeling of rejection of having just shared a very vulnerable part of myself and, in return, I got this, “Why is this even an issue?” “Why are you talking to me about this?” And that feeling is extremely difficult. Now, that client also went on to other resources where you can be assured that there are like-minded individuals. There’s Sexaholics Anonymous, so the AA version or the sexuality version of AA. 

Yeah. And he has found a community there, right? And so, there is a big component of knowing who you’re talking to, weighing who you’re going to open up to. Because, yes, I do talk to my clients a lot about the need for vulnerability and the need to share everything about your struggle and your journey with whoever you’re going to share it with. 

And yet, that can’t be just with anybody and everybody on the street. There are reasons why there need to be boundaries around that. And so, we do need to be careful about who we share with and what, how we walk into that space. It is an extremely important and necessary part of this journey of being open and having that community. 

Who are the people in my life that I can trust and that I can turn to? And at least to start with one, and then Lord willing, that will open the door to a larger community. Because the reality is, the people around us, if you think you’re alone in this struggle, you definitely are not. You might look at one person at church or in your family or whoever it is and say I know they’re not struggling with this. This is only me. They would never do this. And I’m not saying that person is. But it’s amazing how often we realize that, oh, this person does struggle with this, or this person did struggle with this. And only once we open up and share that with either that person or someone else connected, do we find out that the community around us is far larger than we ever imagined. That’s really great.  

What are you learning by training? What are some of the areas of research or findings that you’re most excited about? Yeah, we touched on it a little bit earlier, but just learning the brain science and how sexuality or how sexual urges and sexual experiences affects our brain in a very similar way to other drugs is always so interesting to see. Just in that, especially as we get into this age or as we’re in the thick of this age where pornography is more and more intense, even thinking of AI or VR or whatever pornography you want to find, you’re going to find it, and you can find it There are far more reports of high schoolers with erectile dysfunction because of the way that their sexual behavior is affecting their brain function and their body overload. 

When we utilize the pornography and the sexual experiences that are available to us to such an extreme extent, it does affect our brain and our body in very intense ways that you might see for someone who’s been drinking or utilizing some sort of drug whether hard or not as intense drugs. 

You see those effects, and we’re seeing that more and more on the sexuality side. They don’t show up in the same way, but you can see the effects on young minds and old minds alike as they engage in these intense things. So, sexual deviancy is making a change in our brains and in our bodies. Yeah. And it’s going to negatively impact our sexual health.  

Yeah. We can recall back to the last podcast I was in here for was the supernormal stimuli and that whole idea. We talked a lot about food in that podcast, our food, our junk food, the sugar in our food, is more intense than it ever was. The same thing is true with the sexual content that’s out there. It is far more realistic and far more pleasure providing, if you want to say it that way, than it ever was in the past. It’s far more supernormal. And so, our brains are getting used to this new level, and we don’t want to go back to the typical, right? 

And the normal that God created is our wives or our future wife or just any relationship, whether sexual or not. I think that’s something that I touched on in a recent presentation I did, is that we desire relationships with others when we are engaging in electronic content, sexual content especially. But, when we think about social media or different things, when we are getting supernormal relationships, we desire typical face-to-face relationships less and less. And so, we see that effect on our brains that we are getting these new highs of dopamine and of pleasure so that we no longer desire even the relationships that God made us for. 

I think that’s evidence to perhaps a very interesting potential point, that sexuality really embeds itself, finds itself, in the larger category of a relationship. And we would need to really hash out a definition of what we mean by sexual not to get any strange ideas here in this conversation. But the idea that if sexuality at the core is about relationship, then it would make sense that ill health in this particular area has collateral damage in being relational people, period. Which is a huge heartache. Oh, yeah. I know that in my own life, I have found in my conclusions, all sin is a breach of love at some point. 

Yeah. It’s a breach of love against God, myself, and it always comes out as a breach of love and a failure to love other people. Yeah. We don’t realize how much of a breach of that love it is until we engage in that community or engage in that accountability and feel that impact that it had on them. One of the biggest things I’ve learned in my training is that this struggle kills our empathy, but empathy kills this struggle. And so, this idea that we get so lost in our own mind and in our own desires that we stop caring about what other people are feeling or what other people are experiencing. 

Empathy is, by definition, that ability to understand what this other person is feeling. It’s a relational idea. And when we engage in this very self-centered behavior, we are losing touch with the people around us because we’re so focused on ourselves that we aren’t paying attention to them. 

