“Sexual Addiction? Help Others!” by Arthur Nisly

The one may be overpowered by another, two can withstand him, and a threefold cord is not quickly broken. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us this morning for this special feature on Strength to Strength. We have Brother Arthur Knisely joining us from Kansas, and he will be sharing on overcoming sexual—let's see if I get this right—overcoming sexual addiction. And this morning's session is Sexual Addiction: Helping Others. So it's more from a pastoral angle, I believe.

And before we get started, actually, I'll just make some other announcements as well. We won't open it up for an open discussion at the end of this session, but if you have questions, please send them to strengthtostrength.org. That's on the website. There's a place to submit questions there, and also through email at contact@strengthtostrength.org. And this afternoon will be an extended Q&A session. So please submit any questions you have through that.

And there will be a second session this afternoon at 3 o'clock, which is titled Sexual Addiction: Get Help Yourself for Yourself. So before we get started, let's bow our heads for a word of prayer.

Eternal Father in heaven, we praise your name this morning for your compassion and your love for each one of us. You have lifted us up out of a myripit, set our feet on a rock. I thank you, Lord, for this gathering here this morning, and I thank you for Brother Arthur and his willingness to engage in these sensitive topics. I just pray that this time would be a blessing to him and to each one of us who hears. Lord, open our hearts in humility and in grace to those around us who are struggling with less-than-ideal circumstances, and just pray that the things that we hear this morning would equip us with some tools to help our fellow man in overcoming this insidious thing that can rise in our lives.

Just please bless Brother Arthur as he shares, give him clarity of thought, and I pray that your spirit would be upon him and anoint his lips to share in a way that is clear and understandable and useful in the work of the kingdom. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.

So if you could share a bit of an introduction to who you are and maybe how you got into this ministry as well. Sure. I'd be glad to. My name is Arthur Knisely. As of last month, I'm 65 years old, so I'm a senior citizen. It doesn't feel like that.

I lived in El Salvador for 30 years. I thought that's where I would retire and die, but God had other plans. In 2016, as a result of health issues, we came back to our native Kansas, and we're lifetime members at Center Amish Mennonite Church, and we have four living children. We've had two sets of twins. One of each of those sets of twins died, and so we know all about grief. We know all about—yeah, we know all about grief.

So we came back to Kansas. It was just overwhelming. It was a heartbreak. We said it was really hard trying to figure out what we're supposed to be doing here in Kansas. It felt like missions was our life. And then in 2017, to make it short, I felt like God gave me an almost audible call to, "Arthur, I want you to learn how to help people who are struggling with addictions." I immediately felt like that was Anabaptist men who struggle with sexual addiction, although addiction is addiction, and the same principles apply whether you're a man or a woman or whatever.

So since 2017, I've been working hard to learn everything I can about how to help men like me win the battle with sexual addiction.

I always listen to all the podcasts and everything that I learn. I always listen with the question, "Will this help my people?" There's interesting truths like brain science that is discovering all kinds of things, but I don't spend that much time with that because I'm guessing what I think my people need. So that's my intro.

So do I go ahead and dive in, get started? Yes, go for it. Yep. Thank you. I'm going to share my screen, and I'm doing something I haven't done before. We're preparing the slides. Here's my first slide. I propose that helping other people is a dream worth embracing.

I think our churches—well, let me just do a little bit here. I think our churches are needy. I don't pretend to have statistics, but I propose that even any kind of statistics that we do compile are not going to be accurate because sexual addiction is such a shameful thing.

So today, I want to talk about how to make it safe. This morning, I'm going to be talking about helping other people, and this afternoon, I want to talk about how to get help for yourself. You're going to be much more equipped to know how to help people if you listen to this afternoon session. The two sessions are linked, and yet this morning, my session is about helping others.

So I want to start out with talking about understanding the current crisis, and that leads me to something that Josh McDowell said. He said, "I would—and by the way, I gave you access to a worksheet or a place where you can copy down some things. I think it will greatly enhance your ability to have a copy for yourself of the content that I share. So I hope you have that printed out. If not, at least print out the session this afternoon."

