#006: Satan's Addiction Playbook|God's Healing Playbook

Welcome to the Courage Reclaim podcast, where our mission is to help Christian men break free from what holds them back, fall madly in love with Jesus, and become the leaders he's called and created us to be.

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I think so often people, myself included at a young age, assume Satan's temptation of us is haphazard. It's not. Satan has a number of playbooks that he runs like clockwork. Now, in over a decade worth of addiction and many years worth of being in the journey of healing, pursuing freedom, and now being in a position where I have the opportunity to connect with men who share this struggle. What I have learned is for one of the playbooks that Satan has, that he uses for a lot of men is he uses our emotions, which are good, godly things, but twist them into triggers for bad things. So for example, a playbook.

Step one start by degrading sex, which is the pinnacle of human intimacy to pornography.

Step two ensure as many people are exposed to it at the youngest age possible, ideally before puberty. In that way, they go pursuing the dopamine that comes with the high of pursuing that with the emotions they're feeling while their emotions are at their height.

Step three make it into the pretend solution for a variety of emotions. For example, stressed hard day of work. That's a quick way to escape feeling alone and like nobody really cares for you. Boom. Instant Access. Feeling like life is futile. Boom. Instant distraction. See, part of why it has such a strong grip on so many people is because it twists itself in our mind to be a pretend solution for real emotions that we are feeling.

Step four add a few traumatizing experiences to convince us that it is not safe to confess to other people. I know I have a few of those, and I would imagine that most people who struggle do too.

Step five Hypersexualized society so that you can't escape it. Temptation is everywhere. And then it feels like, how could I possibly experience victory? Because one I haven't up until this point and two triggers are everywhere. How do you escape that?

Satan has a playbook, but here's the thing. Here's what I didn't realize at the time because no one around me was talking about it. God has a playbook too. Now, don't get me wrong, I was reading the Bible and praying more as was instructed. The problem was Scripture talks specifically about what it takes to pursue freedom. I was reading the Bible. I wasn't implementing core verses that are really behind what God says is the prescription to pursue healing, and we'll get more into that beyond read the Bible and pray more. What can I do to break my porn, sex, or lust addiction? We've talked a lot about the heavy weight of sexual sin, and there is heavy weight to be felt about it. But what happens when we feel that heavy weight, but we lack any level of practical steps of how to pursue healing that can be super defeating.

It's like, okay, so I stepped down from my position, but now what? So I am going to turn our attention to first John one five, and I'm going to lay out three very practical steps from Scripture, two of which come from this passage, as far as what pursuing healing, because that's ultimately what is behind any form of addiction is a need for healing. So first John one starting at verse five, “this is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.” Pause. Verse seven. “But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another.” How often particularly for guys. But frankly this category, if you will, of sin is so isolating that how often do we long for real friends community that we do more than just watch football with, but actually know us to the core of our being? That is a vital part of the human experience. That's a vital part of being a church.

And yet it says right here in first John, what it takes to truly have fellowship with one another. And that is walk in the light. And I can tell you from personal experience, one of the things that kept me in the dark was not having that fellowship with other believers on a real level. We must walk in the light. Let's continue reading verse eight. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. Verse nine “if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Okay, boom! Cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Is that not what we want? Sexual sin. Other sin. That's part of the sanctifying process. Sexual sin. It's not one of those you're in or you're out just like any other sin. It's a healing process. It's a sanctification process. Don't we want to be healed from our sin? And yet it tells us right there what is required if we confess our sins. Now, let me ask, who is John writing to? Was he writing to me personally? No, it wasn't alive yet. Was he writing to any individual? No. He was writing to the church. What John is saying here is if we confess to each other. Yes, confessing to God is a vital importance, but confessing to each other is what ultimately is going to lead to the forgiveness of our sins, along with, again, Christ, but also the building up of the fellowship that we so desperately crave.

