The D.I.G. · The Compromise of Porn · Relationship Goals Reloaded

0:40 We are so excited that you are here with us today. This is our third week, I think, with the dig, y'all. And every single week it gets better and better. We are so excited that you have joined us. If today is your first time joining us, drop a number one in the comments below and let us know where are you joining us from. We have people every single week that's joining us from all over the world, all over the world. So let us know where you're joining us from. We're so excited that you are here with us here at Transformation Church. Our vision is to represent God to the lost and found for transformation in Christ. And we know that God is doing that not just with our Sunday morning services, but he does that through the DIG. Now, maybe you don't know what the DIG is. It's like, what's the DIG? Why is it named the DIG? Okay, DIG it, man. I like that. Come on.

1:32 The DIG is an acronym for Deeper in God. What we want to do is we want to take the Sunday message and we want to take it and break it down to a practical conversation. So what we do is we bring real people, not robots, real people. And we're going to actually talk through our stories and what it is that God has done in our lives relating to the message. And we want you to join in with us. So if you are watching online, go ahead, get your fingertips ready because we want you to type in the comments and let us know just an amen, a yes, I hear you. or answering a question, whatever that may be, we want you to engage with us tonight. Hey, we have some really exciting things that we're going to talk about today, but I do want to give you a disclaimer. This is going to be mature content that we're going to be talking about tonight, so parental discretion is advised. Now, that means that if you don't feel comfortable with your child being in the room as we're having this discussion tonight, go ahead and shoo them to the other room.

2:28 But there are some parents out there that I know that you know that it's important for your child to hear a conversation about what Pastor Mike taught on Sunday, especially if you have a preteen or a teenager, believe me, they know more than what you think they know, okay? So go ahead and let them stay in the room and watch this because this is going to be some very edifying, good information that you want to hear tonight, okay? We are so excited here at TC. We're going into next month. It's going to be our fun month, and during that time, it's a time where Pastor Mike and Natalie take a sabbatical. a month break from everything that's happening here at the church. And we do that because he knows that his family is his first ministry. So we still want you to tune in, okay? Mature believers that you want the word of God. It may not be Pastor Michael speaking on Sunday, but we have powerful speakers every single Sunday. You want to, a couple of them may or may not be sitting up here right now, okay?

3:27 So you want to join in with us this month as we're going into fun month. You can go to our website or social media to see some more information about that. Okay. We have some beautiful couples up here today. Everybody up here is with their spouse. And so we're going to introduce ourselves. And what we're going to do is everyone introduce yourself. And how many years have you been married? Okay. So my name is Bree, and this is my husband. My name is Erin, and we've been married for five gloriously long years. Wow.

4:00 Come on and speak that. Wow, glorious. Come on, Jesus. Glory is five going on 50, okay? Our next couple. I'm Brenda Todd. And I'm Tom Todd, man of God, a.k.a. the captain. And we've been married for 41 years. Wow. 41 years. We trying to get like them, y'all. We trying to get to that. I know. That is so impressive. That's awesome. My name is Amberly, and this is my husband. I'm Will. And we have been married for 10 fabulous years. And listen, every year has been so perfect. Not really, but it has been fabulous. I think we're going to learn up here that every year of marriage has not been perfect, but we're doing it with God. And so it's good still. That's right. This Sunday, we had a message called the compromise of pornography. And I mean, Pastor Michael broke that thing down so clearly. For us.

4:57 And if you didn't get a chance to watch it, go back and watch that sermon on YouTube. Emily, tell us, what did Pastor Mike talk about this past Sunday? Oh, my gosh. So for those of you who have not had a chance to sit down and watch it literally from beginning to end, we want to encourage you to do that. And we want you to encourage you to get your spouse and go get you some chicken and have a date night. Like this will be a real intense date night. But this is so incredibly powerful for you to have as a tool in your tool belt. And Pastor Mike, I mean, he just went hard. There's just no doubt about it. But he talked about the compromise of pornography. And he was breaking down the word compromise into two different words. The first part was comp. The second part was promise. And he described that the word comp, you know, means free. And we all know, have you ever been to a restaurant and they're like, you know, we're just going to comp that. And you're like, thank you, Jesus.

5:53 That's the will of God for my life. And so comp means free. And then there's the promise, the promise of God that he has for our lives. And when we allow pornography and soul ties and all the things that he's been sharing during relationship goals reloaded, we find out that we are literally giving the promises of God away for free. it. Literally the precious blood of Jesus that's worth all the dollars and pennies and credit cards in the world. And we're just throwing it away for free. And the thing about pornography is I'm going to be honest with you. For those of you that are sitting at home in your jammies, sitting on your couch with your bowl of popcorn, the reality is everyone sitting on this set right now in this couch, they have suffered from the effects of pornography in one way or another. Is it not true? and it's a normal thing and I realize that word pornography is so taboo and it's so scary and it makes you feel dirty and the effects of what the enemy wants us to do is to feel isolated and alone that we're the only ones that struggle with it and there's so much shame and so much guilt attached to it and the reality is is we got to talk about these things to get free the book of revelations is so clear that it says that we overcome him the enemy by the blood of the lamb and the word of our testimony. And so that's what we're up here doing. We're going to be real. We're going to be raw. Buckle up. Just get ready. Go ahead and pay attention to this next clip so you can see what we're talking about. He said, you will be my disciples if you remain faithful to my teachings.

7:30 And watch this. And you will know the, everybody say truth. And the truth will set you free. Everybody just shout at me one more time. Truth. That's a cuss word in church most of the time. We want to give relatively around what happened. We want to give the PG version of what really is going on. We want to give the quotation version of I'm struggling. I'm going through. We are friends. But what's the real? Everybody say truth. And I think the problem in the body of Christ right now is we try to pacify everybody so we don't say the real truth. We try not to offend anybody and try to make everybody comfortable. Oh, if you say what it really is, well, that's where the enemy gets to win. He gets to win in darkness and silence and obscurity because we don't tell the full truth. And today I'm coming to tell the truth. I'm not going to allow this series to end without us skirting and without skirting around the real issues that are plaguing people right now.

