Blazing Grace Radio

Greg Reid is a minister and former private investigator who has trained in over 250 criminal justice classes on occult crimes and crimes against children. He is also a survivor of ritual and sexual abuse in his youth with a powerful story of how God sets captives free. In this show Greg shares his story and discusses how the occult has taken ground in every corner of society and infiltrated the church, the Harry Potter movies, and more.

Phil Poeschl, the director of Safer Surfing in Vienna, Austria, calls in and shares his story. Safer Surfing is a ministry partner with Blazing Grace that publishes Mike’s books in German.

Most of the people who come to us for help are married, in an age range from their forties to their sixties. By then the damage has been done and their marriage is in pieces. By God’s grace we see a lot of healing, but we need to go beyond damage control and get to the roots of the porn epidemic. Most men and women are getting hooked on pornography anywhere between ages 8 to 10. This show looks at the need to equip our youth before they’re exposed to pornography.

How do we receive the love, grace, and forgiveness of a God we can’t see? When a man or woman has been trapped in shame, sin, or the lies of the enemy, receiving the love of God can seem like a mystery, even hopeless if we’ve allowed our failures and sin to define us. In this show Mike dives into the process of receiving the gift of grace, beginning with the issues that block the flow of God’s love into the heart.

Unfortunately many Christians are told “Stop it!” is the answer when they go for help for freedom from sin. Telling someone “Stop it!” ignores the battles with the flesh and the enemy, fails to equip the sexually broken on how to be an overcomer, and can drive them further into isolation. It also reveals the arrogance and lack of love of the person who dispenses such advice so quickly. In this episode Mike shows how we can help the sexually broken.

This radio program is PG-13. Parents strongly cautioned – some material may be inappropriate for children under the age of 13.

Jesus’s mission was to comfort those who mourn, bind up the brokenhearted, proclaim liberty to captives, and open prison doors for those who are bound. For those who want more than status quo Christianity has to offer blazing Grace Radio begins now. And here is your host, Mike Genung.

Hey, Mike Genung here, and welcome back to Blazing Grace Radio. Good to have you along. Coming to you from Phoenix, Arizona, Valley of the Sun. And I want to start out today with some announcements of some events we have coming up.

On April 24 – so coming up just in a few weeks – we’re holding a From Porn to Grace Conference in Porterville, California – that’s a little north of Bakersfield. It’s going to be held at the Porterville Adventist Church on Saturday, April 24. It’ll go from 3:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m., and these conferences that we do are for men and women, and for anyone from youth all the way into their seventies, and anyone who wants to dig into what the whole recovery and healing process is about for those who struggle with porn addiction, or do want to heal from it. It’s not just 3 hours of me speaking, because you’ll forget 95% of what I say ten minutes after you walk out the door. But there’s also times we break up, I’ll break you up into small groups of two or three and have people sharing with each other and praying for each other. So it’s really a powerful time. We’ve done these conferences – we’ve been doing these conferences for several years in the US and in Europe. It’s always a blessing to those who show up, so I really hope you can make it. We’re also talking to other people about conferences in other areas, and we’re always open to doing a conference outside the US. So this is not just American thing only.

Then in May, around May 20, we have our Wives’ Retreat, and that will be held in Bula, Colorado. It’s in a beautiful place, about an hour and a half southwest of Colorado Springs. And it’s a small retreat, meaning we don’t do more than seven or eight women, but it’s very powerful. Ladies, we equip you on what it looks like to deal with triggers, it’s a time of healing, a time of rest, a time of sharing with other women, other wives who are going through what you’ve been going through with the pain and trauma of your husband’s porn and sex addiction. So I want to encourage you to… if you’re a wife listening to this, consider coming to that and you can go to the website for more details at blazinggrace.org.

Every Wednesday now we’ve begun a Zoom prayer meeting, because right now where we are, prayer is so powerful and so much needed. So we built an online prayer community, I’m calling it the Rogue Church. So every Wednesday morning at 9:00 a.m. US Central Time, it goes for 1 hour. People show up and we pray for each other and pray for our countries. We’ve been having people from all over participate, not just the US, but we’ve got people from Canada, in the UK, and Germany, and other countries show up, and also in Africa, too. So it’s really what I hoped, is it would be an international prayer community. So if you’re hungry for being around a group of believers or community believers who have a heart for prayer, then that’s for you, too.

