The Steve Nam Podcast

Let's talk about lies that you believe about porn that are keeping you stuck, okay? The first one is that you feel like you need porn or you need to masturbate for sexual release. So you might feel like you can't live without porn, you need to masturbate, but the truth is that no one actually needs it, okay? I know that sounds crazy, but it's not a requirement. You don't need it to learn about sex.

You don't need it to keep your relationship exciting. You don't need it to make sure you're not missing out on anything, okay? What's happening here is that you've become addicted to the dopamine rush that you get from watching porn, and so your brain gets a payoff from it, and so it's craving it. It's because you're hooked, okay? This is why quitting porn can be so challenging.

But what you're gonna come to learn is that your emotions, your spiritual well-being, your brain chemistry, all of those things have been impacted by porn. And so your brain right now, yes, it's chemically dependent on it, and that's partially why at some level you're operating under this lie, or your brain is telling you, well, if I don't believe this lie, then what am I supposed to believe, right? But the truth is you can live without porn, but you need to start on the journey of becoming free before you can actually feel the truth of this, all right? You'll realize that you don't actually need porn. You don't need to masturbate, and that is the truth.

For now, you need to know that truth, stop believing the lie, and start operating, realizing that you don't need to release your sexual energy in those ways, using those vehicles, all right? And the second lie about porn that might be keeping you stuck right now is that you feel like you are beyond or past the point of change, okay? Listen, if you feel defeated and hopeless about ever becoming free from porn, I am with you, okay? I have been there, especially after countless attempts to stop watching porn and failing over and over again, it messes with you. It tells you that, look, maybe you're just damaged goods. Maybe you've messed yourself up too much.

You start telling yourself, maybe I've gotten so far deep in my addiction. I'm past this point that I'd ever thought I would be, and maybe it's never possible to recover from this, right? But I want you to know, friend, change is possible, and it first starts with dropping this lie from your thinking and opening yourself up to the possibility that, look, you are never beyond the point of God's love and God's power that can rescue you and can save you, and that is not just a possibility, that is the truth. You have to open up.

You have to decide that it is time for a change. You're not gonna do it on your own again. You're gonna come out of hiding.

You're gonna connect with people who have become free from this addiction, and you are going to start believing the truth, and the truth is that God is with you and that you can never escape and you can never run or fall too far from his hand over your life, all right? And the third lie that you might be believing that's keeping you stuck is that you are alone in your battle with porn addiction, okay? It might feel like no one else has the same problem or no one else could understand your struggle with porn, but it's just simply not true. If you are stuck alone in an addiction and you're hiding it from everyone else, then yes, look, you have built yourself a self-imposed prison and you've put yourself in isolation, and so that's causing you to think that no one else would understand your situation or they would reject you if they ever knew or they'd think less of you and your pride would have to go, and so you protect yourself and you've built this wall and you don't let anyone in, and that's exactly what the enemy wants. He wants you to keep it hidden.

He wants you to feel lonely, wants you to remain afraid and stuck in your chains, doing it alone, but the truth is, my friend, you are not alone. You are not the only one who deals with the sex addiction, and I think deep down you know that. We've all got our own issues, and when you share your experience or you hear the experiences of others, when you open up and you actually connect with somebody else, you discover that many people are in or have been in the same boat as you, and the core issues that drive addiction to porn are actually all pretty much the same.

You start to realize, hey, I'm not the only one who actually deals with this stuff or deals with these desires or deal with these temptations, and once you bring your sin into the light, the darkness, the temptations, the power that your addiction has over you, it starts to loosen. It starts to get weaker. It starts to break, all right, but it's not just about connecting on the struggling part.

The important thing is that you're gonna learn that there is a way out, and there are people who will walk with you and lead you into freedom. You do not have to do it alone. You are not alone, and if you keep yourself stuck and alone and continue to believe this lie, then you will continue to stay stuck in your addiction.

All right, and the fourth lie you might be believing is that you have to suppress your desires or pretend that they're not there, deny them if you wanna be free from porn, and I wanna be very clear here. Suppressing your desires is not the solution, okay? God created you with those desires, and what we wanna do instead is let God redeem them for his purposes. When you understand God's love and the reasons why you have these desires, what we're gonna do is we're gonna shift our desires away from using them on porn and using them towards what is more redeeming.

He does not want you to suppress your desires. He wants you to use them for his good and for his purposes, and the truth is trying to ignore or overcome our desires, we don't overcome our desires, by the way. We overcome our addictions, okay? Trying to ignore or pretend that your desires are not there, it's only gonna lead you to frustration and confusion, okay? And the problem is not that we have sexual energy.

It's that we have learned to use or to misuse our sexual energy in a way that harms us, but the truth is you can channel your sexual energy productively, and you can use it for God's glory, but you've got to learn how to see sex and how to see your sexual desires in a whole new way, and the fifth lie that you might be believing about porn that's keeping you stuck right now, I mean, I believed this ever since I was a teenager. It's the biggest lie I ever told myself, okay? It was that I could never be completely free from porn because all guys at some level are struggling with it. That's what I told myself.

That was a lie, and I was convinced that if you surveyed any group of guys, 95% of those guys would admit to using porn, and then the other 5% would definitely be lying. They would definitely just be afraid to fess up to it because of how surveys work or whatever it was, but I simply didn't know a single person who was free, and if I'd ever hear of some weirdo online professing that God delivered them or something like that, I just refused to believe it. It seemed so out of reach and so far-fetched and so just impossible in my mind, and it wasn't until I started seeing a lot more accounts of people that are collectively trying to give up porn and appearing successful at it that I started looking into it, and I opened myself up to a different possibility for myself that maybe I had it wrong and that maybe freedom was actually possible, and ironically, I'm now one of those weirdos who can say that porn is not my default, but it took me being open to the possibility that maybe I had it wrong all along, all right? Well, I hope that training was helpful.

I would love to hear your thoughts on it, and I'll talk to you very soon.