He said, "I would personally say that from all my knowledge now, pornography is probably the greatest threat to the cause of Christ in the history of the world." Emphasis on in the history of the world. In other words, what we're facing is something that is unprecedented. It's something that is changing the world, and we do well to be aware of it and to not say, "Well, in our church, we have fences. In our church, we're careful, and that couldn't happen to us."

It is happening to us. I think if we say that it's not going to happen to us, that it's not happening to us, that we're probably burring our head in the sand.

I propose that sexual addiction is like a tsunami.

This photoshopped picture shows a picture of a huge wave overwhelming beachside buildings. And I say sexual addiction is a tsunami because it's so powerful and it's all-inclusive. It overwhelms us before we can prepare. I don't think we have adequately prepared. I don't think we have an idea about how big the issue is and how fast it's coming and how invasive it is.

You can't get away. The best thing that we can do is to prepare and to make it a talkable subject for our people. So I say that it's like a tsunami because you can't get away from it. I want to now talk about what's changed in these last years.

I'm going to suggest that not quite 70 years ago, the first explicit magazine, the first edition, came out in December of 1953. That means that commercially available pornography, even pictures, was not available before then.

So in the last 70 years, things have changed a lot. But then I'm also saying that porn has gone from still images to explicit motion with audio, and this realism makes it so much more addicting.

And so back in the good old days, pornography was on VHS and those kinds of mediums where you still had to have something physical in your possession to be able to access it. But now, since the internet, which is about 25 years ago, that's been a game changer. The smartphone in 2007, my guess is that most of you would have a smartphone.

But can you imagine that that's just happened? Even the cell phone is not that old, and we're still getting used to the effects of that. Something else that's changed is 2008, the broadband internet became available, and that makes it so you can watch one explicit video after another without having to wait for downtime.

That's a game changer. I'm guessing that 3D porn is already available.

I made that statement to somebody, and they just laughed at me and said, "It's already available." The other scary thing is that first exposure to pornography is getting younger and younger, and it's more damaging and more addicting for young brains. In other words, you might be 50 when you got your smartphone, and that's very different. Exposure to pornography is very different for you as a 50-year-old than it is for an 8-year-old who suddenly discovers this. His brain isn't prepared for that, and it's going to be much, much more addictive.

I like to tell the story of what it would have been like for me in the '70s to search for pornography. In the '70s, I would have had to go as a teenager, I would have had to go to a convenience store probably late at night, far from home, and I would have had to buy it, and I would have had to sneak out the door. I mean, yeah, the embarrassment of having the waiter, the cashier see it. I would have taken it out to my car, but then I would have had to hide it because that could expose me. So it's very different now with a smartphone in your pocket and being able to access it.

Someone has said it's easier for a 12-year-old boy to access pornography than it is to get a drink of water because you have to get up to get a drink of water. In addition to sexual addiction being like a tsunami that overwhelms, I propose that sexual addiction is like internal bleeding.

It's silent. It's hidden, and it's very possible we may not notice until it's too late. Our enemy is destroying us from the inside. We see people coming to church. They look the same as they did three months ago, but something very powerful might be happening. And I'm going to suggest that some of us are at a place where we're almost ready to give up because you have tried everything that you know to try, and it's not working. And so shaming ourselves isn't working, isn't helping.

This is a fictitious quote. I say it's by John C. Anabaptist, who thinks—well, I'll just read the quote. "Sexual bondage isn't really a big problem among us, us Anabaptists, so we can safely avoid talking about this issue at no risk or loss to us and to our constituency's future."

If we're saying that, I'm really worried about us because it is a big problem, and maybe he represents our unspoken thoughts. Please, please don't think that and don't say that because it is destroying us and our people. I'll talk later about that, but it's wrecking havoc to our people.

Now, I want to talk about Dr. Samuel Perry's definitive conclusion after studying 3,000 people over a six-year period. He said, "I can see the evidence. I can see that any porn use is associated with declines in religious commitment and behavior, like attending services, prayer, and anything like that, and an increase in religious doubts."