8:40 Because God says the truth will set you free. And the problem with the body of Christ is most people do not have freedom. The problem is they come to the altar, they get prayed for, they heard a sermon that felt good, and they feel better. They don't have freedom. Wow. My God. Listen, the truth shall set you free. Listen, we want to talk to you, TC Nation. You're out there. You're watching. We want you to share the truth with us. There in the comments section, the question that we have for you is if the truth sets you free, have you ever told anybody the real story? The real, real. The real. Like the real, ugly, raw, honest truth. So, Erin, we were talking about this earlier. You had some thoughts that you wanted to share about this. Well, yeah, I wanted to talk about that. I mean, Pastor Mike, I mean, when he brings the word number one, it's always real.

9:36 Okay, right. You never know what he's going to say. But this particular point, I mean, I loved it so much. And it was personal to me because, I mean, I grew up in church. And it's like all I knew was church. Right. But growing up in school, I was around kids that told their truth. Right. I mean, no matter, there was no sugar coat. Right. But in church, it's like we sugar coat. Like you say, we don't want to say pornography. Oh, that's so good. We don't want to say porn. But we struggle. Yeah. And we suffer because we don't tell the truth. And so we suffer in silence. Yeah, that's good. And I ultimately think that we have this fear of people's opinions, obviously. Yeah. But we feel like God doesn't already know or that we'll be punished. It's like we're scared of telling the truth to someone else because of their judgment. But, I mean, it's just powerful. When I got to a place where I can actually tell the truth and be honest, the freedom that I feel and understanding that God sees me, God knows me, he loves me. Yes.

10:29 And he accepts me. And so it was just powerful to be able to tell the truth and actually feel freedom. Oh, my gosh. That's so good. I have heard this quote from someone before, and I think it's so true, is that we are as sick as our secrets. There we go. So you think you're well. You may think you're well. A lot of people at church, we act like we're well. We think we're well. But the truth is, if you have secrets, you are as sick as your secrets. That means that God wants, but this is a beautiful thing. We serve a God that is a healer. The only way that we get that healing and the manner in which he wants to give it to us is for us to be able to tell the truth. So I want to ask a question for everybody up here. I'm going to interject one thought right there. When you were saying that, it just resonated so deep within me. And I just want to use this as an opportunity because you are as, say that again, Bree. As sick as your secrets. Okay, listen.

11:21 I just feel like there is somebody in the chat right now, somebody watching. I am just confident that you have been battling a certain sickness and you've been to the doctor and you've questioned and you've taken the medication and you just don't seem to be getting any better and all of a sudden that thing seems to rear its ugly head up and the reality is Jesus wants freedom for you and if you will expose the devil and shame him and let the truth be told I believe that God wants to heal you of that sickness truly that those secrets that you're hoarding, out of shame, and out of guilt, that God wants to use those to bring healing to you. Oh, my gosh. That is so good. And if that word is for you, go ahead and receive that. Our God wants to heal you. It's his desire. Absolutely. That we walk in holiness. Yes. Absolutely. The Bible says, confess your sins or your secrets one to another that you may be healed. That's so good, Pastor.

12:17 So, in other words, you can't be healed if you don't confess. Amen. Amen. It's just as simple as that. Yeah. So the question I have for us up here is how have you denied the truth to feel better about a situation instead of experiencing real freedom from it? And I'll go ahead and start. One of the things that Aaron and I have talked about is that even though I was a virgin when we got married, before we got married, he asked me a question. He asked me had I ever had a sexual experience before. And the truth is, even though I had wonderful community around me, a healthy community of friends around me, I never actually told the truth that I had some sexual experiences when I was a child with my cousins. And it wasn't sex, but it was still sexual experiences. And I had never told anybody that. I mean, years of being in a relationship with God and in friendships. And I never said that.

13:11 I remember the day we were literally in a cell phone store. I remember it to the T, y'all. We were in a cell phone store. and he asked me that we were dating at that point, and I was like, uh. Because I didn't want to lie, but also I didn't want to tell the truth. And that's what we find ourselves in a lot of times is we don't want to lie, but we also don't want to tell the truth because we don't really know that there is so much freedom in us telling that truth. We get so comfortable in the lie, you think that that's the best way to be. But the truth is, it's not until we tell that truth that we can actually experience freedom in our lives. Well, you had a story about Target. Tell us the Target story.

13:50 And this just happened six months ago. And, you know, we're at Target shopping, mind our own business. Yeah. And, you know, and I was, she was doing her thing, I'm doing my thing, and I looked over. Tell them about what you learned before me. You know, remember your BA days? Yeah, my BA days. My BA days. Before Amberly. So, you know, I, what happened, the thing at Target happened and it caught me off guard. And it's because I knew better. Yeah. And it wasn't because I grew up in church. I didn't get saved until I was 27. So it was, you know, before I met you, I was part of a men's group or a community group, belong group, whatever you want to call it. And in this group, I was the only single guy, only single person in a married group. Yeah.

14:42 And at first I thought it was just strange that I was there. But really, I learned a tremendous amount about marriage prior to even being married. One of the things that we talked about is the guys separated, the women separated, and the men talked about pornography, lust, all those things, using the book Every Man's Battle. And every man's battle just really hit home for me because I took a couple of those things out of every man's battle and was able to use them in everyday life. One of them is we have to arm ourselves, the armor of God, every day. And that's because as men, we struggle with lust every day. You're visual.

15:33 We're visual, right? Women struggle too, just FYI. But mostly men. Mostly men. I mean, we're born that way. We're visual people. Yeah. So, and then one of the other things that I learned, and I use this to this day every day, is a key element of bouncing your eyes. Yeah. So what that means is that if you, you know, a pretty girl walks in the room, the goal is to see her and move your eyes away. Yeah. That's good. The key is to not look back. Yeah. Look back, that image is going to be bound in you. And you didn't make it that day. You didn't make it that moment. So when I met her, I was not the best of Christians. I was saved on Sunday. But I had that element of what I knew I needed to do. I meet her, time goes on, and I do a really good job.