So, empathy atrophies. Now, the second part of that statement was that empathy is required. Am I right? Yeah. Say that phrase again. Yeah. This struggle kills our empathy. Okay. But empathy kills this struggle. Okay. So, finish with that second part. Yeah. How does empathy kill the struggle? 

Yeah. So, I heard recently that another word that is synonymous with empathy is compassion, and compassion in its roots means to suffer alongside. Passion to suffer alongside. And so, when we have compassion for somebody, we’re choosing to suffer with them. That’s something Jesus did throughout his entire time here on Earth and still today is to suffer with us, right? 

And when we choose to engage in this, we are locking ourselves out from others. However, when we open ourselves back to understand how our actions are affecting others, we see the hurt that it causes. We see that our actions have consequences, and hopefully, through that experience, we will acknowledge that, “I don’t want to do this. I can’t live this way anymore.” And that empathy as it floods into our life is going to show us that we can’t continue on this path because it is affecting my loved ones. It is affecting those around me in a way that I’m not okay with. And the more we engage in that, the more it’s going to give us the motivation and the ability to choose empathy and to choose love over our own desires. 

Now that’s another interesting, I think, angle about the community piece that you started out with and the importance of that vulnerability in community is to engender this compassion to recognize my impact on other people. And sometimes our empathy is triggered by the reaction of another person, right? 

Yeah. Perhaps the sorrow or the hurt. As much as we don’t like to see it, does engender empathy or compassion in us. Oh, yeah. Now that’s interesting. Now let’s go back to this client. I found it interesting you said reach out to this person, and it didn’t go well. What would you say to that person now? 

You know what I mean? So, suppose it was a pastor, suppose it was a parent, an uncle, grandpa, a friend, a neighbor, whatever, whoever it was. A support person. He thought that this person was a support person. This would be the person. And I don’t know what he was met with exactly, but it didn’t go well and it shut down. What should that person understand? Speak to the support person. Maybe they could have used some pointers at that moment. What’s one, two, or three things that the support moms and dads out there need to say, “This is what you need to understand about your son, your daughter, your friend”? 

Yeah, I think we touched on it a little bit earlier of knowing the truth of how God created sexuality, knowing the truth of God created this to be good, and this is not a filthy thing. This is not something to run away from. If somebody comes to you and opens up about this and shares that this is a struggle, not to recoil from that and to run away from that, but to say, “Okay, I see that you are hurting in this area, and this is an area that God loves, and I want to love you as He loves here,” and to enter into that space. 

And you may not know how, and if you don’t know how, then say, “I don’t know how to help you in this area but thank you for sharing. Thank you for coming to me and being willing to open up, and let’s talk to somebody who does know. Let’s talk to somebody who has experience in this area or that can speak into this.” 

And being willing not to shut them down and say, “I’m not comfortable with that. Let’s not talk about that,” but to say, “Okay, maybe I’m not comfortable in this, but this is important, and this is a God-given part of you that needs to be stewarded.” Yeah, I appreciate that and maybe the takeaway that I’m getting out of this is whether you understand the space or not, you said don’t shut them down. 

So, it sounds to me like the real mission of any support person would be primarily to allow it to open. To be able to sit with it. Yeah. To not react. To suffer alongside. That’s really helpful. That’s great. When you put your professional hat on, what are your top few approaches to helping people with sexual struggles? And I’m thinking about science now.  

Yeah. We touched on the brain science a little bit, but I think one of the first education pieces I come at it with is the dopamine route, that acknowledgement of the hold that it has over them, because I know this is compulsive, right? That it is a choice, and yet it’s something that we are compelled to do. But the reality is both of those things are true. They are choosing to do it, and we are struggling to say no. And being able to acknowledge why that is really important, that this is something that our brain is now accustomed to, that our brain turns to for comfort, for coping, and being able to say, “Okay, this was a tool that my brain got used to for a time that I now have to retrain my brain that this isn’t needed going into this new season of my life.” 

Yeah. So, let’s go into that proactive piece then. Given all of that science in the brain and the stuff that’s flowing up in there, how does that inform treatment? What are some of the interventions that help step into that hold? 

Yeah. One of the most common interventions that you’ll see in any therapy, but it continues and works well in the addiction space is CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy. It’s just being able to train the brain and start to take notice of our thoughts, take notice of where our brain is and understand why we’re behaving this way, being cognizant of that. 

And so, trying to help the client slow down enough to be able to acknowledge this is a process. This isn’t something that I just saw that tempted me and I reacted. There is stuff that happens between there. And it has a lot to do with thoughts. Yeah. Is that true? Oh, yeah, there are thoughts all the way along the way that we have to just stop to slow down enough to notice. So, could you say if we thought differently, we would have behaved differently? Is that basically the axiom? Yeah. Our thoughts affect our feelings, which affect our behavior.  

