“Sexual Addiction? Get Help for Yourself!” by Arthur Nisly

The one may be overpowered by another, two can withstand him, and a threefold cord is not quickly broken. Well, good afternoon, everyone, and welcome back here to Strength to Strength. It's a real blessing to be with you again for this special event. So, as you know, we were together this morning for a talk by Brother Arthur on how you can help others, particularly talking of church leaders and those in areas of influence and authority. So, I wasn't able to be on this morning, but I heard good things about that talk this morning. And this afternoon, our topic is, "Sexual Addiction: Get Help for Yourself."

And so, I'm really anticipating this talk, Brother Arthur. Sexual addiction definitely is part of my past, and definitely know that it's something that all of us, as humans, as some more, some less, struggle with in these areas. And so, I'm excited to see this talk, this particular topic being engaged here on Strength to Strength. The goal of Strength to Strength is to be part of advancing God's kingdom. And one of the ways that we can do that is by exposing the lies of the devil.

And as I thought about that, I thought of a verse here in Psalm 11, or in the Septuagint, which I'm reading from, is Psalm 10, verse 3 says this: "For the things you created," referring to God, "they destroy," referring to evil men.

But what does, or what did, the righteous men do? And it's somewhat a rhetorical question, but earlier in that passage, the psalmist is saying how the sinners, they stretch their bow, they go out at night, and they shoot the upright heart. They're out to trip up the righteous, and they destroy the things that God has created. Notice, they're not the creators; they're the destroyers. And what does the righteous man do? And the psalmist ends here in verse 7 saying, well, just proclaiming this incredible truth: "The righteous Lord, the righteous Lord loves righteousness. His face beholds the upright."

So, I'm sorry if you're hearing a saw in the background. My neighbor's sawing over here with his handsaw. So, but yeah, the righteous Lord loves the righteous. His face beholds the upright. And so, before we get started with this important talk, let's just bow our heads for prayer. Father, we thank you, Lord, that we can come to the Creator, the Creator of the heavens, the Creator of the earth, the Creator of humanity, the one who created us in perfection.

And we looked, we're just amazed by how you have created us, how you've created the universe. And it brings us to worship many times. And Father, we're here to acknowledge this afternoon, as the psalmist says, "If the foundations are destroyed, what should the righteous do?" And we want to proclaim today that we're going to run to you, to the righteous Lord who loves the uprighteous and who notices us. So, Father, guide us and direct us, Lord, here today. Bless Brother Arthur as he speaks. Father, pray that you would remove any fear of men, Father, that you would remove anything that the evil forces would have against this talk. Remove that, bring us good internet connectivity for not only Arthur, but all the rest that are listening in.

And Father, if there's anybody here that should be here, if it's not here that should be here, Father, that you would remind them of this talk, that you would bring this to mind, bring this in front of them, they could be here and listen to this. So, Father, we look to you and we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Amen. All right, so just in a couple of seconds, Brother Arthur, I'll turn it over to you. Just a reminder to everyone that's here, you have been submitting questions to us. We thank you for that. We do have a list of questions, but feel free to submit any question that comes to mind, and we'll see if we can't at least catch the theme of it. So, there are a couple of ways you can do that. For those of you who are here online, you can just go to the chat button and submit that via the chat, or you can actually email us here too at contact, I believe, at strengthtostrength.org.

So, if you're on a call-in line, have access to email, you can email us here, like I said, strengthtostrength at, I'm sorry, contact@strengthtostrength.org. We'll try, like I said, we'll try to compile those, and Glenn and I are moderating the call here this afternoon, so we'll be submitting those questions. It's something we do for our events to kind of help condense and get as much out of these times as we can. So, all right, back to you, Brother Arthur. All yours. God bless you. Thank you very much.

I'm going to share my screen here in a moment.

If somebody asks a tough technical question, I may not be able to answer your question. I'm here speaking from personal experience and having worked with a lot of men, and so I'm glad to share what I have. I think it will be helpful to all of us.

