The Steve Nam Podcast

Whether you watching porn is always the symptom of a deeper root issue. If you want to uncover what's underneath, you're going to have to dive into the thoughts, into the feelings, into the behaviors that cause you to act out. And this is how you're going to get clarity on why you do the things you do, right? If you don't do the inner work, you're never going to understand yourself at a core level, why you think the way you think, why you act the way that you act, why you feel the feelings that you feel, right? This is crucial to creating the real and lasting change that's necessary to walk in freedom from sexual sin.

This is the stuff that we dream of, but we never actually do the work that's necessary for us to get there, right? And most people don't do this work in a whole lifetime, but the truth is you can, you can do this for yourself and you can achieve it very quickly if you will continue day by day to do the inner work. All right. Psalm 51.6 affirms this choice to do this type of work because it says, surely you desire truth in the inner parts.

You teach me wisdom in the in most place. God wants you to go beyond the surface and he wants to transform you from the inside out. Okay.

The real question is, are you willing to courageously look within because it takes courage. It's hard to confront the muck and the mess of stuff that's within us that will force us to actually look at our sin and actually look at the stuff that's causing us to sin. And Oh, maybe that means that we might have to change because we've now looked at it.

Maybe it's going to cause us to adopt a different life, adopt a different lifestyle, adopt different behaviors. And that's what stops us from actually going within and trying to uncover this deep work. And so the question is, are you willing to get radically honest with yourself and with God, right? David prayed this in Psalm 139, 23 through 24.

Search me God and know my heart. Test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there's any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.

We want the life that leads us to real life. We want true freedom. We want to walk in freedom and not in slavery.

And that requires being humble. And that requires persevering through understanding what the state of our heart is like and whether our heart is aligned with the heart of God. Okay.

But what happens when we do that work is on the other side, freedom is there for us. So if you're ready to do the inner work, let's talk about it. The first thing you want to do is you want to start by actually carving out time, take time out of your day and every day do some reflection, whatever this takes for you.

Maybe you're spending 30 minutes, maybe you're spending an hour, maybe you're spending even 10 minutes to get started, but you're journaling, you're praying, you're meditating, you're getting into that secret place with God where he can start working and doing surgery, the stuff inside your heart, right? Where you're really asking God, what is driving my behavior? And you want to start asking yourself these probing questions. And the questions are going to be things like, well, okay, what types of feelings or impulses are arising when I am feeling stressed, when I'm feeling tired, when I'm feeling lonely, when I'm feeling angry. All right.

And you want to get very detailed here. You don't want to just name, okay, well, I'm feeling bored. And so that's what caused me to act out.

You actually have to understand, okay, well, what led me, what were the things, the circumstances that surrounded me getting angry? And it's not to put a blame game on, oh, it's because of my boss that was a jerk to me. So that's why he made me watch porn. That's a whole victim thing.

Oh, this happened to me. And so I had no choice but to watch porn. No, that's not the point of it.

The point is understand the things that led to you watching porn so that you can understand now how to shape, how to get rid of those things if needed, and how to shape your life so that you can create a different outcome for yourself, right? And so you're not just going to name that you're bored. You're going to say, well, okay, well, why was I bored? What were the circumstances surrounding my boredom? And when I felt bored, what started, what were the sensations that I was feeling? Maybe your boss was a jerk to you that day. And so that made you feel angry, frustrated, confused about your future, anxious about your income.

And so you came home that day and you started feeling like you needed some kind of relief. You need to get your mind off something. What were those things that led you into opening yourself up to temptation? And then what were the lies that you started believing that said, okay, well, maybe it's just this one hit.

Maybe it's just this one time. Maybe I'm not actually hurting anybody. And so it's okay to say yes to this temptation in this moment.

So you want to get crystal clear and descriptive about the things that are leading you to that sin. Okay. The second thing that you might want to be asking yourself is, okay, what types of beliefs am I holding onto? What are the things that I believe about myself? What are the things that I'm tolerating that continues to let me go down this spiral that leads me into watching porn again? Okay.

Maybe I was shamed about my desires and I allowed that to be reinforced in my identity. And I felt like I was always getting stuck in the sin of lust. And I believe this lie that I was always going to be stuck because all guys are stuck.

And a youth pastor once told me that 99% of guys do struggle with porn. And the 1% that say that they're not are lying. I used to believe this and that kept me stuck for many years.