16:30 I feel like I've done a really good job of bouncing my eyes, of being as good a husband as I can be. Right. Fast forward six months ago. We're at Target. I like Target, by the way. You do like Target. It's a good store. It's so good. Okay. Yeah. You guys want to talk? No, we're fine. So we're at Target. She's shopping. I'm just kind of hanging on to the cart, minding my own business, doing my own thing, not harming anybody. And people walk in and out, walking in and out, and this girl walks in, and I stared. At her boobs. I stared at her. At her boobs. Yeah, at her boobs.

17:09 Just tell the truth, babe. Tell the truth. The truth is I stared at her boobs. The truth is going to sit you first. Thank you. Thank you. And I stared so long that you walked up to me. Yeah, I did. And said, are you staring at her boobs? Yeah, I did. And I straight said, what are you talking about? No. No. No, obviously not. I'm a married man.

17:37 And she's like, yeah, you did. You're staring at her. And I said, no, I'm not. I'm not. So I straight, bold-faced lied to her to cover what was happening. And it wasn't until just a couple days ago. After Pastor Mike's sermon on Sunday. We sat down and we had, like, I just felt like I needed to, like, we needed to pull any skeletons out of the closet. And I wanted you to know that, again, we are one. And if there's anyone better suited to pray for you and to intercede for you and to battle for you, it's me. We are one. And so I wanted to know in that moment, and honestly, babe, I didn't even tell you this. Listen, we're going to get real, real, real. But in that moment, I didn't tell you this, but I had decided in my heart as I was praying, God, I need to know what my husband truly battles with. And so I need you to allow me to calm it, to cool it.

18:31 If he says something that I don't want to hear or I don't like to hear, I have got to be ready to stand my ground and be the support system that God has called and the helpmate that God has called me to be for him. Because that's the struggle, like, you know, to tell the truth. Yeah, you're afraid you're going to get in trouble. It's so true. And you'd rather just cover it up, swoop it under the rug, be done with it. And here's what I know. He doesn't need, he got a mama. He don't need a mama. He needs his wife to stand up and to intercede for him. And so we sat down after Pastor Mike's message on Sunday, and I just said, okay, babe. And I mean, I was, ooh, Jesus. Because I thought I wasn't real. I mean, I felt like I knew the answer, but what if? What if it wasn't what I didn't want to hear? And so I said, babe, we need to talk about this thing. Like, we need to expose this thing for what it is. And so I asked him, and he was like, babe, I got something to be honest with you with. And I was like, okay, here's where you put your money where your mouth is.

19:26 And then this is what he shared with me. Yeah, I just, through the sermon, I just realized that the reason I lied about it was because I was so caught off guard. I knew that I was, you know, I felt like I was doing right, doing right, doing right, doing right. But I just, I relaxed in a moment. And right when I relax in a moment, in walks, you know, the enemy. And, you know, try to ruin my marriage. You know, there is wisdom in a woman that will not cut her husband down when it's time for truth. I remember earlier in our marriage, and yes, we've been married 41 years. But Tommy, when we first got married, we lived in New Orleans, Louisiana. and one day Tommy came home about eyes all booked and stuff and he said, baby, you gotta pray for me. And I said what baby? He said, baby, these women out here, their boobs, their butts, they're all out and I need you to pray for me.

20:27 Now a silly woman would have said through her head and what you're doing looking at her. Women, I'm telling you right now, if your man come and tell you the truth you need to take your position as a woman of god and be able to truly cover that man and so what i did i got on my post in the name of jesus and i began to pray for him because he was letting me know i am having some problems because there's too much looking at me and so that was wisdom and i'm speaking this for other women that you use wisdom because from this message Some men are going to come forth. Men, some women will come forth. And don't tear them down. Give them the grace. So good. So good.

21:17 One of the things that my mom told me about marriage is when you're in that situation where your spouse is coming to you and they want to tell you something truthfully, instead of thinking of yourself as the hurt wife, think of yourself as the sister that the brother is coming to talk to. So Aaron is not just my husband. He's my brother in Christ. And so if I think about that, if I think about somebody on staff, a guy coming to me on staff and said, hey, I got to tell you this truth or whatever, I would pray for him. I would care for him. I would send him scripture. I would send him counseling, whatever the case may be. But if I take the position of the hurt wife where I allow my ego to be offended by what Aaron's telling me, then I can't be that to him. I can't be that sister in Christ to him. That's so true. Yeah, that's good. I think what Will was saying and just exposing the lie, for me it was different. I hadn't lied to you.

22:11 Well, not in this situation. But we'll talk about that later. But particularly this situation, what I had lied about was a family member of mine that had shown me so many things. And in an effort to talk to me about manhood. and he'd show me, you know, how to clean my car, how to keep my body clean, hygiene and all these other things. He also showed me porn. And it was like this whole other side of our relationship from the time I'm young till 16, something like that. Anytime he was around or at one point I remember he was married and I went to his house and he gave me some of his collection of porn videos. And it was like our thing. It was like. And how old were you? I mean, it was like a span of like I was from nine to maybe 15, 16, something like that. But it was the line that I told myself was, well, he was trying to be good.

23:09 I mean, he's a Christian. I mean, like I said, my family is church. And so, I mean, I would see him, you know, reading his Bible when I go over his house or something like that and everything like that. But, I mean, literally there would be times when he would get up and say, oh, I got something for you. And it would be a new video. That's crazy. And so I had lied to myself that, but I lied to myself and told myself that he was a good man. But the truth is he had taught me how to connive behind my parents. He had taught me how to keep secrets. He had taught me how to do all kinds of things that were good. But then all the images that would become terror in my mind at some point. And so that's just the truth that I had to get to that really helped me be free. and knowing that all that was bad. Like, nothing about it was educational. It did not help me at this point. Like, now I'm married.