He said, "These are generic—this is a generic statistic, but we can clearly see that more pornography, more sexual acting out is going to result in less service in the church. You can just bank on it." He said, "In his studies, he said that someone who never or rarely uses porn, there's going to be a 33% chance that they're going to serve and offer to serve in some capacity in the church."

It might be that our Anabaptist churches, those figures are different, but I want you to see what's happening. When someone is watching porn every month, he said consistently it drops to 10%. Porn every week, 5%. And if somebody's watching porn daily, there's almost no chance that they're going to offer themselves.

So the obvious conclusion is that the more frequently someone is watching porn, the less likely they are to serve in their church. Just a quick question. I can't ask each of you to respond, but do you see that the shame, how badly you feel about what you're doing in hiding makes going to church no fun, and you feel like a hypocrite? And so it makes lots of sense.

So this is a slide no one else has seen before. Some of the rest of this has been stuff that I've shared at other presentations, but I'm pleading with church leaders everywhere, "Please evaluate how much you're helping those who are under your care."

It might be that no one is coming to you, and no one is saying, "Church leader, please help me." But I want you to think about what that means. Does that mean that no one is struggling? Does that mean that they got free by themselves, or is it that it isn't safe to admit that they have needs?

And maybe you, dear church leader, are saying, "I can help people get over." Here's USB. USB is my simple way of saying I'm talking about it's unwanted sexual behavior.

And by unwanted, I want to be very clear, and I'll talk about this again this afternoon. Unwanted sexual behavior is not a sneaky way of not calling it sin. Clearly, it is sin. I'm talking about, number one, I'm talking about lustful thoughts. I'm talking about masturbation. I'm talking about pornography, and I'm talking about acting out with someone who is not your spouse.

So when I talk about USB, we use this with the guys that I mentor. Oh, I never told you that in my intro that since 2019, I've been mentoring other men, and they're paying me to help them get free.

So yeah. And since 2021, I gradually quit working less at my day job, and then in 2021, in July, this is all that I'm doing. I tell people I would love to do this for free like I did while I was in El Salvador, but if I did it for free, I'd have to keep my day job, and I wouldn't have time to be able to help you. So I am doing what I'm doing because I believe there's a huge need and because I'm wanting to prove a point that there are people who need help, and they're willing to pay you if they think you can help them. And so I would love to have dozens more people doing exactly what I'm doing.

My schedule is filling up, and I'm training other men to do what I'm doing, but just know that if all the people would come forward that are struggling at least once a month, we would be overwhelmed. We would need dozens of people doing what I'm doing.

But anyway, back to USB. Unwanted sexual behavior. It's my way of quickly talking about the whole gamut of sexual sin. The Bible clearly calls it sin, and that's what I'm saying. So back to what I was saying. Our tendency has been to say, "I'm the preacher. I can help anybody that wants to get over unwanted sexual behavior if they're really serious."

We might say that since they keep floundering and since they keep going back to the same things, they're not really serious. They don't want to get well. And I just plead with us. I say that's a faulty belief because we don't understand unwanted sexual behavior.

I extend grace to men who are struggling, but may it be clear, my goal, what I want to see happen, is that they be free from the four things that I just mentioned. And it is possible I get to see it happen, and I love what I'm doing.

Are these people worth helping? Maybe we ask ourselves that question because we say, we as church leaders say, "I'm not sure that these people are really serious."

I'm pleading with you. I'm pleading with you based on my experience. I have men coming to me who come to me partly because I live far away. I talk to them on Zoom, just like what we're doing right now. I talk to them on Zoom because there's nobody. They don't know anybody that they trust to dare to share their heart.

I'm pleading with us to understand that unwanted sexual behavior in the men that come to us is normal Christian discipleship. Normal in that it happens all the time, but not normal that it should keep happening. But I want to say that it is possible to successfully overcome that.

Maybe I'm belaboring a point, but I want to talk about Anabaptist addiction equivalence. Many of you have never heard about this idea, but what I'm saying is that some of us who are older, who have grown up in safe homes, praise the Lord, don't have to struggle that much with unwanted sexual behavior. And we assume that because we don't struggle that much, other people ought to be able to get over it too.