I accepted this thing that was a lie, but the word of God told me otherwise that freedom was possible. But I said, no, I'm going to choose to believe worldly wisdom, not God's wisdom. And so you want to start to uncover these things.

What are the things that are deep rooted inside your mind, inside your behaviors, inside your feelings, your emotional, what's going on inside your heart? What are all those things? You really have to get real and honest and understand the rawness of what's actually happening there. Describe those things, get crystal clear about it. Okay.

And then once you have that full picture of what's going on, the next step is to start to establish those pillars that you can have of support around it. You want to start building barriers of support around you. And the first relationship that I would suggest that you establish is going to be with a trusted mentor who has been through the sin of pornography and who has not just been there, but has been out of it.

And so maybe this is your pastor at church. Maybe this is a brother in Christ. Maybe this is a counselor.

Maybe this is a coach. Okay. What I would advise you not to do is to go randomly share it with other guys that you don't know if they've actually been out of that sin.

Because a lot of times we try to find just accountability partners. We don't look for necessary mentors who we know have achieved freedom from porn and who are walking in that freedom. And so we go to an accountability partner.

And a lot of times they're stuck in the same place that we're at. And we are counting on them to be someone who lifts us up and continues to check in with us and continues to make sure that we're on the right path. But what you have to realize is that if they're in that same place too, a lot of times what happens is the check-ins will naturally fall off because what it forces that accountability partner to do is then it forces them to confront their own sin.

And it's hard for them to do that. And they don't know the way out. And so they're just kind of saying, okay, well, if I talk to him, I've got to get real about myself and I'm not really there yet.

And maybe I don't want to be there yet. Or maybe I feel bad about checking in with them because it's going to not just cause me to look at my own sin, but then admit to them that I'm currently not there, or I don't really have the answer to them. If they're in shame too, it's hard for two people that are in shame, that are not walking in freedom, that don't know the way help to lead each other out, right? Out of the sin.

And sometimes it's our pastors aren't even there too, right? So what you really want to do is you want to talk to somebody who you know is free of porn. You know that without that, you can actually ask them. And if you don't know, you can ask somebody, assuming that you think that they're willing to have the talk with you.

When you talk with them, Hey, I'm struggling. And I'm looking for someone who has really gone through that and overcome that. And there's not actually watching porn anymore, not acting out, not masturbating is stuck in sexual sin.

And you can ask them, is that you? Have you experienced something like that? And hopefully they're honest with you. And if they're honest and they say, you know, I'm not actually there yet myself. I'm, I still struggle with that.

Maybe you can ask them, what do you happen to know? Anybody would you recommend me to talk to anybody? Is there someone that you know, that you would recommend me to go and confide in that, you know, for, for sure that they've been through that and that they've been become out of that. That's how you can find somebody who is going to be the right mentor for you. You don't want it to be a case of the blind meeting a blind.

You want to go and confide in somebody, tell your story to somebody and ask for support, establish the pillar with somebody who you know is actually a pillar and not somebody who's on shaky foundation. You want someone who's a pillar of faith and a pillar of freedom in your life. Okay.

So, so talk to somebody about your struggle, about the things that you uncovered in your reflection, and you can share that your story with them. You realize these are some triggers for me. These are some things that I would appreciate if you could encourage me or maybe show me some of the things that you did.

If you experienced something similar that can help me to maybe change my mindset, maybe change the way that I process things that I can understand what type of safeguards I need to establish so that I don't act out and I don't continue down the way that I behave that way that I've behaved in the past because it's something I really desire to change. Okay. You've now done the deep work.

You've brought that to a mentor and you've asked for support there. Now, likely together, you guys can both talk about, okay, well, what are the things inside or around my environment that I need to change? The fastest way to change your behavior, the fastest way to change the way that you act out is to change the environment that is around you. Maybe that environment means friends that you're hanging out with.

Maybe that environment means the actual physical location that you're at, but you need to change the environment that continues you in the rhythms that you continue to stay stuck in. Okay. Are there unhealthy dynamics in your life that you need changed? Maybe it's a certain relationship with a friend who is just tolerating porn.

They're cool with porn. Maybe they're the ones who are showing you, sending you pictures of hot girls or whatever it is. Maybe it's also the type of environment where you, okay, every time I'm in my bedroom, that's where I just bring the phone to my bedroom and I go down this rabbit hole.