What I want to share now is the things that I've learned about how to get help for yourself. And as a simple reflection, I just thought we would look at Luke 8, where Jesus talks about the four kinds of soil. Some people call it the parable of the sower, but it's really four different kinds of people. I want to think about that as it relates to finding sexual freedom. You know about those by the wayside are the distracted and forgetful, the ones that, I guess, I don't need this, and they forget it and it's gone. And then there's those on the rock. They start well, but I didn't think it would be so hard. I guess I won't do it after all.

And then there's the felon thorns who get busy, and they get so busy that other activities crowd out what they're doing, and they lose focus, and they don't go on. And then there's the good ground people who are consistent, patient, and persistent. So, my reflection, my thought for you is, I wonder where you come in as you think about those four different kinds of people and about getting well. Are you by the wayside, a rock, a thorn, or a good ground? Let's pray.

Father, we want to consecrate this time to you. I want to share what I've been learning. I just want to ask in Jesus' name that you would open the way before us, that we could connect well with what you are teaching us, and you would receive honor and glory. I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

So, what I do, like I said, since July, a year ago, I do this full-time. I talk to men on Zoom who are struggling. They can't find freedom by themselves. They ask me to help them. I meet with them one hour per week, and I teach them the things that I'm going to teach you today.

I want to be sure that everybody understands that holiness is my goal. By holiness, I mean no lustful thoughts, no masturbation, no pornography, no pre-porn. I have men who don't watch porn anymore, but they still kind of try to get close to the edge and see something, and it's the same thing. In Jesus' eyes, it's the same thing. No sexual acts with anyone other than my spouse.

I have borrowed a phrase from someone else: unwanted sexual behavior. I call it USB with the men that I talk with. I just want you to know that if that slips into the conversation today, I'm not talking about this is not a sneaky way to avoid calling unwanted sexual behavior. It's not a way of calling sexual sin something that's not sin. So, if you hear me talking about USB, I'm talking about the same things that you are. I have the same goal that you do.

I just want to talk about the men that come to me so that you understand that I'm talking about my experience—more than 1,000 hours with men—is these kinds of men. It's possible that you know people who are still enjoying what they're doing. You may know people who don't want to give it up, but that's not the kind of people that I talk to. I talk to men who are profoundly disturbed. They're upset. They say, "I can't stop, and I need help." So, that's the people that I talk to, and that's the basis for what I want to share with you today. So, most of the people that I talk to are people who have experienced early exposure with no guidance.

In other words, they happened onto something, and yeah, they happened onto something. It could be a magazine. It could be something on their dad's phone or whatever. They struggle with masturbation and pornography, usually in secrecy, some adultery, and fornication.

I just want you to know that it normally gets worse. I work with a lot of men who didn't struggle that much in their teens and then in their 20s, and even after they're married, it gets worse. They're past the initial thrills. They understand that USB is robbing them of the life that they're longing for. They're grieved. They don't want to do this, but they don't know how to stop. And they, like you, they embrace what the Bible says about fornication, about masturbation, about pornography. They say it's wrong. They don't want to do it, but they don't know how to stop.

And they haven't been able to be successful with accountability. This is statistics that I looked at a couple of weeks ago. A little bit over half were married. A little bit over half were under 35.

56% reported crossing their boundaries less frequently than every two weeks. That was a surprise to me. Some of them, the people that I work with, they might be messing up about maybe every three weeks. I'm sorry, three times a week.

But I was surprised that a lot of them don't mess up more than every two weeks. But what I want to say is they are still experiencing the consequences of a life that's, yeah, it's not going well for them.

They've tried all they know what to do, and it hasn't worked. They can't get free. They've lost confidence in themselves and in God because nothing is working. Their relationship isn't healthy, at least not as healthy as it is after they start making progress. They're desperate, want to change. They're willing to be brutally honest. They're willing to pay someone to help them.

I get to see men who have a distant relationship with God. I get to see them change and move toward God, and I love it.

I want to talk about fences. And by fences, I mean things that we can do to try to make so that we can't be naughty. This could be things that parents do, that churches do, or that a desperate person does for themselves. It could be accountability.

