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70% of men and a third of women say they are currently struggling with unwanted sexual behavior. According to the Matrimonial Lawyers Association, in 56% of divorce cases a major contributing factor is one spouse's obsessive use of pornography. Even more sobering, the average age of first exposure to hard core pornography for a child is 11-12 years old, which means on average a child has been exposed to pornography before they've even reached junior high school. The sad reality is that pornography is pervasive in our world and highly addictive. It is a multi-billion dollar industry that preys on women, trafficks them, and abuses them. Even worse, nobody is having the conversation about the dangers of porn; either because they don't know of them or they don't care. Yet, the problem of unwanted sexual behavior is surprisingly common. Sam Black is on the mission to change that. He is Director of Recovery Education at Covenant Eyes, which is a resource that aids in online accountability for people seeking to find freedom from unwanted sexual brokenness, and the author of The Healing Church, What Churches Get Wrong About Pornography and How To Fix It. He joins Stephen this week to have an incredibly vulnerable conversation around pornography, the challenges addressing it in churches, and how you as a mentor can support your mentee and have conversations with them around sex and the dangers of pornography.
Struggling to quit watching porn? YOU'RE NOT ALONE. Join over 1.5 million people who've used Covenant Eyes to experience victory over porn. Learn more at https:// www.covenanteyes.com/
The Healing Church is a powerful "field guide" for churches and ministry leaders to address the issue of pornography extensively & with grace. Learn more at https://www.thehealingchurch.com/
Download the Victory App:
Apple
Struggling to quit watching porn? YOU'RE NOT ALONE. Join over 1.5 million people who've used Covenant Eyes to experience victory over porn. Learn more at https:// www.covenanteyes.com/
The Healing Church is a powerful "field guide" for churches and ministry leaders to address the issue of pornography extensively & with grace. Learn more at https://www.thehealingchurch.com/
Download the Victory App:
Apple
Android
Purchase the You Can Mentor book:
You Can Mentor: How to Impact Your Community, Fulfill the Great Commission, and Break Generational Curses
youcanmentor.com
Purchase the You Can Mentor book:
You Can Mentor: How to Impact Your Community, Fulfill the Great Commission, and Break Generational Curses
youcanmentor.com
Creators & Guests
What is You Can Mentor: A Christian Youth Mentoring Podcast?
You Can Mentor is a network that equips and encourages mentors and mentoring leaders through resources and relationships to love God, love others, and make disciples in their own community.
We want to hear from you! Send any mentoring questions to hello@youcanmentor.com, and we'll answer them on our podcast. We want to help you become the best possible mentor you can be. Also, if you are a mentoring organization, church, or non-profit, connect with us to join our mentoring network or to be spotlighted on our show.
Please find out more at www.youcanmentor.com or find us on social media. You will find more resources on our website to help equip and encourage mentors. We have downloadable resources, cohort opportunities, and an opportunity to build relationships with other Christian mentoring leaders.
You can mentor is a podcast about the power of building relationships with kids from hard places in the name of Jesus. Every episode will help you overcome common mentoring obstacles and give you the confidence you need to invest in the lives of others. You can mentor.
Speaker 2:Hey, mentors. Just a reminder about the You Can Mentor book. It's titled You Can Mentor, How to Impact Your Community, Fulfill the Great Commission, and Break Generational Curses. The whole point of this book is to equip and encourage mentors with new tools and ideas on how to make the most of their mentor mentee relationship. If you're a mentor, hey, go pick it up.
Speaker 2:And if you're a mentoring organization, pick some up for all of your mentors. If you would like to order mass copies, like more than 20, send an email to me, zach@youcanmentor.com, and we will get you guys a special price. But go and pick up that book. It's good. You can mentor.
Speaker 3:Welcome back to the You Can Mentor podcast. My name is Steven, and I'm here with special guest, Sam Black. He is the director of recovery education at Covenant Eyes and has come up with a book called The Healing Church, What Churches Get Wrong About Pornography and How to Fix It. Covenant Eyes is a trusted resource to help men and women and parents deal with pornography addiction, break the cycle, quit porn for good. They've helped over 1 and a half 1000000 people experience victory over porn, and encourage people that they are not alone.
Speaker 3:I I know Covenant Eyes has changed the lives of so many people. When it comes to porn addiction, porn creates shame. Shame fuels porn usage. You get stuck in this isolated cycle of shame. And so if you are a man who wants to quit porn, if you're a woman who wants to quit porn, you have a friend, you have a spouse, you have a child that you wanna help live porn free, Covenant Eyes is a great resource.