So today I’m going to get into how we can help the sexually broken. So if somebody comes to you and they’re torn up – either a man or a wife – and they want help, what do we do and how do we approach them? So I’m going to preface this by sharing a six minute audio clip that gives you an example of what NOT to do. In this clip, it’s around 15 years ago, Bob Newhart is a counselor, and so I’m going to go ahead and roll that clip now.

[BEGIN AUDIO CLIP]

Dr. Switzer?

Yes. Come in. I’m just washing my hands.

I’m Catherine Bigman. Janet Carlyle referred me.

Oh yes, fear of being buried alive in a box.

Yes, that’s me. Should I lay down?

Oh, no, we don’t do that anymore. Just have a seat. And let me tell you a bit about our billing. I charge $5 for the first five minutes, and then absolutely nothing after that. How does that sound?

That sounds great. Too good to be true, as a matter of fact.

Well, I can almost guarantee you that our session won’t last the full five minutes. Now, we don’t do any insurance billing, so you would either have to pay in cash or by check.

Wow. Okay.

And I don’t make change.

All right.

And… go!

Go… What?

Tell me about the problem that you wish to address.

Oh. Okay. Well, I have this fear of being buried alive in a box. I just, I start thinking about being buried alive, and I begin to panic.

Has anyone ever tried to bury you alive in a box?

No. No, but truly, thinking about it does make my life horrible. I mean, I can’t go through tunnels, or be in an elevator, or in a house, anything boxy.

So what you’re saying is you’re claustrophobic?

Yes. Yes, that’s it.

All right, well, let’s go, Catherine. I’m going to say two words to you right now. I want you to listen to them very, very carefully. Then I want you to take them out of the office with you and incorporate them into your life.

Should I write them down?

Well, if it makes you comfortable. It’s just two words, we find most people can remember them.

Okay.

You ready?

Yes.

Okay. Here they are. Stop it!

I’m sorry?

Stop it!

Stop it?

Yes, S-T-O-P. New word: I-T.

So what are you saying?

You know, it’s funny. I say two simple words, and I cannot tell you the amount of people who say exactly the same thing you’re saying. You know, this is not Yiddish, Catherine, this is English. Stop it.

So I should just stop it?

There you go. You don’t want to go through life being scared of being buried alive in a box, do you? I mean, that sounds frightening.

It is.

Well then stop it!

I can’t. I mean, it’s been with me since childhood…

No, no, we don’t go there. Just stop it.

So I should just stop being afraid of being buried alive in a box?

You got it. Good girl. Well, it’s only been three minutes, so that will be $3.

I only have a five, so…

Well, I don’t make change.

Then I guess I’ll take the full five minutes.

Fine. All right. Well, what other problems would you like to address?

I’m bulimic. I stick my fingers down my throat.

Stop it! What are you a nut of some kind? Don’t do that.

But I’m compelled to. My mom used to call me fattie…

Oh, no, we don’t go there.

But I’ve been having these dreams…

No, we don’t go there, either.

But my horoscope did say…

We definitely don’t go there. Just stop it. What else?

Well, I have self-destructive relationships with men.

Stop it! You want to be with a man, don’t you?

Yes.

Well, then stop it. Don’t be such a big baby.

I wash my hands a lot.

That’s all right.

It is?

I wash my hands all the time. There’s a lot of germs out there. Yeah, don’t worry about that one.

I’m afraid to drive.

Well, stop it! How are you going to get around? Get in the car and drive, you… you kook! Stop it!

You stop it! You stop it!

What’s the problem,

I don’t like this! I don’t like this therapy at all! You’re just telling me to stop it!

And you don’t like that?

No, I don’t!

So you think we’re moving too fast, is that it?

Yes. Yes, I do.

All right, then let me give you ten words that I think will clear everything up for you. Do you want to get a pad and a pencil for this one?

Alright.

Are you ready? Here are the ten words. Stop it or I’ll bury you alive in a box!

[END AUDIO CLIP]

So that is a rather humorous example of, unfortunately, what we see and we hear a lot in churches. What I mean by that is people who come to us for help and they’ve gone to a Church or a counselor, and they pretty much get that same treatment where they’re just told to “Stop it”, and “This is what the Bible says”, and then “If you can’t stop it, then maybe you’re a unbeliever, maybe you’re a back slider, maybe you got a big sin problem”.