24:02 It tormented me because now I'm married to a virgin. And now all these images from nine to, and obviously after he stopped, then I figured out how to find it for myself. And so it would torment me at night, like, because now we don't have that. And I'm looking for, you know, I don't want to say video names, but I mean, I'm laughing, but it really was torment. Like it really did. So that was something that helped me be free. It's not just about us telling the truth to the people that are in our lives, which that is definitely a part of our healing process, but it's about telling the truth to ourselves. Like you said, you were lying to yourself about that relationship, that being a good beneficial relationship in your life, and it wasn't. And I know there is somebody watching right now. You need to go on, tell the truth and shame the devil. There you go. Tell the truth to yourself about the situation. That guy is not a good fit for you.

24:56 You know their friends are telling you, oh, you can watch some porn. There's nothing wrong with that. You know it's not beneficial for you. But until we can tell ourselves the truth, we cannot walk in the healing that God wants us to walk in. So one of the things that Pastor Mike did on Sunday, y'all, was tell the doggone truth. He told the truth. Oh, my goodness. Told the truth so much. All of us is in here like, oh, oh, okay, okay. I think we're ready. I think we're ready for this. But what he did was seriously step out on faith and get vulnerable about his own story. And Aaron already alluded to it, but it was about his relationship with pornography. Go ahead and check out this video. I have a public confession to make. I've been in an abusive relationship for over two decades, and it has not been with Pastor Natalie because this relationship almost robbed me of everything that God promised me.

25:53 And the person I've been in an abusive relationship with, her name is Pornography. And the crazy thing about it is I'm not the only one that she's been visiting. But today I am coming to tell the truth that this foul spirit that has crept this way into the church, into the pulpits, behind every musician, behind every camera, operator, behind every children's church worker, behind everything that has been trying to slowly steal the virtue and the purity. I feel the presence of God coming on me today. I will stand in the full authority that God has given me as a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And I'm exposing this silent killer of relationships. I'm talking to you. Listen, he called it all the way out on Sunday.

26:51 And that's how, that's what we have to do if we want to walk in freedom is to call it out. That's so true. All the way out. And so one of the things that Pastor Mike talked about in his sermon is the consequences of pornography, that there are ramifications. There are consequences that come from what seems to be an innocent relationship. And there are some people up here that want to share what were some of the consequences of pornography in your life. And he talked not just about the consequences, but the root. From the root to the consequences. That was all touched on Sunday. So we want to touch on that a little bit. Pastor Tommy, share us with your story. Well, one of the things that I realized when Michael was talking about his testimony, specifically when he talked about how he liked big breasts. And I said, now, that's generation. I know where that came from.

27:44 I know where that affinity came from. It came from me. My God. My God. Because, you know, even though I didn't teach him that, but it's something that's passed down because my experience, you know, The Bible says that the sins of a father visits his children to a third and fourth generation. And so what I did was I went back in my mind and I thought, why did I have this offensive breast? And the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit brought back to my mind. When I was about four years old, three or four years old, I had a babysitter. And the babysitter had big breasts. And when we would have play time, she had this game that she would play with us. Now it was my sister and me called Hide the Peanut. The Peanut? Hide the Peanut. Okay.

28:36 The Peanut that you eat. Hide. Right. All right. Right. Hide the Peanut. But the thing is, she wouldn't just hide it in different places. She would hide it in her breasts. That is great. And then we'd be sitting on her lap, and then she said, find the peanut, find the peanut. So I know where she put it. So I just went there and put my hand down in her breast, and I felt the peanut, but I felt other things too. So I just couldn't find the peanut to stay that long. And when I thought about that at four or five years old, that planted a seed in me that I like big breasts. But then as I got older, I learned the scripture. The Bible says, let your fountains be blessed in Proverbs 5 and enjoy the breast of the wife of your youth. Well, bless his name.

29:32 Yes, bless his name. Bless him. But the thing I want to say about that is that led to me being more curious about breast. because just like Aaron, just like Will, every time I see somebody with big breasts, I wouldn't turn my head away. I would look that direction because there was a drawing there. And when I went to New York, after I was in college, we were traveling, and I went to New York with a group of musicians. We were in a band, and we spent, I guess, all night long walking. and I tell my sons the story about walking in New York with a pocket full of quarters. I walked from 42nd Street all the way to Greenwich Village with a pocket full of quarters and I went to every peep show that I saw because that thing was still, that seed of pornography had been planted in me and I wanted to see more.

30:28 I wanted to see because I'd never seen anything. I was from a little country town, had never been nowhere. You're in New York City. New York City. You see everything. So I was walking, and we would come to a peep show, and I put my quarter in, and Michael got the story wrong. He said the curtain closed. But it wasn't a curtain that closed. It was a door that would go down, and that door was going down. I was getting down. I was making sure I got every bit of that quarter's worth. But, you know, I learned later on that if I didn't take control of that stuff, that it would take a hold of my life. And because I didn't talk about it to my sons, the enemy used that seed in me and traveled throughout my sons. Just like Michael said, when he needed internet for his studio, I got him internet.

31:21 I didn't even think about it. He would be trying to find pornography. It wasn't in my mind, but the seed was still there. And notice that the age, notice the age. And parents, this is what we have to look at. Michael said that he was four or five when he first saw it. Blew my mind. As a parent, you're sitting there and you're listening and you're hearing things because he told the truth. But then generationally, it was the exact same age. Right. And it doesn't have to be pornography. It can be alcohol. It can be drugs. It can be gambling. It can be stealing. It can be anything that's against God's plan and will for your life. But the enemy will use that seed in your forefathers and work it all the way down into your children. It's so good. Any seed that's planted and nurtured is going to grow. So there are people that think, oh, if I just watch this or I just listen to this or whatever.