Not all of us struggle equally with unwanted sexual behavior. Some of us who were older before the smartphones and internet became available don't struggle. We need to praise the Lord for that.

But I propose that all of us, even the most mature men among us, still have addiction equivalence. Thankfully, they're not as morally compromising. Thankfully, they don't have as many consequences. But let me just tell two stories so that you understand what I'm talking about.

Last Saturday, I should have been preparing for this presentation. I had the day set aside for this, and I knew I was going to work hard at this, but then I just told myself, "I need a break." And so I did something techy that I've been wanting to do, push off. I've been pushing off for probably two weeks, and I said, "This won't take long. I'll just do this quickly, and then I'll get back to work."

It's a sad story, but it took me all day, and I felt defeated, and I said, "What? I wasted my time." But I did the same thing that USB does. It's a way of avoiding hard things. And another story I'll tell you is something similar. I was needing to prepare for something, and all of a sudden, I was doing research on YouTube to figure out how to fix my rechargeable batteries for my

screwdriver.

And actually, I had it in here on my desk, and I was turning out the screws, and then all of a sudden, I said, "What am I doing? I'm escaping from hard things." And I put the screws back in. I put it back out on the shelf. I haven't touched it yet. I'll get to it sometime, and it'll be a fun thing to do.

And I'm talking about Anabaptist addiction equivalence, and I'm saying that those of us who look down our nose at people who are struggling with unwanted sexual behavior, we also have things that we shouldn't be doing that we still do. And who among us is struggling with being 10 or 20 pounds overweight? And who among us has said, "I'm going to be eating more carefully"?

But then when you're at the table, the food is good, and the conversation is good, you forget, and all of a sudden, you're doing the things that you had said you were never going to do again. Overeating, shopping, burying yourself in work, a time-consuming hobby, something like that can do the same thing.

Please understand, it's not as morally compromising. But I think that when we recognize, when we as church leaders, as men who don't struggle with unwanted sexual behavior as much, when we understand that we have the same tendencies toward addictions that thankfully are not as morally compromising, when we understand that, we will have compassion because we know what it's like to vow, "I'm not going to eat a second portion of food," but then all of a sudden, I'm automatically doing what I said I would never do again.

I want to remind us that we tend to replace one kind of addiction with another if we don't get to the bottom of why I'm doing this. And I'm sharing this screen because I pray that it will help us to be more compassionate. Those of us who have, for one reason or another, unwanted sexual behavior is not our issue, I'm praying that we will identify our issues and say, "Oh, it's the same thing. By God's grace, my issue is not sexual addiction."

The question we have to answer is, why do men keep doing the things that they hate?

If you as a church leader are saying they know better, they just want to be naughty, and they're lying to me when they say that they hate USB. When you look at them with harshness and say, "They say they're trying to stop, but I see the pattern. They don't really want to stop." When you say that, I am grieved.

That's not what I see. And here again, this afternoon, I'm going to talk about the kind of men that come to me. The men that come to me are men that are deeply grieved by what they've done, what they're doing. They can't stop by themselves, and they're willing to pay me to help them.

There might be people in your church, the church that you're leading. There might be people who are still enjoying what they're doing, and they're trying to keep it a secret. But I propose there's way more men who don't want to be doing what they're doing. They're grieved about what they're doing, and they don't know what to do. No one else seems to struggle. That's the message of silence. And so they're saying, "I have to pretend that I don't have problems until I get this figured out."

Most of the men that I work with are so relieved when they understand that there's another way of looking at unwanted sexual behavior, that it's a way of avoiding hard things. And I'm here to say that the men that I'm working with are making progress toward your goal and toward my goal of having them be pure from unwanted sexual behavior. I get to see men make progress, men who have been struggling multiple times a week with masturbation and/or pornography. I see them going from that to consistent victory. Not all at once, but we have a paradigm. We have a way of looking at the problem that is helpful, and they start to make progress. And I'm here to say that I'm pretty sure that if you just say, "These men are doing things that they hate," if you say, "That's not true."

If you say, "If they would hate it, they would stop."

Okay.