I would not be bringing this up if this was not happening often. This is not something we hear maybe once every six months, every year. We hear a constant flow of these words that people have come to us for help. They’ve been wounded and injured when they tried to share their porn addiction – or whatever their problem is – to their Church/pastor/counselor, and they were just told to stop it or shove it under the rug. When that happens in the context of trying to overcome sin, it’s very damaging, because then you force the person into a shell and deeper into isolation and shame.

I’ve experienced this first hand, back in the early ’90s, when I first started trying to break free – or trying to figure out what breaking free from porn was – because nobody was really offering much in the way of help for that. I went to a marriage conference, and then during a break, I approached the guy who was the pastor who was leading it. As I approached him, he’s got this big beaming smile on his face. I’d been binging on porn every day, so I was just soaked in shame and embarrassment and had never told anyone. I walk up to him, and I tell him – and I mumble the words, “I got this problem with pornography”. And all of a sudden the smile vanishes and he yells at me, “Just stop doing it! Just stop!”

So that skit is a perfect fit for exactly what is happening, unfortunately, in a lot of churches, and it’s very damaging. It’s not only to those who are struggling with porn or any type of sin, but it’s also, for example, for wives whose husbands are ensnared and stuff. So one wife told me a story where she went to a Church for help, and they just told her, “All you need to do is forgive your husband and get over it and move on”, which basically what they were telling her is “Your heart does not matter. The wound does not matter. All we want to do is just give you two or three words and a the Bible verse and you need to leave”. And she told me that she even got “yelled at” – was her words – by the woman’s Ministry leader. When this lady is sharing her story with me, I just sat there and listened. That’s all I did, and she just broke down sobbing. I watched her. This happened 20 years ago – that she went to the one Church – and she just broke down sobbing in front of me, and she poured out 20 years worth of pain that she had kept compressed in her heart, because basically the answer she got from a Christian was, “You just need to shove your feelings down your throat, and deal with the fact, and submit to your husband”.

So these things get me passionate and worked up, because there is a very thick vein of spiritual abuse that runs from the Church. The root of this is pride and arrogance, because, “How dare you come to me, in my Church that has the right theology and doctrine, and look at all that we’re doing that’s right. And yet you’ve got this problem, and I don’t want to deal with that. And I don’t really know what I’m talking about or how to help you. So I’m just going to tell you a Bible verse and tell you to shut it down”.

So if “stop it” was the answer, we would not need the Holy Spirit, we would not need the Cross, we would not need prayer. What did Jesus do right before Gethsemane – or not right before, right – during Gethsemane. He told the Apostles, “Get on your knees and pray because the Spirit is willing but the flesh is weak so that the battle with the flesh is brutal and miserable”. Plus you’ve got the spiritual battle as well, and then you’ve got the heart wounds and all that goes along with that. Some churches make a big mistake when they say, “Well, we don’t go there with the whole family of origin things”, which I say, “Oh really? Why did God give us a glimpse into Jacob’s family, and to the destructive force it had into Joseph’s brothers when Jacob favored Joseph over them?” So Reuben had sex with his father’s concubine. Judah was having sex with prostitutes. So right there we were just given those two stories of two men who dealt with, at some level, a family father wound by turning to sexual immorality. So you do have to go there if you want to help people, you have to look at the wounds and the lies and all that’s going on with them.

So what I want to give you now is what you can do if somebody comes to you and who is torn up in shame – and this could be a man or a wife, it’s not one side or the other. This applies to everything somebody comes to you with. The first rule is just to listen. In James 1:19 we’re told, “Let everybody be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger”. You can make a big difference in people’s life if you would just stop talking and listen, and let them pour their heart out. Even if they’re saying angry words or they’re cussing, let them vent. Don’t interrupt them and try and correct them, or correct their language, or correct their theology. They’re talking from a wounded, shamed, fearful – or wherever they are – heart. Let them vent and give them that safe space.