Oh, I'm just going to check what's hot on Twitter. And actually, then it ends up looking at hot girls or something like that. Right.

But you have to have certain boundaries with technology, with social media, all those different things. And don't worry, you don't need to figure this alone. This is why we first established those pillars where you have support for someone that can actually keep you accountable to actually flushing all this other stuff in your environment out of your life.

Right. So the first thing that we do is we get in touch with the lies that we've believed with the feelings that we continue to focus on that leave us frustrated, that leave us anxious, that leave us susceptible to becoming open to temptation and to giving in and acting out. Okay.

Once we have done some of that deep work of reflection, we then take it to a trusted mentor, somebody who has overcome porn and who knows the way out, who can lead us into the way out. Right. Not somebody who is going to be just some random buddy, somebody that you know at church that you say, Hey, can you be my accountability partner? It's better than nothing, but it's really unfortunately not going to get you where you want to go because that person doesn't know how to lead you to the place that they've never gone.

Right. And then the third thing is now that you have that support in place, now you want to get accountability around getting rid of all the things that lead you to that sin, establishing healthy boundaries and establishing healthy safeguards, but not just pruning out all the unhealthy activities, but now replacing that with new life giving actions, life giving habits, life giving routines. And that is going to be the last step.

And so what does this look like? This looks like maybe you're getting in touch with your fitness. Maybe you're getting in touch with exercise. Maybe you're spending more time in nature.

Maybe you're picking up a new creative hobby. Maybe you're reading more of the word. Maybe it's all of that.

Right. But you want to fill your mind. You want to fill your time with things that are going to bring life and start producing the right fruit out of you.

Fruit that is coming from you walking in the spirit and not continue to please your flesh as you've done in the past. Right. And so before you eliminated those things that gave you access to temptation, you're not just going to get rid of it and just leave it there because when there's that void, a lot of times you just fill it with what you're used to, fill it with what's comfortable, fill it with the old.

What you want to do is you want to now replace it with the things that are leading you towards the things of God, the things that are pleasing to God. What types of, there's a ton of activities that you could do. There's a ton of ways that you could fill your time, ton of ways that you could fill your mind with things that please God and that feed your spirit and that don't keep you rooted in your flesh really.

And just focused on the things that please the flesh. Okay. And so what is this going to take? This is going to take you going back to that first step and being willing to face what is going on with you right now.

And that takes courage. That takes being willing to possibly make a change in your life soon and being open to what that might mean. And maybe even before that, that might mean really being broken for the sin that you continue to waste your life with being in fear of God, having a healthy fear of God, having a healthy fear of how your life ends up.

If you continue in this being real about the death that surrounds your life, when you continue in sin, what does that mean for your marriage? What does that mean for your family, for your kids, for your income, for your, for your potential, right? If you don't actually change, this isn't going to get better. This is only going to get worse. But if you're willing to humble yourself under the mighty hand of God and ask him to reveal the sin that's in you, to search your heart and help you to see those thoughts, those anxious thoughts, and to lead you in the way that leads to life, God will do that for you.

And he'll show you, he'll lead you to that mentor. He'll lead you to that person who has been freed and who can show you freedom so that you can become that guy that then brings other men, other people who are lost into freedom. And once you have that mentor, now you can start doing the where you get rid of all the things that have allowed and perpetuated sin in your life.

You can start to establish healthy boundaries, and you can start to replace that with new habits, with new routines, with new life giving activities that lead you to righteousness, that please God, that take away all the carnal and fleshly living in your life that causes you to go back to porn. And so that is how you can start to do the inner work and uncover the reasons why you're actually watching porn. Porn is just a symptom of what's going on underneath.

And once you do that inner work and you start getting real about what needs to change and you start making those changes, that is how you walk in freedom. It's not easy. It's going to be difficult, but it is so worth it.

Okay? You were not made to be a slave to sin. You were made to be a man who walks in freedom and in purpose. And by God's grace, you can start living that abundant life that Jesus came to give you today.

And so I pray that God would empower you. He would break you free of every chain that keeps you stuck in the center of pornography. I pray that you realize your time is now.

Do not tolerate any more of this sin in your life. Now is the time for change. And now is the time for freedom.

I pray that God bless you, brother. And I'll talk to you in the next video.