32:20 You know, I'm not watching pornography. I'm just watching movies that had crazy sex scenes in it or whatever the case may be. Any seed that you nurture, that you keep adding water to and you keep adding life to, it is going to grow. whether you want it to or not. I think about the weeds in front of my house right now that we need to pull up. Listen, the rain and the sun have been on that. Regardless if I want those weeds to grow or not, they're growing. They're growing. And so that's why it's important for us to cut it off at the seed, at the seed form. Will, you were talking to me earlier about pornography and how it's almost insatiable. I mean, there's no... Yeah, it's like a drug. It's not like a drug, yeah. I mean, it's an addiction. so you know I had a phase of drug addiction and it was pornography is no different where my drug addiction only lasted a couple years but the porn addiction lasted 20 something years and it was just simply because I at the time didn't know how to cut it off you know it just as a child seeing an image and then that you know just kind of growing and growing and subconsciously even wanting more. Not knowing I'm wanting more, but just wanting more.

33:36 And so then it was the next better magazine or the next whatever. And so that just progresses further and further. And the older you get, the more accessible things become. I was just like Michael where I'd go to the store and pull out the magazine. I wouldn't go to Barnes & Noble and look at it. I would steal it. Take it home with me. I had it forever. So it was just, you know, so then, you know, so now I'm not just looking at porn. I'm now a thief. Right. And, you know, so it's just, it was an ongoing, ongoing, never ending. And I remember when we met and, you know, thankfully we had a lot of these conversations before we actually got married. And these weren't conversations we had after we said I do. And then the shock came. And so, you know, that's why you should definitely do some pre-marriage counseling for those of you who are engaged out there. Do not get married without it because that's where they ask these questions and they cause you to start having conversations. And so we were having a conversation in pre-marriage counseling and somehow it got to the depth of his pornography addiction.

34:40 And he was explaining to our pre-marriage counselor that what got him high initially didn't get him as high the next time. Right, exactly. And so what started as, if there is such a thing as innocent porn, there's not. But do you see what I'm saying? Innocent as a child. Okay, right. But what started as innocent, that no longer gave you the effect that it needed. And so I remember when we were in pre-marriage counseling, you told me that at the end of your porn addiction, the things that you were having to watch and the- Yeah, right. Stimulation. Yeah, the enormity of what these women and men were doing on these theatrics and the whips and the chains and the things that you had to expose yourself to in order to get that high. Because that high of just a man and a woman having normal sex didn't do it for you anymore. It had to be, you know, super filthy and super dirty and super, you know, not what God has called sex to be in order to get you that high that you needed. No, that's absolutely right.

35:37 And then what happens is then if you don't cut that off, if you get married with all of that, now you've walked into a marriage with this mindset that my wife has to perform like every female that I've ever watched ever. Not remembering that that's theatrics. Yeah. That's not real life. It's a movie. It's whatever. It's airbrushed. It's whatever. And truly, it's the same for women. If we get caught up in love stories and romance novels and Fifty Shades of Grey and Fifty Shades of Yellow or whatever, and then we try to get married and then he doesn't woo us with his private, where's your private jet, babe? I mean, where's that at? It's no different for women. We still struggle with that same thought of like, why are you not being what I've seen on TV? Oh, goodness.

36:31 It's so good. For me, it was like what Will's saying. I mean, that thing, learning about it so young, I mean, by the time I'm 16, I've seen everything. Like, from whatever, I've seen it. And so I'm 16 now. So Mike with the Wi-Fi and the Internet, like, that just took on a whole nother. And it becomes watching it. That's why you kept coming over my house. Hey, you know? Him and Mike and the Internet. I don't know what kind of AOL you have, but it was strong back then. But, I mean, from there, and it's kind of like, now seeing on the other side, like, we laughing about it. But that thing, like a drug, will pull me. Like, I didn't have a stint with drugs, but that porn was it. Like, from elementary school all the way up through high school, and now I'm an adult. And so, at one point, porn wasn't it.

37:27 Because I remember I'm looking for the romance, too. I'm looking for romanticizing in porn. And so now I'm fulfilling this void of love, of affection that I wanted when I was a kid that I was missing. And it's no shade to my parents, but it was just that's the kind of kid I was. I liked affection. I mean, but magazines, like my mom, I would, at her job, like if I saw a cosmopolitan that said 10 ways or 10 tips to the best sex, I read every article. And so to me it was like I needed to fulfill this sensation because remember my uncle told me that this is what they want to know. This is what you have to know. So I'm getting as much information as I can up until the point where I now have had sex. And so now porn doesn't do it for me no more. Now I have to have sex. And because it's fulfilling this void of affection, of love, I need a physical body with me. And so my heart is in all places.

38:27 My heart is in places, my body's in places. And so then I get married to Bree and she's a virgin. And it's kind of like, oh, shoot. So now. Oh, dang. You know, and here's the deal. As amazing as that is, and that's why I asked Bree that question. Like, have you, you've done nothing? Because I knew no life. I had no life without. And I'm laughing, but I'm so serious. Like, it was so, like, the perversion that it takes you to. I mean, the progression. So now I'm out here. I'm through the door of perversion. I'm living my life, like. And so now I'm married, and I've brought porn. I've brought infidelity. Like, I've just, I'm so inundated with I need the adrenaline of the sneak. I need the. Insecurity. Yeah, because, and now we're married, and now it's okay.

39:21 it's okay to have sex and it's kind of like she's you know she may be in a certain outfit and it's kind of like okay cool but what you gonna do with that outfit right right right and it was it was for real like and so at night the torment of like I don't know how to tell her the 25 years of porn I don't know how to teach her I don't know I mean and so it was just something that I carry and it was like the drug that pushed and so it was honestly that truth that really set me free like hey this thing has really taken over my life and i've hurt people i've hurt her now and now i'm looking at the face of her her pain every day yeah and and she's mirroring back to me what i've brought into the marriage and so it's kind of like yo i need to be set free from all of whatever is happening whatever i missed and so i had to go back to four yeah to to get to the root i mean it's just it's deep and if you don't address it and if we don't tell the truth, if we're not honest, then we'll never see the love and the grace that's endless in the well of power and mercy that God has for us.