It could be blocking accountability and/or blocking software. It can be somebody who avoids a smartphone. Just yesterday, someone told me that they're going to buy—it looks like a smartphone, but it's a dumb phone. They're still available. And he said, "This is what I need to do because I have to do this." It could be blocking sites, apps, or times of the day that another person has a password. It could be regular accountability meetings. Those are the kinds of things that I'm talking about. You might think of more things.

There's benefits in that. Basically, the benefit is that while we're thinking clearly, we're putting things in place to make it hard to be naughty. There's limitations. There's always ways to get around. I hear about people using common apps to be naughty. And it's really sad. I'm not going to tell you about the things I've learned that people do because there's no sense in me telling you.

But there are ways to get around almost anything. And if our heart's not right, I've been working with a man who would spend an hour or two hours trying to get around the very strict filtering systems that his church has put in place.

And clearly, he is getting sexual gratification from just trying in hopes that he'll be able to—he's hoping to anticipate something.

And it's possible to lust without accessing pornography. So, it's a big problem. I propose that fences and shaming, using pressure, fear of public humiliation, and external control kind of work. But I want to suggest that it works with the people who haven't had that much exposure and who have strong, resolute—they're highly disciplined people. But I say that's not freedom. That's just barely hanging on. And there's a lot of people among us who are deeply wounded, and this kind of thing doesn't work for them.

I want to talk about three—my outline for today is a very simple outline. I want to talk about things that I do to help people stop, things that I do to help them grow in self-awareness, and teaching them dependence on God. I know this is very, very short, but you can't do very much in 40 minutes.

There's the above-the-surface logical and visible reasons why we want to stop. You remember this is an iceberg. Nine-tenths of it is underground. There are the visible logical reasons for wanting to stop, and we work with those.

So, I want to share with you some of the things that I find most helpful in the men that I work with.

I have an exercise where I have them—where do I draw the line? I want them to define what is permissible and what isn't permissible. I don't want to be their policeman. I want them to be the ones that decide. So, I have them fill out a paper that says, "As far as masturbation, internet, social media, email, TV, whatever," I have them fill out. This is when I have crossed the line.

The next is I want them to define for themselves what will be their consequences. And they're not just going to fill those out on a piece of paper. They're going to give it to people around them. This helps give teeth to it. Self-imposed consequence. It could be, "I'm going to run three miles in the next 48 hours." It could be, "I'm going to fast for 24 hours."

It's something. It could be, "I'm not going to have coffee for two weeks." It's that kind of thing that you decide is something that hurts, and you decide you don't just say that to yourself because you'll talk yourself out of it real quick. But if you tell someone else, it's going to help you.

Brace isn't going to make sense to you, but brace is something that the freedom fight talks about, and I'll talk a little bit more about the freedom fight. Basically, it's a plan for what you're going to do when you're tempted the next time. You're going to be thinking certain things. You're going to go to certain scriptures. This is what your plan is. So, I have them going over those things twice a day, practicing. When I'm tempted, this is where I will go.

We talk about program calls, and that means program that I'm calling somebody not because I'm in crisis, but I'm calling to establish the relationship so that when I am in crisis, I'll be able to call. I can tell you upfront, I'm confident you will not call your friend before you act out if you don't call them before then.

In the moment, bookending. Bookending is probably the most favorite tool that I have, probably the most powerful. I learned from someone else. It's basically looking ahead and saying, "I see that I'm going to be vulnerable. It might be a trip to Walmart. It might be being in a hotel by yourself. It might be I'm going to be alone all day. My wife is gone for the evening." That kind of thing. You recognize it, and then you call or text your friend, and you say, "Hey, Joe, I think I'm going to be okay, but I recognize that I'm going to be vulnerable between now and 9 o'clock when my wife comes home. So, I wanted to reach out to you, and I'll call you when she gets home and tell you how it went."