Speaker 3:Sam Black here has written a book called The Healing Church. And today, I'm having him on the podcast to have a conversation about why we leave this conversation off of our list of curriculum, why it is so hard for us to bring up this secret struggle that so many have and so many experienced early on in their life that has developed into a stronghold. And so Sam is an expert in this area. I'm having him on the podcast to help us crush these strongholds and give us a vision for what it looks like to be a healing ministry for so many, what it looks like for us to be leaders in this conversation. I think he he's going to give you a lot of value today.
Speaker 3:So I hope you'll share this next 45 minutes with us as we discuss the Healing Church, what churches get wrong about pornography, and how to fix it. Sam, thank you for coming on the podcast.
Speaker 4:Hey. Glad to be here. Thank you so much for having me here, Steven.
Speaker 3:You you had mentioned a story to me last week of starting to work at Covenant Eyes. That was, like, I mean, a decade and a half ago. Tell tell our listeners that story because I just I love the image that it put in my mind of of Covenant Eye's new beginning. I think the Internet was just becoming a thing. You may correct me on that.
Speaker 4:Covenant Eye started in 2,000, and so we've been serving for almost for 23 years now. That's incredible. Isn't it? And it's just amazing. The first days that I was at Covenant Eyes and and talking to pastors and ministry leaders and and individual people, I remember talking to the wife of a pastor, and she said he's looking at pornography on Saturday night and preaching on Sunday morning.
Speaker 4:It's just tearing him up. It's killing him. And we don't realize just how much impact pornography is having on all sections of the church. And I think that's imperative for us to really think about how pornography is impacting the church. And that's why I wrote the book, The Healing Church, where churches get wrong about pornography and how to fix it.
Speaker 4:Because regardless of where you are looking at the church, pornography is having an impact that is undermining every ministry in the church. When you think about the amount of time we put into children's ministries and Bible stories and instruction and Sunday school, and yet the average age for first exposure is somewhere between the ages of 8 12. Then we have to really recognize how pornography is impacting what you're trying to put into children's minds about the gospel. It's being tainted from that early of an age. On a regular basis, I talked, I've spoken to families and let me, let me just up at a level where I would speak at many home Christian homeschool conferences across the country.
Speaker 4:And these are very large events. And the number of parents I would talk to that had discovered that their child at 5, 6, 7, 8 had been exposed to pornography. There were just so many stories like that. Children finding it on accident, being exposed by friends or by family members, cousins, etcetera. Often it was happening within earshot and eye shot of their parents, and yet their parents didn't discover it until much later.
Speaker 4:And so I think it's very important for us to understand how that's impacting our children's ministry. But if you think about men's ministry, where 70% of men say they have an ongoing struggle with pornography, where a third of women say they have an ongoing struggle with pornography. And so we're we're putting plenty of effort and attention in the church to men's ministry and the men's pancake breakfast and the men's steak night and the and the weekend retreat for women, etcetera. And yet we're often ignoring an a problem, a pain point, a habit, and often an addiction that is undermining our efforts in ministry. We think about marriage ministry, yet in 56% of divorce cases, a major contributing factor is in one spouse's obsessive use of pornography.
Speaker 4:And that's from the Matrimonial Lawyers Association. So a totally secular organization says, listen, pornography is having an impact on marriage, but if we're not addressing how pornography is impacting marriage within the church, then we're miss, we're missing how pornography is undermining all the efforts that we're putting into having good conversations and communicating well and intimacy and non sexual intimacy and all the above. We're trying to teach them and yet there is this cancer that is eating away Yeah. That is often unseen and secret.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Can you say that phrase again that the Lord spoke to you in choosing to come to Covenant Eyes? Because I feel like that may be something that the Lord's speaking to somebody listening today. Because I think that relates to not only someone committing to a youth mentoring relationship, but also being a husband, being a father, being a leader. Say that thing one more time, what what the Lord told you.
Speaker 4:Yes. Okay. Sam, your whole career has been about you, and this is what I need you to do for me.
Speaker 3:I love it. I love it. And, I mean, I think in a way, obviously, you are a wellspring, a resource for the church to talk about this issue. And you writing this book, I mean, I recommend mentors, mentoring leaders, pick up this book. The main reason I wanted to have Sam on the podcast was to really give us vision for having healthy conversations about pornography in our mentoring relationships and realizing the effects of pornography on ourselves personally and within our communities and within our families.