40:29 So it's just the ramifications are like what Pastor Mike said. They are endless. It's almost like when he was talking in the sermon about being killed by your own lust. That if you don't deal with that, that lust will straight take you out. Take you out and everyone around you. And we're going to watch that next clip talking about that. Yeah. pornography gradually lets you kill you.

40:56 I was studying the ancient Eskimo and how they would catch wolves. The ancient Eskimo to catch a wolf would take fresh blood and put it on a post and it would put the blood on it and then it would put water on it and freeze it. And then it would put another layer on the sharp post and then it would put water on it and freeze it. And they would do this thing over and over again. And on the last thing, they would put a fresh coat of blood and then they would stick it in the ground. And what they would do is they would go back in wait because what happens is the wolf had a keen sense of smell and it would smell the fresh blood on the post and it would go over. And when nobody was looking, it would lick it and it would keep licking it until unbeknownst to the wolf, he had already cut himself and he's licking his own blood.

41:52 And his lust for what he was doing would end up killing him. The Eskimo would come back in the morning and next to the post would be a dead wolf that was killed by its own lust. ah and that is the picture of so many of our lives that are robbing us from our relationship goals we go with what we feel we lick this thing until it cuts us and we don't even know we're killing our own self the bible says that sexual immorality is the only sin that we commit that is not against anybody else it's against ourselves my goodness Jesus goodness That is so good. That is so powerful. And that illustration that he gave with the wolf, like, oh. Oh, my gosh. Oh, I could so picture it.

42:45 Yeah. I could see it. I could, too, literally. So in what ways did pornography slowly take from your life without realizing it? We were, Pastor Brenda, we were talking about that. Share what you were telling us. Yeah, you know, just like Bree. And we've heard, I mean, since this time, since Sunday, I've heard so many cousin stories. Mine is a cousin story. Cousins be out here acting a fool. I mean, maybe we're cousins too. I don't know. But go ahead. Yeah. When I was young, seven, eight, whatever, we had a cousin that would just flash himself, that would show himself. And as little girls, we would just laugh. I wasn't by myself or anything. We would laugh. But see, that right there, the enemy used it because that then from there, it caused curiosity as I got older. Okay. he was showing me this, but what is this really all about? And then you, and then when you get in a relationship with the young man and then things rise and all, all kinds of things happen, you're slowly killing yourself as far as that is concerned to the point where when you are with a boyfriend and you have sex before marriage, and then it could then lead to literally me, uh, getting pregnant and having an abortion.

43:59 Wow. Whoa. Okay. So literally it led to death, not just for me. Oh my goodness. But for somebody else. Wow. My goodness. Oh my gosh. That, just the ramifications, like the consequences of the actions is, is beyond us. It's beyond the people that it's affecting in the here and the now. there are future generations that are being affected by our decisions today. That's powerful. For me, as a woman, I kind of shared this on another episode of The Dig, but just how I had a sexual experience with a boyfriend, and he wanted me to watch porn to learn how to do what he wanted me to do. And first of all, that was my first exposure to porn. So it was like, just shocking to see that that's what people did on camera with no clothes on. And then what I realized is it attached this massive feeling of insecurity to me that I didn't measure up. I was never going to be good enough. I was never going to be worthy enough. I was never going to be valuable enough. So much so that I carried that into our marriage, knowing that Will had dealt with this addiction of pornography that I just remember thinking like, and even saying like, I will never look like those women. Like I'll never talk like those women. I'll never act like those women. Like I can't measure up. I can't become those women. And the thing that gave me life is Will said to me, he said, Amberlee, I want you to understand that because of that God healed me from this pornography addiction, he said, I've realized that yes, we think that the grass is greener on the other side. But the reality is the grass is greenest where we water it.

45:45 And he told me, he said, when I keep my eyes focused on you and on you only, and if I do that for a month consistently, and then six months consistently, and then a year consistently, until here we are 10 years consistently, he was saying, I'm watering my own grass, if you know what I mean. And he said, and when I see you, I don't think about, when you walk around the house naked. He's like, all I want is you. And I'm like, Lord, where are my jammies? Cause I need to put my jammies on. But it just makes me think about, you know, that this, the thing that pastor Mike was talking about was just the perversion turned to promise. And I believe like what God did when he radically healed Will of his pornography addiction, like it, whenever he explained to me how God, what the work that God had done in him, it began to release that bondage of insecurity in me. And it began, it allowed me to begin to see that the promises of God were yes and amen and that I was valuable and I am worthy and I am beautiful and I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

46:49 And it was powerful. So we want to show you this clip that he talks about going from perversion to promise. And God took me from a place of perversion and he brought another door. Somebody say another door. See, when you allow God to do it, there's another door. Somebody say another door. See, when you allow God to give you a vision of who he wants you to be in your life, you don't watch the images. You don't stay at the pornography. You don't go there. You begin to move into the permission for God. You can do whatever you want to do in my life. If you want me to be a pastor, if you want me to lead these young people, if you want me to stay here, if you want me to go there, you have permission to do whatever you want to do. And God, you're a great provider. I was young, but now I'm old and I've never seen the righteous forsaken. If you want deliverance, God said, I'll provide for you.

47:45 And when you walk through this door, the door of perversion is no longer an option. God turns the door of perversion into the door of promise. Somebody needs to shout with me right now that God is exposing the lies. And today is going to be the day that some of you for the first time in your life say, I'm done with perversion. I'm knocking down the door. Come on. Hallelujah. Done with perversion. Thank you, Jesus. Glory. Thank you, Lord. Let me tell you something. So powerful. There is freedom if you want it. Yes, there sure is. There is healing if you want it. And there were four things that Pastor Mike talked to us about on Sunday that were action steps for how we get free from this. And the first thing was confession. Next one was accountability. The last one, the third one was generosity.