Okay. So, you do a lot of work in the thought space. Yeah. Providing alternative thoughts or finding what you are you looking for. Some of it comes down to why we react a certain way to a certain stressor or a certain event, and being able to see, okay, why did we react to that event in that way? And to acknowledge, again, instead of just saying this event happened and so I reacted this way, what was the thought that came after that event happened? 

So, I just messed up. My thought is I’m a failure, and I am going to escape by acting out. Is that an example? Yeah. I just messed up. My thought is I’m a failure, and so I feel ashamed and I feel unworthy, I feel insecure. And so, to try to remedy that, I’m going to act out, right? And being able to acknowledge, okay, so that thought of I’m a failure, where did that lead us? It led us to shame. It led us to act out. And so, the work then is in helping to rewrite some of those automatic thoughts. Changing thoughts is not an easy thing to do. No. It takes a lot of practice and a lot of time. What’s the practice regimen then? A lot of it comes back to that community piece and that accountability of we have to be willing to reach out at the earliest point possible, so what we’d call forward accountability, where we can get in the practice of more of the confession accountability, where after we act out, then we ask for help. 

But we can’t fight the battle if we’ve already been slain. Yeah. And so, we have to do the forward accountability. So, one piece is getting in practice. But this provides actually some helpful activity for a community and intention for getting into community. 

Yeah. And I’ve experienced this better when I’m with people. I think we would probably recognize that, oh, when I’m with a certain group of people, I don’t endure the temptations that I feel and think when I’m in isolation, right? Yeah. So there again, that community is informing my thinking. 

Yep. But also, to step into community with the intention that, you know what? I’m not thinking right now. I’m going to get into community. And the tricky thing is that’s very often the time when we don’t. I’m not thinking very well right now. Last thing I want to do is be with those people. 

But also, to commission those people to inform our thinking is like a whole layer of practice that we would do well to perfect. How we talk to one another, for example. Yeah. Being able to speak truth into each other. Is that what you’re saying? Yeah, being able just to have that close-knit community that I know you, you know me, and you know my weaknesses, you know my insecurities, and when you see me mess up, you can be the first one to say, “Hey, you’re not a failure,” because you know what’s going on in my mind. 

And then I know that I can reach out to you when I mess up, and I can hear the truth of God from you, is such an important piece. Because when we feel like we’re on an island, then all the company we have is ourselves, and so we’re going to try to fix our frustrations and our failures by ourselves. 

But when we engage in that community, we can turn to our brother or our sister and ask for the truth of God to speak into that CBT piece of when I mess up, my first thought doesn’t have to be, “I’m a failure.” It can be, “Okay, God made me well, and this is one thing that does not define who I am. God defines who I am.” 

You’re really asking for a different trigger. I know trigger is a big word in negative connotation, this idea that, okay, something happened and I’m triggered sounds like from your model it triggers a thought, which then becomes a feeling and then a behavior. Yeah. If that thing were to trigger something else- it would be a huge win. Yeah. A big help in this fight is understanding triggers. How do we understand when we are on track towards unhealthy thought life and that we are moving in an unhealthy direction? It is when we understand our weaknesses and we understand our triggers. And so, I have a few different exercises that help in that matter, but one of them is called the Personal Craziness Index, the PCI. 

And it’s an interesting name for it, but it is the idea of how do I understand where I am personally when I am moving in an unhealthy direction? How do I understand my triggers, and how can I map that out to catch it at the earliest point? And that’s what a lot of this is with the CBT model of catching our earliest thought. 

This also, the PCI, is trying to catch our earliest unhealthy behavior. In my internship at an addiction recovery center, one of the biggest things they talked about was that relapse happens days, weeks, months before the actual, and they were talking about alcohol, the first drink. Or the first time we look at porn, right? 

We have to look back for months maybe to see when did I start going downhill? What did I first do? And this PCI exercise helps us map out what our unhealthy behaviors are so we can understand how to catch it at the earliest point. So not only should we be thoughtful about what we’re thinking about and how it triggers us. But really, what you’ve supplied here is to be very thoughtful about what our behaviors are, and they sound like micro-behaviors. 

Yeah. Oh, I’m just going to make this up. Last Tuesday, I downloaded that app. Wasn’t a problem. Yeah. But I downloaded the app. Yeah. Why did I download the app? It made a meal out of me three weeks later. Is that what you’re getting at? Yeah. Is having a thoughtfulness about ourselves to say, “Okay, why did I just do that right now?” 