We do two-day intensives here in Arizona, and the first day what I tell them is “I just want you to tell me your whole story, and take your time. There’s no rush”. And usually they take anywhere from 45 minutes to 3 hours to share their entire story. In many cases they tell me, “This is the first time I’ve ever shared my whole story with anyone, ever”. Sometimes they’re looking at me as they’re sharing all this stuff and some bloody things that they’ve done, that they’re ashamed of, and they’re looking at me and I can tell by the look in their eye what they’re really saying is “Are you going to judge me? Are you a safe person? Is this a safe place?” So I just listen. Maybe I’ll ask a question every once in awhile, but most of it’s just 95% of me listening to them and showing them that I’m tracking and that I care about them and not trying to fix them. That in itself can be so healing. I talked about the Wives’ Retreat earlier, and first thing we do first night – the Wives’ Retreat – all the women share their story. There’s a lot of crying, but there’s also peace afterward. I hear the same thing repeatedly, “This is the first place that I’ve had to share that’s safe where I could share my story”. Just sharing their story is just incredibly healing to them.

Sometimes we get wrapped up with this idea that you’ve got to have all the answers and no, you don’t. Sometimes when you try to force the answers, you just make it worse. Listening to another person can be a gift to them. These people that we’re talking to, often they try to go to a Church or somewhere for help. They got cut off or ostracized or given trite answers or, “Well, you’re in sin”. If you just listen, it would make a big difference.

Remember Job’s three friends after Job had lost everything. He lost family members. He then wiped out, lost his business. He had his health… he was in severe pain from the sores on him. I think it was the first week his three friends sat with him and didn’t say a single word. If they would have just done that, they would have helped him. But instead, they opened their big mouths and they get in a theological debate, and they basically add more sorrow to his pain. At the end of the book, God convicts Job’s three friends for opening their mouths in areas they didn’t know what they were talking about.

So another thing is ask questions. So when somebody’s sharing with you, and you’re listening to them, and they’re done – give them the free space to share it all – ask them questions. Don’t go into preaching mode. “Can you tell me more about why this hurts you so much? Where is your husband today? How long have you been acting out? What did your parents say to you when they discovered this?” When you ask somebody questions, you show them that you’re listening and that you care and that you’re focused and it’s not about you. This is one of the big problems with people who are trying to help others, is there’s too much of them involved. You don’t want us to make this about you. If you’re helping somebody, it’s about the person who’s come to you. So take your focus off of yourself and the way you perceive their life should be, or how it should go, or what their answers might be. Focus on getting to know them, focus on having them share their heart with you, and focus on you being a safe person.

Oftentimes – not often – but some people, what they do is they pull the Bible out and they start shooting verses and they haven’t taken the time to get to know the other person. So before you go there with giving out advice, take the time to earn their trust by having at least some form of a relationship. You can do this quickly just by doing what I said, by listening and showing that you care, and, at some level, empathizing.

Now, if somebody says, “You know what I love pornography. I love doing it every day”, okay, now it’s time for some confrontation. But 95% of the time, people are coming to us, that is not needed. They’re already torn up, ripped apart in shame and fear and doubt and all the other things are going through. So just let them share with you, and then take the time to get to know them, and look for their heart.

So the way this works with helping people is we don’t apply the truth until we’ve taken the time to get to know them, to get them to share their heart, and look for their heart when they’re speaking, look for lies that they might have bought into about themselves. So what I do when I’m working with people is after a while and they share the story, I’ll start moving into “What do you really believe? Not just not what you know, what do you really believe?” Because once I can get to the lies that have hidden themselves in their hearts, then I can move in toward healing. Because that’s where you take them into the truth. That’s when we apply the truth, after we’ve taken time to know them, after we’ve listened to them, after we’ve asked them questions. So the truth comes often later on in the process, once we’ve established some kind of relationship with them.

So if somebody comes to you, you can do a lot of good just by listening. You don’t got to have the answers. In fact, there’s times I’m talking to people when I’m asked at the same time simultaneously, I’m praying and saying, “Okay, God, I need wisdom with this”. I don’t rely on myself necessarily for everything. I rely on Him for wisdom and discernment. So you let Him speak through you, and don’t make this about you, or your agenda, or you “fixing” someone. That’s all about pride. If we go this way, we can be a Church of people who minister to the broken and open doors for healing. So thanks for joining me today, and we’ll see you next week.