48:38 And the last one was fasting. I know for Aaron and I, he talked about it earlier that we experience infidelity in our marriage. And confession and accountability was huge for us. because the ramifications of him being introduced to things so early and bringing that into our marriage, it created such insecurity. I mean, this was in our first year of marriage. So I want y'all to imagine we walk down the aisle and within that first year, it's broken, completely broken. And I will never forget, we had gotten to a point where we decided we were going to get a divorce. We hadn't even made it to year two yet, I don't think. But we knew that there were steps that we needed to take in order to do that. And the first thing we did was we asked our friends to come over so that we could tell them that we were going to get a divorce. And when I tell you, I'm getting emotional even thinking about this.

49:39 Even bringing our, I remember they sat in our living room on our couches and we were on some stools and we were so done with each other. just so angry and so jacked up, no trust, no real love in the relationship. And we told our friends, we just want to bring y'all together and let y'all know that we're going to go ahead and call it quits on this marriage. Our friends knew what had happened already, and they knew that we were struggling. And we brought them together to tell them that, and it was our friends. At that moment, when we did not have the strength within ourselves to see each other in another way, to love one another, to love beyond the hurt and the pain. And the experience that we had with one another was so ugly over that first year. We didn't have the strength to see beyond that. Our friends did. And they sat in that room, and they basically argued with us and let us know it wasn't going to happen. Yeah, right, right.

50:32 Basically, and honestly, at the time, I didn't want to hear it. And I felt like they wasn't hearing me right. Like, oh, no, no, no. I love Bree. this is something that's just best for us. And the truth is, what I knew then is that I felt like I didn't have what it took to bring you out of the pain that I put you in. And the truth is, I did not. But God did. But it was through the confession. And that's why confession is not some little baby thing at an altar for me. Like, I want to sit down and I want to talk. because I realize now from going through all that that I have found the real power of God on the inside of me. Like this is not a joke. I mean, greater is he that is in me than he that's in the world. Even me, I'm on this world. I'm on earth.

51:24 I'm in the world. And he is greater and he is in me. And so when I confess, Paul writes, I'm gladly do I boast in my weakness because God says in your weakness, my power becomes perfect because now you're out the way. Now you've given to me your weaknesses, and now I can show you how you can be strong in this area. So to me, confessing is not just a tippy-toe thing anymore. Like I needed to really talk, and I needed to really be able to speak to somebody who I trusted, who I knew. And honestly, that came in little Cs, little did I know. before we even got to that living room talking to my friends, I was talking to a counselor that would come to my job and just talking about little things. I would say a little thing to see how he responded because I didn't trust people like that.

52:16 And so when we got to that point, I mean, the confession, it's not even really about that person. The confession and the beauty of confession and accountability is the freedom that you receive in Christ. This is what we believe, that in Christ we are strong. And I experienced it. I know it to be true that when I can come into a safe place and I can confess, then now my weakness is out on the table. Now I really fulfill God's word of the power and that's perfect. And so it's made strong in our weakness. So good. It's so good. Even when you think about confession and accountability, it is not a one-time thing. So, yes, we brought our friends together. We had that conversation. But then we had to keep confessing to counselors. It was not like, oh, we're just going to tell y'all and then we good. And people do that.

53:11 You think, oh, if I say it one time, I'm straight. Like, that's not the case at all. We have been to four counselors. I have a session Wednesday. I have a session next Monday. This is not a game. It's not a game. You have to. You have to. Yes. You have to. And what that done has produced so much health, not just in our marriage, y'all, in us individually. Right. When you can get healthy individually, what God has put together gets even stronger in your marriage. And that confession and that accountability is something that's just not a part of one season of our life now. It's just a part of who we are at this point. Forever. That's so good. Forever. That's so good. Oh, my gosh. That's so good. Yeah. You know, the next step that we're going to talk about is generosity. And when you think about the word generosity tied with getting out of a porn addiction, because let's be honest, the whole premise of the series was how to quit porn. I saw it on YouTube.

54:03 It said the compromise of pornography, and then it said how to quit porn, which we later found out that every week, like 50,000 to 60,000 people literally search how to quit porn. That's mind-blowing to me. And so when you think about generosity, you think, so if I give, I quit porn? How does that work? And when I was thinking about that, what God showed me is that, yes, the Bible is very clear that where our treasure is, there also is our heart. And so whatever we're spending our money on is where our heart is. So if you're spending your money on the websites and on the magazines or, you know, rendezvous sessions, then that's where your heart is. But the thing that God really showed me is the power of this is in generosity, we have a culture code here at Transformation Church. We give just to give and not to get, because that's what God did with his one and only son, right? And so when I think about generosity, I think about the thing that we have to be willing to bestow to our spouse in situations like this and to ourselves is the gift of forgiveness. And you have to be able to open up your hand. And maybe it's not money, and maybe it's not a car, and maybe it's not a product, but it's forgiveness. You have to be able to extend the gift of forgiveness to that person who's come against you in that infidelity or pornographic addiction relationship. But even yourself, when you've made those mistakes, like when you have to be able to confess to yourself and confess one into another, that you may be healed. And so I believe that as we're generous with forgiveness, it's one of the hardest things to be generous with because it's so much easier to hold a grudge and to be offended than it is to say, I'm sorry, especially in this culture to take responsibility but i believe when we're generous with our forgiveness that god will choose to heal us so good you know and the um the last one is fasting some people might think that fasting how does that help me with my porn addiction but what you have to understand is that fasting affects your flesh you crucify your flesh you deny your flesh it Actually, the word means covering of the mouth.