It's a powerful tool because it helps you to not be alone. The lie that says, "Nobody needs to know," it won't make any difference, goes out the window. When you know that somebody else knows that you're going to be tempted and you are—yeah, when you know that someone else knows, it helps you a lot.

This is a new one that I just heard about this week, and I had the privilege of talking to men every week. And I'm a tools junkie, I guess. Basically, what he said is when you are starting to think fantasy thoughts, fast forward to the consequences.

I don't want to be explicit, but this man is starting to think about what it would be like to be with somebody. And so you say, "Whoa, we're not going there. Let's fast forward to the consequences. If I really did that, what would happen to me?" Well, I'd lose my relationship with God. I'd be public shame.

You just think about those things, and it kind of slows things down for you. One of the big things that have happened to people is that they start to think thoughts like this, "I've been good for a while. I think I can relax and not be quite so strict anymore." And I say, "Whoa, did you hear what you just said? You are saying that somehow USB, even if it's what we call edging behavior, it's not being naughty like you were before, but it's the same kind of thing." And I say, "Okay. So you are believing at a foundational level, you are believing that somehow USB enhances your life."

And it doesn't. So identify and stop edging behavior. We talked about that. Edging behavior is what I call when you're not being as naughty as you used to be, but you're just trying to get close to the edge to see what you see. And maybe even you are hoping to accidentally—this happens all the time—hoping to accidentally be tempted without feeling guilty for having looked for it.

We need to identify that and say, "Whoa, we don't go there."

We do crash reports. They fill out a very comprehensive report as soon as they can after if they've messed up so that I can help them identify the rituals, the routines, and the vulnerable times and places. They're going to be—probably they're going to be feeling emotions. We're going to be talking about that later.

You see, if I can help them say, "I have one man who has been able to identify that I'm most vulnerable in the morning after I've had a good time with my friends at night. I'm feeling lonely because I'm alone in my apartment." That's powerful. That's really good to know because winners anticipate and losers react. So if you know that, you can put a mark on the calendar. You could remind yourself first thing in the morning, "Okay. Last night, we had a good time at church. I felt connected with my buddies. So I need to be careful." And that makes a difference.

Recognizing the building blocks and drivers of USB. You'll understand more about that in a moment when I show you a slide. So afterwards, you're going to implement the consequences because you told your accountability partner. And that doing the hard thing, whether it's not having coffee for two weeks or running for three miles, it kind of soaks in a little bit because what's happening with you is that you are the clear-thinking part of your brain that understands morality and understands consequences, goes offline, and you start doing things I call a panic, and you don't think about consequences. So after you've run three miles a couple of times and you say, "I'm not so sure I want to do this," it'll help you.

You're going to recognize and understand both the physical and emotional aspects of addiction. It's easy for us to see this with the drunk who gets used to the good feeling that he gets from the alcohol, but he's doing it because he lost his job and his wife is upset with him. I'm here to say that the physical part, the sexual feeling, the temptation to chase the dopamine high, the good feeling that there is, that's the easiest part. It's not that hard. It is hard. But that's not nearly as hard as the things that you have done to the emotional thing, the way that you use USB to escape hard things. We'll talk more about that.

And I teach them how to avoid the shame cycle so that you—because what tends to happen is that people will mess up, and they're just so devastated. "I thought I was past this. I feel so awful. And so what do I do? I can't believe I did it again." And the shame overwhelms them, and they're back and doing it all over again. That's why some men will not be able to stop themselves. They will repeatedly—that's why we call it binging. They will act out repeatedly because they don't know what else to do.

The freedom fight, like I told you this morning, the freedom fight is both an app, it's a website, and a study guide. It's free. I use this with both the men that I mentor that I'm helping to stop, and I use this with the men that I am teaching about how to help others. It's really good stuff. It's the best thing I found for Anabaptists. If you know about something better, contact me. I won't mind switching. But this is the best thing that I have found. They offer this stuff, their content, their app. By the way, this app allows you to form a group and to form a chat inside the group. And it's really good.