So one of the questions I want to ask is, how much loss is permissible loss?

Maybe you're someone who says, "I don't believe that." Arthur says, "It's a big issue, but I don't think so." I'm going to guess maybe you're saying, "I'm going to guess not even one person in 10 is struggling with unwanted sexual behavior in my church."

So how many of you would go to a hospital where just one out of 10 dies before they're released from the hospital? I don't think you would go there. I think that hospital would be shut down very quickly.

Just to make us think, I say, "Jesus is the Good Shepherd, and he certainly rescues people, at least if there's enough of them to merit the effort." Is that true? Or would we say, "Praise the Lord, Jesus goes after the one person who is struggling"? And I say, "We should be like Jesus. We should strive to go after even if it's 1%." I'm confident that in our circles, the numbers are—I shouldn't say this, but I'm just going to guess that in many of our churches, the numbers are really high. In some of our churches, the numbers are in the 2 out of 5 range.

I'm pleading with us to not be silent. I'm speaking to church leaders or people who help. We must not be silent. And what I mean is, if we don't address this issue, we are going to be giving a message that we don't want to give, that we shouldn't want to give.

I want church leaders to talk about this in their churches. One of the men that I mentor, I do mentor training, 8 or 10 men at a time. It's a one-year program, and we'll talk about that later on. But one of those men, partly in response to the input that he was getting through working with me, he talked in his local church. He talked two Sundays about it, and the people in his church said it was about time that someone talks about this.

So if we say, "It's not happening. I don't want to expose anybody," we're giving a clear message that it's not safe to talk about sexual struggle in our church. And in too many places, they know that if I come forward and say, "I'm struggling," they know that they're going to be dealt with harshly and that shame and humiliation will be used to help people because that's the only tool that many people know. And so what do people do? Well, they just learn to hide better.

I was working for quite a while with a young man in his 20s, and he came forward and tried to get help. Two men were assigned to him to shepherd him, and he would apologize to them every time he messed up. And he was identified. He was marked as a problem person. But now, a year or two later, his church has small groups, and he's discovering that there's other young men who are struggling just like he was, but they didn't come forward and talk about it because they saw what happened, and they didn't want to be marked.

Please don't do that. There's a belief that sexual sins are worse than others. And here, I want to be very careful.

But I think it's a part of my Anabaptist genes to say unwanted sexual behavior, masturbation, pornography is just about as bad as it can get. And if you ever do act out with someone else, either if you have an affair, that's off the charts, and that's wicked. And I don't want to undermine. I don't want to say that that isn't significant. But what I am saying is, please make it safe to get help.

If you only hear silence about this subject, you're going to understand that you have to pretend that you're doing okay even when you're not doing okay. You're going to believe that you're the only one that struggles. And think about this. If it's not okay to talk about finding victory in church, there's not going to be any sexual sin redemption stories because it doesn't happen.

And I'm going to suggest that there are men who don't dare talk about this issue because they're afraid that by talking about it, they are getting too close and other people might know about their hidden struggles. What message should we give? That's in contrast to the message of silence. We should talk about it. We should say that it won't be easy. It won't be quick. Freedom will require attention and resolute commitment. We should be saying it's worth the struggle.

Freedom is what God wants for us. You're not alone. We all struggle to some extent. We'll walk with you. We want to help you find your way out. And freedom gained in this area will help you to conquer other sin strongholds in your life. And may I add, you will learn life skills, important life skills for the rest of your life.

Finding sexual freedom is not just about finding freedom for yourself. It's about passing on a legacy to the next generation.

So we've talked about the issue, understanding the current crisis. Now I want to talk about helping others walk in freedom. There's things that we can start to do now. The first thing I want to mention is getting healthy ourselves.

And if you dare to talk about this, if you dare to get involved and really help people, doors are going to open for you. I never dreamed that when I accepted God's call in 2017, that's just five years ago, that God would open the doors that he has.

I basically said, "I'm going to try to help people because if on my deathbed nothing happens out of this and it doesn't go anywhere, I will feel better having tried." But can you imagine what I have seen? I've seen God open doors. People are coming to me. I get to help them. I get to watch people change. I just love this.

