Nick and I chat about his journey of discovering freedom from pornography, dealing with negative sexual history, normalizing the conversation in our churches and homes, behaviors vs. core beliefs, and how Pure Desire ministrieshelps people find freedom from sexual addiction.

Pure Desire Ministry

"My little brain responded to it the way God has designed our brain to react to that, which is a sense of curiosity, intrigue, drawing, even maybe to level a bonding to what I'm seeing.  I'm wanting to see more and yet, at the same time, this repulsion of this is wrong. I can't tell my mom and dad. I don't know what I am doing...Sex came into my life in a way that was both secretive and shameful."

"No one really knew what freedom and hope and lasting transformation looked like, so you go away thinking, 'Okay, this time I am going to try really hard not to go back there,' but because nothing on the inside has really changed it comes back."

"I remember her saying, 'It's not that I hate you, but I hate the way this makes me feel and because I don't know if it is ever going to change...I don't know if I can stay'....Because of that moment of real pain, by God's grace, He used that to direct us into Pure Desire Ministries, where we went through a year of being in groups, both for myself as the one who struggled and for her as the betrayed spouse. And also a year of counseling, that was the first time in my life I sat down with someone who knew the Bible and also understood the human brain and addiction and how all of that didn't have to be contradictory, but it all fit together."

"This was never our plan, but it became, by far, the best discipleship program we ever had"

Setting Us Freeby Nick Stumbo

"It does feel like people are making a moral choice, and they are. I don't want to in any suggest that because we understand the addictive nature of it, because we start to see what happens in the brain, that doesn't in any way excuse us from responsibility, that doesn't mean we can blame it on someone else...But it's trying to help believers see that there's more going on than just try harder and believe more."

"What happens in the church is we see someone's behaviors and we say, 'Stop that! Don't do that anymore! Read your Bible and pray and don't make that decision.' But if we don't help them see the thoughts and feelings that are driving it and even deeper, the core beliefs that in our family of origin or trauma that we've gone through or places we've been wounded...."

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