So they offer everything for free, but they're hoping that people will pay when they start to get freedom because it really works. I just want to say something yet. I was going to say it earlier, and I didn't. If you're here and you wonder about the things that I'm teaching, I have no problem with you having a different perspective than I do because there's so much room. There's so much need out there. We'll never be able to help all the people that need help. And that's why I say if you're able to help somebody, go for it because I want you to help people. What I don't have much patience with is the people who theorize about how it ought to be done but who aren't really helping people.

And I propose that the people who are helping others and who, even if they come from different perspectives, I think as they become more successful and as they cry out to God for help, they're going to move closer and closer together. So I just wanted to share that idea.

So we've talked about stopping USB, and I'm going to talk about growing self-awareness. I said that there's 90% under the water, and there is an intuitive and invisible reason why you may not be so sure that you want to stop.

And we need to understand that and learn to go to God. So the question for anybody, whether you're a helper or whether you're somebody who needs help, why do men keep going back to the things that they hate?

Maybe you are one of these people who says, "These people just want to be naughty, and they're lying to me when they say that they hate USB." That certainly is not my experience. I am able to help people who all their lives have been trying to stop, but nothing works. And I see them starting to make progress. And I'm excited about that. And by the way, it is my privilege. It's my joy to be able to listen to somebody and say, "You know what? I don't think your problem is that you're a sexual pervert. It's not that you are hopelessly over-sexed. It's that there's woundedness there." And that's what I want to talk about today.

Here's where I want to talk about the threshold. And this dam represents how much you can take without resorting to unwanted sexual behaviors.

So the left side represents painful emotions and difficult situations. The stacked water represents how much you can handle. There's lots of men who say, "I was doing good. I don't know what happened. I was doing good. And all of a sudden, out of nowhere, I acted out. I can't believe what I did." Just look at this example. Let's just say that this person has conflicts with other people, maybe his wife. There's church problems.

He's going through financial stress. COVID has done a lot of damage. He has problems with his boss. His children are disrespectful. And all these things are just kind of building up, and he's not dealing with it. He's not even aware of it. Men are notorious for not being able to identify what's going on inside. One of the things that I do is every meeting we have, I have them put four words down, four feeling words to help them. It's like a muscle that hasn't been developed. I help them to think about what I'm feeling. And in recovery, we say, "Name it to tame it."

And so when he's able to identify these things, we might be able to, with a bunch of these, learn how to go to God and actually deal with them so it doesn't keep building up. But what can happen is if you have a lot of things here that are causing problems, you could easily—one more small thing, and just all of a sudden, you just feel overwhelmed. "I can't deal with this," and you're acting out and doing the things that you hate.

I want to talk about three kinds of triggers.

I call them sexual, environmental, and emotional. Sexual, that's easy to understand. Well, first of all, I talk about trigger. It's the idea that I was doing fine. I wasn't being tempted. But then something happened, and all of a sudden, I just want that feeling. What it really is, is an escape. It's a way of looking the other way instead of facing the hard things head-on.

Sexual is like a billboard or other ways of just something tempting. That's an issue, but it's not that hard to get away from. Environmental is a lot bigger. Environmental means the ways that you have in the past learned to act out. It's kind of like your routine. I had a man recently who said, "I was at my parents' house." He was young married. He was at his parents' house. There was nobody home, and there was internet access. And it was kind of like his brain said, "Oh, we know where we're at. We know what happens next." The first time he acted out, the second time he recognized what was going on and didn't act out.

He actually called his wife and did the bookending that I talked about. And when a man bookends with his wife and says, "Honey, I'm at a place in the past. This has been vulnerable for me, but I just wanted you to know so that it's a powerful thing." And emotional is the third component that I think about and that we spend a lot of time here because it really is a big deal.

I want to talk briefly about this little illustration that I found. I found the illustration. Let's say this is you, and you're struggling with unwanted sexual behavior. It just feels like it's pounding in on you. It feels overwhelming because you didn't know what was going on behind the scenes. And I help men to understand the triggers that we talked about. The triggers are things that take me from, "I'm at a healthy place, at a good place," to all of a sudden being tempted. And that can happen in a matter of minutes or hours, but it can happen quickly. What we need to do is to recognize what's going on. We need to understand what the meaning is, how we've come to believe things.