If you're a church leader that feels overwhelmed and like you don't reach around for this, then please look for discover and authorize lay people who are gifted. Do you remember what Peter said? Peter said, "We're going to keep on praying. We're going to keep on preaching. We're going to involve other people who are able to be deacons so that we don't need to sidetrack. We don't need to lose our primary focus. We need to prepare our churches to be safe places to heal." I'm hearing a movement all over where people are forming small groups in their churches where people can be accountable, and it's becoming more safe. And I'm so happy.

But I'd like to also suggest that we need to be designing multi-church structures that give support for people who are just starting to get help so that when you start a small group in your church and someone has a struggle and can't seem to get on top of it, I want you to have people in your conference, in your constituency who are able to help you and who have more experience than you do and for you to feel supported. Do you remember how that Jethro said, "Moses, it's not right for you to try to do everything. You're going to burn out. Why don't you involve people who are responsible for groups of 10, of 50, of 100, and of 1,000?"

And the wonderful thing that's going to happen is that those people are going to be able to step into a place of responsibility, and they're going to be able to be stretched and to grow themselves. I want to introduce you to the freedom fight. This is something that I found about almost two years ago. You'll see that on my left, it is an app. Look for the double Fs on a green background. It's also a website, and they have a study guide. The study guide goes with the 60-some short five-to-seven-minute videos for married men and a few less for men who are not married. Actually, they also have a track for ladies.

So this is the best thing that I have found for conservative Anabaptists. It's way better than the Conqueror series. It's a six-month program. And I go through this with the men. I have the people that I work with. I had them go through this, two or three short videos a week, filling out a worksheet.

If you go through this yourself, you're going to learn an awful lot. And if you buy the study guide and fill in the blanks, you're going to have a good idea about how to help people. Plus, you can go through it with someone else in a one-on-one setting or in a small group setting. This is really good stuff.

It's solidly biblical. It's brain science. Yeah, there's a little bit of eternal security stuff in the last section, but it's better than what I could have done. And I'm going to keep using it until some future day when something better shows up. I'm on the lookout, but I really think we ought to be using the freedom fight. In 2022, they hit 50,000 people that are using it, and they're hoping to reach 100,000 people in 2023. Incidentally, access to their videos is free. They say pornography is free. We're going to make our resources free. They do ask that you ask that people consider a paying-it-forward model.

For the men that I work with, I pay 10% of what they give me. I pay them to pay it to the freedom fight in a monthly donation that I do. So think about it. Check it out. It's not just me. Other men are saying this is good stuff.

Let me just talk a little bit about what I do. I work Hope Journey Guide mentoring. I mentor men on Zoom. My typical way of working with men is that I meet with them once a week for one hour, and I give them the best tools that I have. I give them accountability. I encourage them when they're discouraged. And probably what's most helpful is that I brainstorm with them about how to protect themselves. I'm on the outside, and I can see what's happening, and I ask hard questions. I'm not the policeman. But for example, if someone has messed up two times through Instagram, for example, I say, "So what are you going to do?"

And I take them, and then I ask them if they did anything about it. That's what I do. I love what I'm doing. A lot of men will work with me from 8 to 15 months. At the end of that time, they're meeting with me maybe twice a month and then once a month before he and I agree that he's ready to go.

Some of the common themes that I see are early exposure. Not everybody, but a lot of people have had early exposure. 8, 10, and 12-year-olds discovering pornography, and it set them up to struggle a lot. A lot of the men that I work with have struggled with masturbation, with pornography.

They're in a binge purge cycle. I've changed that to the indulge and then resolve. I like that better. I think we can identify with that. Indulge, and then we say, "What did I do? I wasn't going to do that again." We say, "I resolve. I'm never going back there again." But if you don't get help, you will do it again. There's some adultery, some fornication, but not that much. But I'm still saying, even though there isn't any— even if there isn't any adultery and fornication, the damage is the same. It gets worse with time. Almost never can you get well by yourself, and it makes you be a weak— well, think about it. If you're crying out to God and it seems like nothing is changing, wouldn't you say, "I guess this doesn't work for me"?