When we're talking about the importance of confession or exposing our sin, are we talking about exposing it to God? Are we talking about exposing it to if there's a spouse in the picture to the spouse, or are we talking about to others in the church? So I'm going to take each of those one by one, exposing it to God. God already knows. However, Scripture makes it clear we are called to confess, not only confess acknowledging that we did something, but also repent. That means turn away from it and pursue the Lord. Yes, we confess to the Lord. Now I'm going to skip over to talking about to one another. John talks about it right here. The vital importance of confessing with one another. Now, the challenge, obviously, is it can be so hard to know, okay, if I were to tell someone that I'm struggling with fill in the blank, are they going to shame me or give me the response that Ryan impersonated the gasp? You struggle with this. It's like, how do you know it can take time to build up to that level of trust, to be willing to confide in a person of your sin? And I'm not saying that you shouldn't build up to that. However, that is one of the core tenets of why the sexual integrity exists. These are a group of broken people.

On one side, we have people who are struggling with the sin, and on another side, people who are struggling because their spouse betrayed them. These people all can relate to where you have been. They're not going to. You did what? No. We're all in it together. We are all at a place where we're going to connect with each other in confidentiality and encouraging each other. No shame, no judgment. We are all there to pursue healing. That is a safe expression of confessing our sins within the body of Christ. That is what these groups are all about, manifesting the gospel within the context of sexual sin marriage. Now going back to what about within marriage? Within marriage, the goal, the purpose of marriage is to reflect. And this is the mystery in the passage that Ryan was reading and preaching on today (Eph 5). The mystery of the gospel is that Jesus wants to marry his broken church. And that is exactly what marriage within a man and a woman is supposed to reflect. Now, how are we going to have unity? Just like Christ wants with his church? How are we going to have unity within our marriage. If there is a secret, especially a secret that is wreaking havoc on our unity, whether we're aware of it or not. So is it of importance? Yes. If we want to promote unity and therefore have our marriage fulfill the purpose that God instituted marriage for? Yes, it's vitally important that both spouses are intimately aware of who they are fighting against the evil one, as well as what they are fighting for their marriage.

I put it this way if, let's say in our example, in the midst of my struggle, my addiction, if I am going to leave the back door to the house open of our marriage, knowing that there is a lion prowling about, seeking to destroy our marriage and us individually, don't I? At least if I'm going to be the one opening the door, don't I at least owe it to my wife to let her know? Hey, I should have protected our marriage. I have failed in this way and give her the opportunity to do what steps she needs to take to seek healing, to seek protection, and to the extent that she can to protect our marriage. Of course, there are times, and I will say as a caveat, there are times, especially early on in the disclosure process where sin is coming forth. There are certainly times where the betrayed spouse will say, I don't want to know. I can't bear the weight. And we need to create space for that. We also need to acknowledge, though, that healing as a unit is going to require healing on the individual level, but also healing of the unit as a whole. So if for a time accountability happens exclusively, like in my case in a group of other guys, and I don't confess to my wife if that is what she requests, not me, but she then there's a level of that's fine, but both parties should be working toward unity in every area of life, especially sex, which is supposed to be a celebration of that unity.

So three types of confession, all of which have vital importance. Now, in addition to community and confession. The third is understanding. I've been a part of groups in which it's like we all sit in a circle. Hey, what did you do this week? Okay, let's pray about it. Honest to goodness, more harm was done than good because we just kind of got used to allowing ourselves like there was no encouragement and there was no further understanding of how God wired us, created us, and how what the healing journey looks like if we have a trigger of loneliness. What are we going to do about it? Because I can speak from experience, in the midst of feeling some of these emotions, some of these triggers, I'm not consciously thinking, how am I going to mess up today? Literally, in the thick of addiction, I could have been reading the Bible one minute, one minute later acting out in sexual sin. It is imperative that we understand who we are fighting against, and how Satan has rewired our brains, and how we can wire them back by the grace of God through the gospel, through doing what Scripture says as we've been laying out tonight.