It's usually a statement about me. Let's say, for example, I can't think of an example. Then you feel an emotion, and the emotion could easily be a feeling like, "Oh, I messed up again. I guess I'm not good enough.

I'll never get it right." Those are the kinds of emotions that are painful, naturally, and we start acting out.

I say that a part of us is getting some value out of USB, or we wouldn't do it. That's not to make anybody feel bad. It's just to recognize that there's something going on. Remember the example that I gave you of the iceberg? There's something going on under the surface, and until we know what's going on, we're going to be doomed to repeat it again and again. The third thing and the most exciting thing is learning to depend on God. This is the most important slide in my whole show. I'm going to spend a few minutes here. If you get this, it will be life-changing for you. I say that unwanted sexual behavior is a sin at two different levels.

I want to be clearly understood that when I walk with men and when I don't ball them out for the mistakes that they're making, it's not because I don't think it's sin, but I know where we're going, and I want to help them. So here, I say USB, unwanted sexual behavior is a sin at two different levels. Here I have pornography. Here I have masturbation. Here I have lustful fantasy. Here's adultery and fornication. These are the words that King James uses. So this is stuff. These are actions. These are thoughts. And the Bible clearly condemns it, and I do too. This is sexual desire. But if we only work at this level, I had a man ask me a couple of weeks ago.

He said, "We have someone in our church who's doing an important role in our church, and he keeps messing up. It's cyclical. It keeps happening again." He said, "Arthur, when is he going to be able to get on top of that?" And I said, "I don't know, but I'm going to guess that if we just work at this level, if we don't understand what's going on underneath, he's likely going to keep repeating it."

But I said, "If we can understand what's going on under the surface, the iceberg underneath the surface, we're going to understand. If we understand what's going on underneath, it's going to change our way of looking and our success." Here's somebody who's feeling lonely. "I don't belong. I feel overwhelmed. I feel like I'm a failure. I'm unlovable. I feel rejected.

Life is out of control. I'm bored. I'm stressed." All this kind of stuff. And when that level on the dam gets so high, all of a sudden, it hurts too much, and so we escape to good feelings. It is my experience consistently. If I can help guys deal with this stuff down here in a godly way—one man told me, "I can't believe it. My temptations are one-third of what they used to be because I'm dealing with this stuff here, and I no longer need it to face life."

We've got to keep going. Here's an example. Philippians 4:6 and 7 says, "Don't be anxious, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your request be made known to God. And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus." What am I saying? This is an example of what I talked about. This is an example of anxiety. You know what's happening?

I recognize that. I got it. We just say, "God, I'm feeling anxious about all these things, but you told me to give it to you, and so I give it to you, and I ask that you would take it over because you said you would." And we can indeed feel peace, and it's a peace that passes all understanding, both because of the quality of it and because 10 minutes ago, I was feeling incredibly stressed out, yet I have learned how to hand it off to God. We can do that kind of thing with all these words, with all these words that I have here. We can go to God and say, "God, I don't know what to do.

I'm feeling like I'm not good enough." And we say, "God, what do you want me to know?"

I believe that learning how to journal, that's one way of processing this stuff, and the other way is to pray to God about the emotional distress that we feel and being able to receive truth from God that changes the belief that we act on is the single most important skill that those on their way to freedom need to learn. I see that. I watch people change from out-of-control USB to begin to make progress, and as they make progress, their worlds open up, and they begin to understand what's going on.

I get to see that, and I love it. I want to talk briefly. I'm watching the clock. I'll figure out a way to finish. I want to talk about Jumpstart Your Freedom. It's something that I'm going to record next month.

There was a man who had crossed boundaries, and he needed to work with me desperately, and I had a waiting list. I couldn't work with him. During the night, I just felt so burdened. I said, "Lord, I have to figure out a way to help him make progress before I can actually start to work with him."