Blazing Grace is a nonprofit international Ministry for the sexually broken and the spouse. Please visit us at blazinggrace.org for information on Mike Genung’s books, groups, counseling or to have Mike speak at your organization. You can email us at [email protected] or call our office in Chandler at (719) 888-5144. Again, visit us at blazinggrace.org. Email us at [email protected] or call the office at (719) 888-5144.

Laura Graber returns, and discusses the healing process for a wife affected by her husband’s sex or porn addiction, along with other issues. At one point Mike asks Laura, “Do you feel that wives are left out when it comes to porn addiction in the church?” Listen to hear her answer and more.

How fear can trigger lust and what to do about it, how true humility is woven into the recovery process (not false humility which focuses on the self), and our need for rest of soul is discussed, along with more on Christians and porn in the news.

This radio program is PG-13. Parents strongly cautioned – some material may be inappropriate for children under the age of 13.

Jesus’s mission was to comfort those who mourn, bind up the brokenhearted, proclaim liberty to captives, and open prison doors for those who are bound. For those who want more than status quo Christianity has to offer, Blazing Grace Radio begins now. And here is your host, Mike Genung.

Hey, Mike Genung here, and welcome back to Blazing Grace Radio. Coming to you from Phoenix, Arizona, on a beautiful, sunny day. I saw a video recently that apparently had gotten millions of views and really made me just want to cry. In the video, there are a couple of women in a popular – well, it’s Bath and Body Works, I believe it was – a popular store, and they got in a fight throwing things and throwing punches. It got so bad that the store manager, who was a guy, had to intervene because when one of the female employees of the store came in to try and step in between the two women, she started throwing haymakers at the female clerk. It was a disaster and screaming and kicking them out of the store, and as I watched it, it just grieved me because it shows how far gone that we’ve gone as a culture and we’ve thrown everything out the window with just common respect.

There’s no more simple disagreements. Even in Christian circles. Somebody says something that somebody doesn’t agree with, and then it’s easy for people to get offended and just start throwing insults. You see this all over social media. It just made me want to break down and cry because we’ve lost so much and we’re in such a dark period right now.

I’m going to read several news articles that just came out recently. Here’s the first one: The longtime treasure of a Mount Pleasant Church was arrested this week after admitting to state troopers he stole at least $150,000 from Church coffers and spent a large portion of the money on a pornographic website, according to court records. That’s the thing about pornography: it always takes us where we never think we will go. I’m sure that man, when he got started into this, when he got hooked on porn, he didn’t think, “You know what, one day I’m going to get in so deep that I’m going to steal a six figure amount from a Church and then blow it all on porn and then have what I did exposed basically to the world”. These days, you can find anything on the Internet. So the shame for this guy must be horrible, and I’m sure he’s been evicted from his Church and he may be going to jail.

Here’s another one. Bail has been set at $250,000 for a 44 year-old man who was an assistant preacher at a Pakoda church and has been charged in county court with child pornography. He was also a teacher’s aide at an academy in another city. This is something… child pornography – and I’ve talked about before – is very dark. With pornography, you just don’t know what you’re going to get exposed to when you’re out there in those places and on those sites. Some of them, I mean, this is a demonic product… porn. So when the Enemy is going to have baits out there to take people into even darker places, I’m sure a guy didn’t just wake up one day and say, “I think I’m really going to get hooked in that stuff”… to that level to where he’s looking at children.

There’s another article that just came out: a Lancaster County youth pastor is charged with possession and distribution of child pornography. The pastor of Student Ministries at a Baptist church was arrested recently in a Pennsylvania court. We’re seeing this, too. I had to get involved with the FBI just several weeks ago where there was somebody who came to us and they made a disclosure. Of course, that’s a felony to be in possession of that kind of pornography. So I called the FBI myself and had to report it and leave it them with what they wanted to do. But this stuff is so insidious and dark.

The point here, why am I bringing this out? To keep our focus on the evil that has crept its way – maybe even flooded its way – into the Church. There are a lot of people in bondage. There are a lot of people who are crying out for help with this stuff. As we’ve talked about before, the surveys are showing that two thirds of Christian men and 30% of Christian women are viewing pornography, with women being the fastest-growing segment of those who are looking at it. There are people who are in your Church pews and mine who are in bondage to this stuff. Hopefully, they’ve not gone to that far with the illegal pornography. But some very well may have. Some have crossed gender lines who didn’t think they would have. Sometimes what happens when you get chemically addicted to something like this, and the brain wants more and bigger for the next hit, some guys who are looking at only – only, that’s not exactly a good word – but only pornography with women. Then they want more and bigger and they cross over and they start looking at pornography that has men in it. So this thing will destroy lives, and is destroying lives, and inside and out of the Church the world is just winking at it.