And I’m assuming that there’s some sort of pattern there for addicts. Yep. There are some micro behaviors that typically precede. Yeah. And so, another exercise I’ll do is called the three circles exercise, and that helps you see some of that pattern, where we have the green circle and then a yellow circle and a red circle in the shape of a target, and being able to fill out, okay, these are my green behaviors. This is where I’m at my healthiest. Yellow is where I’m moving in the wrong direction. They’re the yellow flags. And then the red is about binging Netflix … red behaviors. For example. Yeah. And so, we can see that progression, and it’s extremely accurate to see there is a pattern, because these are my yellow behaviors. 

This is where I go to, and it might be something weird. I heard somebody talking about how they can tell they’re moving in the wrong direction when they spend time looking at houses on Zillow. Because they can tell they’re not content with their life. They’re looking at bigger homes. 

And most people would hear that and be like, “Oh, that doesn’t mean you’re going to-” it certainly is not a sin to look at houses. No. And that’s often the trappings. Yeah. What I’m doing right now is not sinful. And so, we have this black and white, like I know I shouldn’t be doing sin, but this is not, so we give ourselves a long, long leash not realizing that these things are leading up to unhealthy behaviors. Yeah. That’s good. Yeah. That craziness index is really interesting to me. Obviously, you can’t unpack the questionnaire but give us some categories. What would you be looking at?  

You actually make your own categories. So, over time, you look at your life and you find those areas where you are unhealthy, and you rate them of when I’m doing well, I’m doing this, and it gets worse and worse. And you actually make a graph or a map. Today, I said that I ate some junk food, I watched too many movies, and so I ended up at a seven instead of a two. And then you see okay, I can tell that I was rated as two on Tuesday, but then on Wednesday I was a seven. So, in order to use this device, you have to live with it for a while. 

Yeah. I’d have to look back at it, but I think it’s 12 weeks. Okay. Is there any way we could have links to both of those activities you talked about? Yeah. I can send you some. Yeah, we’ll throw it in the show notes. Yeah. That’s great. Put on your brother in Christ hat. Certainly, we see sexual deviancy as a sin. It’s prohibited in Scriptures. We understand that we are converted, and conversion means something. So, I would imagine this only adds to your ability and to how you treat people, right? Or think about the struggle. What are some top-of-mind things that you would coach us as it concerns Christ and the struggle of sexuality? 

Yeah, I think as we struggle in this area, we often lose sight of who we are in God’s eyes. A piece of what I typically work with on the spiritual side, and this isn’t necessarily an avenue I can take with someone who isn’t engaged in a relationship with Christ, is your identity in Christ. Your identity in God’s eyes. And so, I try to help the client begin to create an identity statement or understanding what my personal relationship is with God and how I engage with that on a daily basis. Because if we don’t have a vision or if we don’t have values to work towards on who God created us to be and who I am as a man of God or a woman of God, then I’m not going to be able to have a roadmap to shoot for on a daily basis. 

What does an identity statement combat against? What is a strong identity statement in Christ the antidote for? Do you know what I’m asking? Yeah. The way I see it is that it’s an antidote for the lies that Satan throws at us or the identity that we get caught up making for ourselves. 

I think in today’s age, we get told very much that we have to decide who we are. We have to create our own identity, and the weight of that is overwhelming. God tells us that he has already given us our identity. And so, my hope in the identity searching process is not to create an identity statement that says who I think I am, but that speaks into who God created me to be, and being able to understand my gifts, my talents, my God-given worth, and allow that to guide me. 

That’s great. We’re going to drop in the show notes some aids for writing. It sounds like there’s some coaching that can be done to write an identity statement. When an identity statement has been written, then what do you tell that individual to do? Writing the statement is one thing but I’m assuming there would be more follow-up required than just to put it on paper. 

Yeah. What are you asking them to do? Yeah. I think having them break down their identity statement into components that they can choose either daily or weekly or for a certain amount of time to focus on, “Okay, if this is my identity, if this is who God has asked me to be, if this is who he’s designed me to be, then how am I going to live this part of my identity today? How am I going to live out this part of my identity this week? If this is one of the spiritual gifts that God has given me.” I often will give my clients the spiritual gifts test that you guys have linked on your website, “if this is the spiritual gift that I believe God has given me, am I living that out or have I allowed this addiction or this compulsion to draw me away from that?” 