And so I, in two and a half hours, shared with him all the stuff that I'm sharing with you and more. And when I told my advisory board, they said, "Arthur, you've got to record that and make it available to people." So I think probably by into the new year, a couple of months, I think I'm going to be able to have this recorded, and you'll be able to purchase a six-month access. You'll be able to listen to that stuff, and we'll have common vocabulary and a framework for freedom. At the end of the course, you'll be able to say, "This is just what I needed. That's all I need." You might set up a few appointments with me, or you might want to get on my short reading list to work with me for approximately 8 to 15 months.

So I'm saying all that to say, please get on my mailing list so that you'll learn about this ministry. If you subscribe, you'll immediately get your first email, and then eight more after that, one week apart, you'll learn when Jumpstart becomes available. You'll learn about mentor training, and you'll learn about new resources.

I believe with all my heart that unwanted sexual behavior robs us of our manhood and our ability to sacrifice for others. You see, unwanted sexual behavior is a, "I want to feel good now. I don't care about anything else. I just want to escape." So it robs us of our ability as men. Part of being a man, part of being an adult, is being able to sacrifice for other people, being able to do the next right hard thing, being able to develop skills, being able to make wise choices, being useful for the kingdom. That's all stuff that goes out the window because unwanted sexual behavior is not just about the simple acts. It's about learning, medicating, and learning to escape from hard things.

I'm going to go through this real fast. Our generation has unparalleled attractive, easy, immediate gratification options like no other in the history of the world, and this is stunting us. It's keeping us from being able to grow into healthy, functional adults.

So I ask two questions. Is our generation doomed for failure and self-destruction? Where is God in all this? Is he being taken by surprise? I propose that no. I propose that the men that I work with become better than ever men.

What happens when you learn to depend on God? What happens when you choose the next right hard thing in the presence of attractive, easy, immediate gratification things? You grow up fast, and that unlearning prepares you for life. I want to say that the life skills that you learn by saying no to USB, by learning how to identify the things, the easy outs, and then going to God and saying, "God, I'm stressing out. I feel all this stuff. I just want to escape." And when we learn to go to God in that, we're going to recognize when you start winning in this area of your life, you become a changed person, and you can start winning in other areas of your life.

Look at this. You can recognize other areas. You'll be able to do an inner census and say, "I'm at a good place now. I'm safe." We learn how to go to God. We learn how to no longer allow shame, isolation, and hiding to ruin our lives.

Even when life is hard, we learn not to panic. We keep our clear-thinking adult brain in charge of our decision-making, and we learn to stay on task. I want to pray with you.

Lord, we've rushed through this, but I pray that you will take our five loaves into fishes and that you will give men who are struggling, who are just desperate and don't know what to do next.

I pray that they will have greater understanding, and they will know how to identify what's under the surface things that are happening, learn how to go to you, and be able to, in dependence on you, do the next right hard thing.

I pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

Thank you so much, Brother Arthur.

Your heart, where this is touching, and the way you're stewarding your talents and your gifts to lean into this and fight for the souls of men is beautiful. Thank you. And touching. And also, you're doing it for more than that. You ended up there as I believe you said, so that we can be on task, I think. So we can be here now, so we can be experiencing that fullness of life right now and not be allowing some impostor to destroy us. So thank you, brother. Thank you for sharing in this way. So we've had a—yeah, we have a number of questions here. We're just going to move right into those.

So I'm going to start with maybe one of our bigger comments that came in here.

And it says, and it goes like this. By the way, if there's any other questions, you can begin to put them in on the chat here, and we'll see if we can get to them. In regards to today's topic, I feel like all the resources I'm aware of on this subject mix porn and masturbation together. I believe there are many men and boys struggling with masturbation that haven't been involved in porn.

These individuals may not even fantasize about sex. They may simply struggle with natural desire of the body or outside triggers, etc., etc. And basically, the person's asking, "Do you have any material that is tailored towards helping somebody find victory over masturbation that doesn't necessarily involve getting over a pornography addiction?"