56:10 So you crucify your flesh. And when you do that, you're killing things that are attaching themselves to you. It makes me think about David. David said, I humble myself with fasting and praying. Now, David had a problem. They may not have called it pornography, but he had a sin lust problem. And he committed adultery. And as a result, had a man murdered to hide and cover it up. and then they had a child. All of that came from his lust and his addiction to that thing. But when you fast, the Bible says that our body is not our own. Yes. But we have been bought with a price. So we have to crucify our flesh and bring it under control of the Holy Spirit. And that spirit controls you to the point where you don't even desire those things that are unpleasing to God.

57:03 So my wife, she's a faster man. I call her, I'm married to a fastologist. I mean, she can fast for 40 days with not think about it. And I'm saying, Jesus. So I'm going to let her tell you about fasting because she's an expert on this subject. You know, it's about what it can do. David said in 35 of Psalms, he said, I humbled my soul, my mind, my will, and my emotions with fasting, denying it of the things that are driven. Come on, what my flesh want. And the enemy always comes in, whether it's through the eyes and through us eating, through all kinds of things. And there are things in this life that's worth us giving up food, whether it's somebody being healed, somebody being delivered. I never will forget a man in our church.

58:04 He needed a new kidney. And I remember saying, come on. I was saying, let's come together for 30 days, just water, because we don't want this man to die. And what we're saying is we don't want your marriage to die. We don't want your children that right now parents are not telling you the truth because they are so afraid. God, I'm telling parents right now, you begin to fast and pray. God will have you to go and look in areas in their rooms and be able to find things. You are sensitized when you fast and when you pray. God will wake you up and give you information. There is a reason. I love to eat, okay? telling you the truth but I love to knock the devil right out of situations and circumstances and make him get out of people's lives because there are so many children I was a child when that stuff started happening and here it is my sons and and different ones that we have heard tonight but fasting will break the power of hell in the name of Jesus that's why Michael had to tell the truth because there are millions in the name of Jesus that are set free because of the power of the Holy Ghost and because of the power that God has. The Bible says that power belongs to the Lord and he said that same power that raised Jesus Christ from the dead. It's on the inside of you and when you hunger and thirst and fast much of this stuff is going to be broken and destroyed and we are committed even in this hour we fast on mondays every monday we fast why because you are out there and we are believing god for freedom like never before god wants to set you free and whom the lord sets free is free indeed glory to god hallelujah listen those are

1:00:12 some absolutely powerful, powerful tools to use. We, that's the whole purpose of this message of the dig is that we know that pastor Mike is dredging up all kinds of thoughts and feelings and emotions. And the word that God gives him causes you to think things that you've never thought before. And so we need to be able to give you those practical tools to be able to use. And that's confessing and accountability and generosity. And as mom and Todd just said, fasting and praying and believing God. And so, but here's the deal. Here's what we understand. In all of this series, the relationship goals reloaded, the ultimate relationship that you can have is with Jesus Christ. He is the ultimate relationship goals. Hashtag relationship goals. That is with Jesus Christ. And listen, I wanna share with you this example that Pastor Mike showed us this Sunday. And he showed us that our lives are full of sin, full of sin.

1:01:07 And here we are, this rag, okay, this rag, and we're clothing. We've got the addictions of pornography, and we've got the issues of infidelity, and we've got the lies that we've told. And babe, hold that up for them. And we've got the soul ties that have attached to us and the things that have happened to us as a child with our cousins and the situations that we got ourselves into that we never intended to be in. And yet all of a sudden we open our eyes and we realize, how did I get here? And we're covered in absolute filth. And then we're so desperate for that relationship, for something to give us purpose and something to give us meaning. And so we find someone and we think that is the relationship goal. And so we mix ourselves with that person. And this is literally what the soul tie looks like.

1:02:03 We put our filth into them and they put their filth into us. And now you can no longer tell between the two. We both just look like a filthy, wretched mess. And so God said, I have to send the one and only pure and holy thing that I can send to the earth. My one and only son. And you mamas and daddies out there, can you imagine giving your one and only son to give as a sacrifice for the entire earth, for the stupid decisions, for the stupid people, for the stupid mistakes you would be sending your son? And God said, son, I need you to go to the earth. They need someone to show them what holiness and what purity can look like. They need to see that this can be done. And so then when you come into relationship with Jesus Christ, when you call him the Lord of your life and the Savior of your life, and you begin to mix yourself with Jesus, instantly as you begin to become one with Jesus, it begins to change you and you become white as snow. Listen, when you mix yourself with the ultimate relationship goal with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, that thing which once was filthy can no longer remain filthy.

1:03:24 And even when you come up out of that thing, these people that have talked openly about their porn addictions, there's still a residue attached. They've committed their life to Jesus, but yet they're still covered in the residue. And he says, I can take the residue. you. So you immerse yourself in the Holy Ghost and you give yourself wholeheartedly to Jesus Christ. And when you put yourself in the spirit of the living God, you become white as snow. And listen, we want to give you an opportunity right now. If you have never made that decision, if you've never made the decision to call Jesus the Lord of your life and to make that ultimate relationship goal with him, we want to give you that chance right now. At Transformation Church, we don't leave anyone to pray alone. So I'm going to pray a prayer and we're going to ask that you repeat after me. Dear God, dear God, thank you for loving me. Thank you for loving me. Thank you for sending your son to die for me. Thank you for sending your son to die for me. Jesus, thank you for laying down your life to save mine. Jesus, thank you for laying down your life to save mine.

1:04:34 I admit I've made mistakes. I pray you would save me, change me, and transform me. In the mighty name of Jesus. Amen. Amen. Listen, if you have made that decision, you have made the absolute best decision of your life. And today you are literally wiped clean. The slate is clean and you are fresh as new and powder white. And listen, we love you and we are so proud of you. Yes, if you made that decision today, go ahead and text the number at the bottom of the screen. We are so excited. This is the best decision that you could make. Y'all, we are so grateful that you joined us again for the dig this week. Man, every single week it gets better and better and better. So keep tuning in.

1:05:28 Share this with somebody else. It'll be up on YouTube tomorrow morning. Share that link with everyone you know. You want them to get a part of this. We love you so much. Go out and live a transformed life.