In another news article, Reddit CEO doubles down on allowing porn after… he was accused of allowing… basically child-level pornography, incest, types like that on their website. Then the article reads, “Although antiporn advocates have accused Reddit of normalizing and showing incest and non-consensually recorded images, the online platform CEO Steve Huffman says he will take the difficult decision of allowing pornography because sex is universal”. I guess I should make a correction here. It wasn’t child pornography, but it was incest and pornography nonetheless.

“Asked if hosting pornographic content and Reddit whatever change, the Reddit CEO responded, “Sex is universal. Unlike many topics on Reddit, sex is one of those topics that often not well served online or offline. So we’re just going to have a free-for-all and who knows who’s really filtering that stuff.” But Reddit, which is a massive site with all sorts of social forums, this is another big, massive trap. Going back to the idea that porn is now normalized, porn is now as American as apple pie. There’s nothing wrong with it in the eyes of the world. For those who say there’s something wrong with it, we’re infringing on their liberty or their First Amendment rights.

Speaking of which, another heartbreaking news article was that Larry Flint, the publisher of Hustler, passed away in his late seventies. Whenever I read an obituary, what my mind mainly goes to is: “Where is this guy spending eternity and where is he now?” Supposedly he turned to Christianity, I don’t know, 30 years ago, but then he stuck with what he was doing with Hustler. I cannot see the man’s heart, but the outward evidence is not good. He gave his life to the Lord based on his actions. If he’s in an eternity apart from God, he’s in a place of eternal torment and suffering, and there are no second chances. That’s just a horrible place to be in, a horrible thought.

There is so much at stake with this whole sexual realm. That’s what I’m getting at. It is capturing people. It is holding them in bondage. This is happening every single week. The articles I read you at the very beginning – those happen all the time. Those articles are the men who got arrested in churches. Those three who, for the most part, were in leadership positions, some with youth… that’s happening every single week. Men are getting arrested in America who are attending churches, and they’re in bondage. They probably got trapped to such an extent that they didn’t feel like they could reach out, and then they didn’t stop going until the bottom fell out of their life and then they were destroyed.

We have to understand that we cannot continue to hold back on this stuff, and we have to understand that the outside world now is so much influenced by the demonic realm with this stuff. It’s flooding into our country, and it’s flooded into the Church. So there has to be equipping. We have to open this issue up big time, full force, and then show people the way out.

So on that note, for the rest of this segment, what I’m going to do is get back into what some of those equipping pieces look like. About, I think, a month ago, I did some shows on Action Steps to Freedom. Action Steps is our men’s eight week course for guys. What it is, is usually the group sizes are four to six. We run these courses and they’re by phone, and we have people sign up from literally all over the world who participate. I think we just had a guy sign up recently who’s from Estonia, which is across the way from Finland in Europe, and we’ve had men participate from Australia, in Europe and Canada.

But what it is, is every week the men who participate are given four to five assignments. We pair them up into groups of two, and then they have to call their support and prayer partner once a day, every day,for the purpose of staying out of isolation because the stronghold of isolation has to be broken. You can’t just go to one support group a week and expect that to really take hold like it needs to. So this is for men who are really serious about change. This is for men who want to go all the way, and they want to be equipped on what it’s about to break free from porn addiction, sex addiction, adultery, sexting, or whatever they’re in bondage to.

The course lasts for eight weeks. They’re getting four to five assignments to work every week. Some of those assignments they work with the spouse, because it’s easy to go to a support group and maybe get some abstinence. But where the real hardcore test is how the man is treating his wife. So if he’s treating her with kindness, if he’s treating her with patience, if when she’s crying or expressing her anger or her fears, if he’s patiently listening to her instead of getting defensive, or trying to shut her down or say questions, or say things like “How much longer it’s going to take for you to get over this?”… When a man is doing when this man is treating his wife like that in love, that’s a real good outward sign that he’s changing, because the true change has to come from the heart. Truthfully, anybody can get a period of abstinence from “white knuckling” it. But then usually what happens? It’s somewhere along the line, if there hasn’t been true heart change, what will happen is the guy will end up falling, and maybe he’ll fall multiple times before he sees. I need more than just to not look at porn. I need to get to the root issues that are driving this stuff.