It's really interesting. I am pretty convinced that the issue is the same. The issue is the same in that we have learned to medicate. We have learned to do something that feels good to avoid hard things. And so my way of working with someone who only deals with masturbation is exactly the same. What are you avoiding? What are you trying to get away from?

And I teach them to go to God.

And it's common. It's very common for men who are struggling with pornography to downgrade to masturbation before they are able to kick the habit. But the problem's the same. If somebody says, "I masturbate without sexual fantasy," that might be. But I propose that the issue is the same. It's a learned way.

And on top of that, masturbation is a selfish thing. It's inward-focused, and it stands between me and healthy sexuality as a married man. Think about this. There's a man who gets married at 25. He started masturbating at 15. He masturbates twice a week.

That's 1,000 times. 1,000 times he has worn the rut deep of, "I'm going to do what feels good. I'm going to gratify myself." That doesn't prepare him for marriage.

Sure. Okay. Thank you for sharing that. And then maybe I have another question that kind of ties somewhat right into this idea here for youth, especially. And it says, "My daughter's boyfriend recently confessed to her that at an earlier point in his life, he would have considered himself addicted to pornography, but it's clean now."

And he asked the question, "Can former addicts stay clean? Should I allow my daughter to continue dating him?" Good question. Do you remember what I said about the man who just struggles? The top half of the USB is a sin at two different levels. I would say, well, let me just back up and say something else first because I don't want to forget.

Any girls that are listening to what I'm saying, when the boy says, "I used to struggle with porn, but I'm not struggling anymore," you should say, "Thank you very much. I want my dad to talk with you." And dad should be asking questions, very specific questions, to make sure that it's a thing in the past. I hear it all the time that men think that they have kicked the habit, but it comes back six months after they're married.

And it's not fair to women. I say the joke this way.

A man talks to his girlfriend and says, "I'm living in victory now." What he doesn't say is that it's since last Tuesday, and it's a big deal.

So back to the question about how do I know whether somebody is really free? One of the five things that I want men to be true of them before I let them graduate is number three. And number three is I identified the things that used to take me to USB, and now I know how to go to God with those things, and I don't do it anymore.

That skill of learning to go to God with the things that used to take me downhill is a powerful thing. It's what's happening on the bottom half of that slide that I showed you. And when someone is consistently making progress there, even if he's not quite doing 100% yet, I know that he's going to keep improving.

And I would say if I knew that man that wants to date my daughter, if I knew that he was dealing with the things on the bottom half and that he's almost batting 100%, I'd let him date my daughter.

Sure. And so we're trying to wrestle with healthy ways to relate to these things and to be proactive. So kind of here we're looking back at or a question by somebody looking back, maybe a gentleman who was addicted to porn 10 years ago.

But maybe another litmus test, maybe, Arthur, be like, "Have you confessed this to anybody else?" Oh, who is your accountability partner? And trying to understand, is this just you and God, or have you included some part of the body of Christ, your church, your leader, your dad around that? Would that be a good question? Thank you so much.

I bless you for saying that.

That is an important aspect, and I'm glad that you said that. I really appreciate that. So for any young person who's struggling, don't be scared to go share this, right? Find an older person, find somebody to share this because that's so important when you begin to think about these serious things of life and building that trust around you. I haven't experienced that men are able to win by themselves.

There's a pretty prominent elderly gentleman who works for Pure Desire, one of the famous Christian recovery organizations. He says, "You have one chance in a billion of getting healthy by yourself."

Because as long as it's secret, and if you think about it, if I had this—if I'm hiding behind a mask and nobody knows who I really am and how I'm hiding, when someone says, "Arthur, I love you," it's not going to get through the mask because they don't know who I really am. And so it's important for us to learn to be loved, even with all our things that aren't nice yet.

Yeah. Well, thank you, Arthur. I appreciate that. Here's another question that came in. It says, "How do I provide security and protection to an individual so it feels safe for them to share a tough struggle they're going through right now? Staying connected with God is needful. Besides this, any help on putting this in place?"