Maybe it works for— apparently, it works for other people, but it doesn't work for me.

So the damage it does, guilt and distance from God. You isolate. You're hiding. If you're being intimate with pixels, if you are being— if you're cultivating fantasies in your brain, you can't be deeply intimate with your wife. You're going to be distant. I have men in their 30s who have come to me for help because they knew that they had no sense in pursuing marriage.

And I get to help them get to a place where they are confident again. These men, the damage that happens is that they're making selfish, short-sighted choices. Why? Because they have learned to do what feels good now. They're going to procrastinate.

I see we are— okay. Maybe I'm being better than I thought. The changes that I get to see, I get to see people having a live relationship with God. They learn to

know God in a completely different way. When you look at God in a thee thou kind of way, and then you learn to reach out to God and say, "God, I need help. I can't do this alone," your relationship with God changes. You're going to have better relationships with people, both men and women, and you can pursue serious romantic relationships because you now no longer have to hide.

And I propose that you're going to have self-confidence because in this depending-on-God relationship, you're able to plow through confidently doing the next right-hard thing.

What experience is teaching me?

My experience is teaching me that if you are stuck, you'll almost never be able to get well by yourself. There would have been a time when I wouldn't have told you about the freedom fight because I thought that people are going to say, "Well, I can get well by myself."

I don't think that anymore. I'll gladly help anybody all that I can. But if you are caught in a shame cycle of trying to fix this by yourself so that nobody needs to know, you're going to struggle. I suggest that lasting change is possible. I get to see it all the time. I propose that a balanced program of spiritual growth, accountability, the kinds of things in this material, I get to see people change.

And the last two are really exciting for me. Anabaptists who are serious about winning the battle with sexual bondage are willing to invest and pay for your time if it's safe and if they believe that you can help them.

And my story is not a— I'm passionate about this because of God's call on my life, but I don't have a deep sexual bondage story myself. And so I'm here saying you can help people even if you don't have a story of having gone really deep. You don't need that to be able to help other people. Because remember I told you about the Anabaptist addiction equivalent. If you understand your own stuff, you're going to say, "Oh, I get it. I understand how someone can hate what he's doing and go back to it again because he's not understanding what's driving it."

I'm doing mentor training. I'm really excited about this because I saw early on, I said, "This isn't going to work. This isn't going to work for me. I can only work with between 20 and 25 people." And so there's no way that I can help everybody that needs help. So I'm working with the second and third group, and we meet two Monday evenings a month for the first six months and then one evening a month for the second six months. In the first six months, we go through the freedom fight and other materials that I share with them. And then the second six months, we're going to be sharing additional things. And we're going to keep after them, if you understand what I mean.

I want them to not just accept. I want them to not just

take this, learn this stuff. I want them to use it. One of the powerful things is that everybody shares their own story, and they learn to be comfortable with talking about this stuff in a godly, discreet way.

There's a link on my website at hopejourneyguide.com/help/get what you call it. Help slash, not slash. Help others. Sorry. That's mentor training. I'm really excited about that. And someday I'll be able to— someday I'll be able to record this, but that's not there yet. Healthy responses to churches.

I'm going to go over this fast.

What should you do if you find out about a problem in your church? I think leaders are going to model this, and they're going to— and it should be embraced by everybody. 1 Corinthians 6:5, where it talks about a problem in their local church, Paul says twice, "You're proud, you're puffed up, and your glorying is not good."

Please, please don't have that attitude of, "Wow, that guy's really messed up. I'm so glad I'm not like that." We, as a church, should model God's heart toward those kinds of people. 2 Corinthians 2, we should forgive the repentant sinner lest Satan should have advantage of us, and we should restore in the spirit of meekness.

This is stuff that we could take a lot of time with. Do you see that in 1 Corinthians 6:11, Paul says, "And such were some of you," and he talks about sexual sin, "but you were washed. You were sanctified." And now I ask you a question. Do you, as a church, want to be known for looking good, or do you want your church to be known as a safe place for people to get well and to have restored people among us that are comfortable with talking about their story? The men that I work with, I tell them again and again, "You're talking with someone after church, and when it's appropriate, tell them." Say, "I'm so grateful that I'm not struggling with pornography like I used to."