Oh, sexual deviancy is actually out of step for who I am. It is not consistent with who I am, is what the identity statement helps us with? Yeah. I think one of the frustrating things about any addiction is that very often the addicted person knows everything we’ve talked about. 

What’s the difference between a person who makes positive motion, and those that don’t? How much are you willing to change? I think there’s a saying that Alcoholics Anonymous uses that they say, “It’s easy. You only have to change one thing, everything.” And I think I alluded to it earlier in the conversation, one of the biggest things that I see in not being willing or in clients that don’t find victory is their commitment to being uncomfortable. And so, I talked about people who don’t have community. I ask them to seek out community, and if they don’t, they’re not going to see that help. 

And community is uncomfortable. It’s uncomfortable. And community is a big piece. We’ve talked a ton about it. Yeah. But there are other components, obviously. And a lot of the other components are choosing to live differently than I have for however long I’ve been struggling, right? I have been living in an unhealthy manner for months, years, however long it is, and I can no longer engage in the life that I’ve been living if I want to live a life of overcoming. 

It is impossible to live in recovery if we still believe in the wording here, the addictive system in any way. If we still believe that this engagement with my compulsion or with my addiction is helping me in any way, then you’re not going to break out of it. If we believe at all that we can maintain our unhealthy lifestyle from before while also trying to live healthy, then we’re not going to live healthy. 

So, if we think we can just change the behavior, if we see the behavior as being really the only problem. For alcoholics, the only problem is the excess of alcohol. Yeah. If I’m just going to stop the excess. Or if it’s the porn, the only problem that I have is when I go to that porn, so I’m just going to stop that part of it. 

What you’re saying is there’s just a whole lot more of the system that needs to be changed. Yeah. What are some things then? Let’s get some practical things. What needs to change? Is it always clear to the person? When you have this conversation with somebody and say, “Okay, lots that need to be changed,” do they connect typically. Or are there a lot of questions. So, I guess my question is what are the big things and what are the small things that most people miss? Yeah. That varies so much from person to person. Yeah, it sure does. But help us brainstorm. Yeah. And the reality is you’re not going to know, you’re not going to see everything. 

There’s going to be a lot of components that you don’t recognize that they are unhealthy. If we take the Zillow example of just liking to look at different houses but this person that was talking about it understood that means I’m not content. To come to that place of understanding that doing something that’s not inherently sinful, and I’m just looking at houses, means that you’re in an unhealthy state of mind, it takes some waking up. 

It takes maturity, for sure. And sometimes that has to come through counseling. Sometimes that has to come through a community of people who are willing to call you out and say, “Hey, I see you do this not long before you usually give in. Is that connected? Are you at your healthiest? 

When you get on and you start browsing Amazon for hours with nothing that you actually want to buy, but then you end up buying something anyway, is that your healthiest version?” Because, yeah, you may not see it but being able to understand that maturity is important. Being able to understand when I am engaging in immature or unhealthy behaviors, are they really moving me towards who I want to become? 

Are they really moving me towards my identity in Christ? Or is that me being stagnant? Yeah. The hope here is that you can change something that’s going to make a difference. Because we’ve been trying to change the behavior without changing anything and that can’t be done. 

I find amazing hope in the accounts in the Word that just remind us over and over again that our God is a God who uses broken people for his good. God does not let anything go to waste. God uses our struggle and our brokenness for amazing things when we allow him to. For those who are struggling, as you see victory in your life, as you see God’s growth in your life, that is something that God can use to encourage and break the bondage of others who are in that struggle. 

Satan wants you to believe that you are a failure because of everything that you were, and yet God says that you are more than conquerors because of everything that he’s created you to be Allow that to be your mission. And as far as the church and the support people, seeing that God’s work is not done, that these people who are struggling, these people who come to you and share that they are hurting and that they are wanting to be free, that is the first step towards victory. 

That is the first sign of hope. Not something to recoil at and be disgusted by, but something to see as a breath of fresh air in a way, that God is starting his work in this heart. That God is starting his redemptive work in that soul, and how do I step into that space to help them along that restorative pathway? 

That’s right. I think we have to see the hope that is before us, and I even wonder, as we talked a lot about community, I wonder if God is working with us through the brokenness that we endure and walking with in today’s climate to produce a community that will go the distance into the future and whatever may come.  

Yeah. Which I think is exciting. Yeah. Thanks, Jacob, for sharing your expertise. Thanks for bringing a great deal of explanation and hope to this topic. God bless you in the work that you do. Thank you, Matt. Thanks to each one for being with us. We have a great deal of respect for what you might be dealing with as well, so God bless you.