So the first four weeks of the course I talked about in previous shows, and there’s a lot in there about equipping you with the biblical tools and how to be an overcomer from this perspective, of what to do with lust’s temptations, how to draw closer to your relationship with the Lord. There are assignments. The very first week the man has to share his entire sexual history with both his accountability partner, who’s working the course with him, and his spouse. The key one is the spouse, because the marriage cannot begin to heal until everything is laid out on the table. So one mistake a lot of men make is that they’ll share a little piece of what they’ve done, and then wait two or three months, or maybe weeks, and share another little piece, and they drag it out months. Some guys even drag it out for years. All the while, it’s impossible for your wife to heal. It’s impossible for the marriage to heal because what you’re basically doing is just keeping salt in her wound. Then when you’re hiding that stuff continually, you’re still keeping yourself in isolation to an extent, and lying and hiding and deceiving all that has to be broken up.

But what I’m going to get into for the rest of the show is more of the second half of the course, the second weeks, five through eight, some of those assignments. One of those assignments has to do with humility. Humility can be easily understood. Humility is not doing a “Poor, poor pitiful me”, and “Look at how wretched I am”. There does have to be an acceptance of the fact that we are broken. I am broken, and I will live in my brokenness, because that’s the only way you can really come to rely on the power of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit. If you don’t understand the fact that you’re broken, and as Oswald Chambers says, “We’re all fatally flawed”, then at some level, you’re going to be living out of the flesh. So there is a balance here that we want to understand. I’ve clarity and that we’re broken. But humility often plays on in actions. So it takes humility for a man to go to his wife and say, “I’m so sorry for the way I’ve treated you”. It takes humility for a man to go into a support group and say, “I screwed up last week, masturbating to pornography”. These are the kind of action steps to put self and put pride to death. And that is true humility. It refuses to exalt the self or to do things from distorted motives or to look good in front of other people.

Another thing I want to get into is fear. Fear can be a lust trigger. What do I mean by that? So let’s say you’re walking through your day and a lust thought enters your mind. Maybe it’s a picture of something you’ve seen before, but you’re not running after that thought and embracing it, and you’re not blowing it up in a sexual fantasy. It comes and it passes through your mind. But what – and this is part of the spiritual battle – what the Enemy does is he’ll come in and he’ll say, “Did you see that? You thought that that was you, you just stumbled into lust. You just sinned. You just fell into temptation”. Then if you don’t have clarity on what’s going on and what’s of you and what’s not… I see this all the time with guys where they’re just tormented because they think they’ve mentally fallen into temptation when they haven’t.

So these ** [engagements] **, you have to remember, go back to the truth. Were you running after the thoughts? Were you creating sexual fantasy? Were you expanding on them? If you were doing that, then, yeah, you got some issues with lust there. But if it was like a butterfly floating through your head and you didn’t go get a net and chase it, that’s not sin. That’s just either a random thought, maybe the Enemy threw that in there, or the way our brain chemistry works, you don’t know what’s going to come up. So we don’t go chasing after those thoughts, we let them go. We don’t try and suppress them; trying to suppress them makes them multiply. We just turn and connect.

As I’ve talked about before, and when I mentioned, fear can produce lust. Fear is like an open door or it’s like a grip that the Enemy can get. So once you start falling into fear, which you can call unrighteous or unjustified fear, the Enemy can then just start throwing all sorts of thoughts in your mind that you’ve fallen. “Look what you’ve done. You’ve gone this far. You might as well just give in”. So you have to understand on the truth of, “No, I did not give in. I did not want to give in. It was just a butterfly thought. I didn’t have any intention or want or desire to even go there. And I’m not going to fall into your trap of fear and condemnation again”. So you need to be aware and be discerning and remember to walk with God saying, “Okay, Lord, what are these thoughts? What’s going on here? Give me wisdom on what this is”, and don’t react and knee-jerk in fear just because the wrong type of thoughts go through your mind.