I said, "Expect the silence, and then pretty soon someone will change the subject, and they will go on, and you'll feel dumb. You'll say, 'Why in the world did I ever share?'" But people will come to you afterwards, and they will say, "Tell me more. I'm struggling."

I want to suggest that regardless of how useful somebody is in church, we need to deal with issues to protect potential abuse victims.

The scandals that came out not so long ago were basically because people were very upset because they saw that either on an organizational level or on a church level, when someone is in leadership and we really need that person, we don't deal with them. And that's the reason for the uproar. We should care not just about somebody's usefulness; we should care about protecting potential abuse victims. And please give the wife support. She shouldn't have to carry the load alone.

And don't tell her to have sex more often. This won't fix these problems.

Jesus wasn't afraid of being contaminated by getting too close to sinful people.

Do you remember that story?

A Pharisee invited Jesus to his house, and he didn't treat Jesus with honor and respect. He was checking Jesus out, and he wanted to get closer to Jesus. This is Luke 7. He wanted to get closer to Jesus to figure out whether he's legit or whether he isn't.

And this woman came in. I'm going to insist that she has to have had previous experience with Jesus where Jesus— and she's here. She's crying. She's saying, "Thank you so much. You rescued me from my sinful lifestyle." And do you remember what the religious leader said? Remember, a Pharisee is a strict elite religious person. He said, "It's all over. I know. I was trying to figure out whether this man is a legitimate prophet of God or whether he isn't." He said, "Now I know. If this man were a prophet, he would have known what kind of woman it is." And what's not written in the text, but clearly understood, is that a prophet of God would never let a sinful person get close to them.

And Jesus said, "Whoa, I do know what kind of woman she is, and there's reasons why I'm relating to her because I am rescuing her from her sinful lifestyle. And I pray that there will be men among us who say, 'I want to be like Jesus.'" I want to talk about the Goshen meeting. This is something I'm promoting.

It's the day before the Anabaptist Awareness Symposium. It will be in Goshen, Indiana. You can go to their website, anabaptistawareness.org. You can go there and learn about that event. I'm going to be at that event. But I think there's a huge need for a networking meeting for local leaders, conference of constituency leaders, residential program leaders, lay leaders, anybody that cares about helping men walk in sexual freedom. I want to invite you to a meeting.

I don't know what it's going to look like. You'll find out about—I'll give more details about what's going to happen at hopejourneyguide.com/resources. If it's just a handful of us, we'll meet at a coffee shop in Goshen the day before on January the 26th. We'll meet the day before, and we'll share books, resources. We'll share what we're doing, what's working, and what's not working.

If there's a bunch of us, we'll find a local church. But we need to be networking. We need to be helping each other. This is not about competition. This is not about—yeah, there's no need to compete because there's way too much need for other people. And if you can't make it to the Goshen, Indiana event, if there's interest, I'm going to, at that same place, post information about a future event. I've had people say, "I'm very interested, but I live in Pennsylvania. I'm hoping that the Anabaptist Awareness Symposium will be back in Pennsylvania again, and I'm very interested." But I guess by that, I'm saying that if you're in the Midwest and this is the first time the symposium has been in this far west, you might want to come to that kind of a meeting.

I want it to be a place where we network and where we learn from each other and can be a support to each other.

I propose that the Ezekiel 37 dry bones can become a great army of reapers. I am so excited. I want to see men who have been trapped suddenly become men who are useful in the kingdom.

Let me tell you a story. One of my men, as he was getting better, told me one week, he said, "Arthur, I contacted the mission board." And he said, "I knew before I had no sense. There was no—I shouldn't be contacting the mission board. But now that I'm doing well, I am contacting the mission board, and he is on the mission field in another country." What am I saying? I felt bad that I had to come back from the mission field, but now I'm understanding that my calling from God is to help these men who are dry bones church—what do we call them? Benchwarmers—to raise those men up and to help them to find freedom and victory, and they're going to be able to be a part of the kingdom.