This applies not just to fear, but just about anything. I mean, you can apply this to pride. The Enemy can insert pride thoughts into your brain like, “Hey, look at how great I am”. And then now you’ve got a choice to make. Are you going to feed on that and say, “Yeah, I’m a superstar”, and then, “Woe is me” if I do that? Because once I do that, then I pretty much grieve the Holy Spirit. Or sometimes, the Enemy, will throw that pride in, and we just, “No, I am not great. God is the one who’s great. I am broken. I need him every moment. I would check that I will not fall for that garbage, because God is the one who’s great and he’s the only one who’s great”. So be aware of what kind of temptations or what kind of thoughts that you’re getting hit with, and be aware that not every single thought comes from you or from the intents of your heart.

Another issue that I keep seeing repeatedly over and over again is rest. I keep seeing that God’s people are just worn out, burned out, even to the point where their nervous systems are jacked up. Sometimes even the Church… we propagate this with the, “You need to get busy for God” message, and be out doing, doing, doing, doing. That’s been going on for millennia. Look at the story of Mary and Martha, where Martha and Mary were in their home and Martha is preparing dinner madly. Apparently she was running around a lot, spinning her wheels, and Martha complains to Jesus, because Mary’s just sitting there listening to the Lord, and she goes to Jesus, “God, don’t you care that Mary’s just listening to you, and she’s not helping me for the meal?”, and Jesus gives Martha a very kind and tender rebuke, that “Martha, Martha, you’re just too wound up about too many things. Mary’s got it right. She’s putting the relationship with me first”. And we’re finding that a lot of people do not know what rest is.

When I talk about rest, I’m not talking about taking a nap, and I’m surely not talking about taking a vacation, because half the time we come back from vacations, we’re more tired than we went. We really didn’t have rest of soul, and that’s what I’m referring to: rest of soul. Where you come to a place where you’ve set everything else aside, and you’re in silence with God, and “God, I just want to know you right now. I just want to rest with you. I want to enjoy your presence. Would you fill me with your Holy Spirit?” and you enjoy him and you enjoy his peace and his comfort, and you do that.

I do that once a week, at least maybe once or twice a week. I try to do that at least for an hour in the mornings, usually Saturday and Sunday, just having extended time of rest with him. Some of you need to learn how to say no and clear your schedule a little bit more. I went to the desert alone a couple of weeks ago because I was needing some rest with him alone. That time was so refreshing and recharged my batteries and He quieted my soul, and that’s where I experience that rest, that rest of soul.

We end up discipling a lot of men and women on how to find rest with the Lord. Part of that is surrender, letting him have his way in you, letting them teach you and ministering to you, walking at his pace, not striving, not trying to force life, rest. I know a lot of you need to hear that right now. It’s okay to rest. Our culture screams at us, “We got to keep busy, busy, busy” and keep checking your phone, checking your text, check your email and at night time after about 6:00, the best thing you can do is start shutting all that down and let yourself unwind.

So thank you for joining this week. It’s great to have you along with us and we’ll look forward to seeing you next week.

Blazing Grace is a non-profit, international Ministry for the sexually broken and the spouse. Please visit [email protected] for information on Mike Genung’s books, groups counseling or to have Mike speak at your organization. You can email us at [email protected] or call our office in Chandler, Arizona at (719) 888-5144. Again, visit us at blazinggrace.org, email us at [email protected], or call the office at (719) 888-5144.

Laura Graber shares her journey to healing from the pain caused by her husband’s sexual sin. Her story shows how “just porn” is devastating to a marriage, how she came to the edge of a crisis of faith… and found hope. Along the way Laura brings out the keys to the wife’s recovery and healing.

As our world free-falls into a moral abyss, what are the answers we’re hearing from Christian leadership on how we should approach the times we’re in? Much of what’s being said misses the mark. In 1938 Vance Havner wrote of the lack of a sense of urgency in the church; in this episode we look at the action steps to take that will make a difference.

Mike and Dan have an open discussion about the church in Italy and the US. Topics discussed include why churches avoid the subjects of sex and porn addiction, how Dan’s church in Italy spends time in prayer during their weekend services and the community they have, the problem of nominal believers we have in the States, and more. Dan called in from his home near Modena, Italy.