Speaker 3:And so if here here at Forerunner, we talk about we want our boys to become godly husbands, fathers, and leaders. And kind of exactly what you're hitting on, Sam, is that for me to be a godly husband, that comes with a commitment, a responsibility, and a healthy vision for sex in my life. Being a godly father communicates that I'm training up my children in the way that they should go, that I'm I'm having, I don't know, a a spirit to listen and not just tell and thou shalt not and and and really communicate and build a a deep, warm, authentic, transparent relationship with my kids. But then being a leader I mean, I think what you're hitting at is that the church, in some way, has a leadership role that hasn't hasn't come to life into its fullness. I think the Lord wants us to be talking about the thing that he gave to us and the things that are disrupting and distorting and and breaking down the family, breaking down relationships.
Speaker 3:And so, I mean, this tell us about this title, the Healing Church, because in in many respects, you've told me that the church hasn't been known as that, especially with when it comes to this issue because it's just so hard for us to talk about it.
Speaker 4:Yeah. So Paul instructs us how pornography is not only sin, but it's sinning against your own body. And we've often taken that only as a warning. Listen, that's just not just bad. That's really bad.
Speaker 4:And that's not wrong, but we've also miscommunicated that, that somehow sexual sin is somehow worse and more shameful and more ugly. And many times it's more damaging to relationships and etcetera. It's more damaging to our it's often more damaging to our spiritual life, our our emotional lives, our the way we communicate with others. I think we really need to not only just say, hey, it's not a word, you know, like this sin is worse than another sin, But I think Paul is really telling us, listen, you have to understand, this is really impactful. This isn't just sort of bad for you or hurtful for you.
Speaker 4:It's going to cause some real pain for you. Please don't go there. I'm warning you extra more here. I want I want you to pay attention. And I think that's really what is should be communicated in that scripture, that we need to take this very seriously because pornography will take you places you never thought you'd go, do things you never thought you'd do, hurt people you never thought you'd harm, pay a price that you never thought you'd have to pay.
Speaker 4:And so I think we, as Christians, we need need to take our sexual thoughts captive. We need to take this issue very seriously. And often in the church, we have extended grace, which is good, but we typically don't offer help to help someone leave pornography behind for good. And instead we often couch it in saying, well, we all, we're all guys, we're all sinful. We're going to always struggle throughout life.
Speaker 4:And that's wrong. That's one way it's often said in church that they were men and men are, look at the Bible, there's plenty of guys who who who have messed up. And so we just take that at face value without providing help to say, no, you don't have to live there. You don't have to keep going back. You can live in absolute and total freedom, but a lot of men don't believe that.
Speaker 4:I want you to know that it's true and it's real. The other part is, if you're a Christian and you love God, then you don't struggle with pornography because good Christians don't struggle. Right? So we have this tussle that goes on within the church. And so what often comes out for men who truly do find freedom from pornography and women and teens is that my church didn't help me very much.
Speaker 4:That just shouldn't be the case. The church is God's plan a, and there is no plan b. The church is God's plan. And so we, as fellow believers, need to create a safe place within the Church to really get honest and real about our struggles and have a safe process so that we learn to grow and live in real freedom.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 4:And I think that's some of the factors that we're often missing in the local church. We take a scripture as simple as James 5 16, which we would all say, oh yeah, that's real, which is, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed. Confession is my part. You listening and praying for me is your part. God does the healing.
Speaker 4:But he used, God uses the church to bring that freedom. Now, unfortunately, we don't practice James 516 very well in the church. I was spoken to a local pastor of a small church and he said, you know, our churches only has about a 100 members. And people know each other and they know each other's families, etcetera. And I guess it's pretty hard to really confess your sins and really be honest about what you're struggling with in life in a church of our size.
Speaker 4:Interestingly enough, just a few minutes later at this conference, I was speaking to a couple. They heard that I worked for Covenant Eyes and they were like, oh, you we really need your help. I'm I'd like to find an accountability partner or an ally as we like to call it at Covenant Eyes to receive my my Covenant Eyes report about how I use my devices just to give me some accountability in my life, give me some some structure and support. But I attend a church of 35100 and I just can't find someone to be my ally. Now we have to ask ourselves, right
Speaker 3:You gotta find the midsize church. That's all you need. You need you need a a church of about 500 to 600 people. That's what you need, Sam.
Speaker 4:It's not the size of the church. Right? We have to ask ourselves what part of James 516 do we not believe? So when I, listen, you've got, you've got mentors who are listening here today and they're thinking, you know, Sam, I'm struggling. I don't know who I could really go to in my church, and I don't really know the next steps I would take, even if I if I confessed, then what should I do next?
Speaker 4:And that's where you need a safe place and the safe process. And there's lots of tools that can help you with that. Covenant Eyes provides a book called Life Change, A Biblical Journey to Freedom. And it is a 12 week journey where you can go through it with your accountability partner, you're with your ally, and have meaningful conversations about why do I, why do I do what I do when I really don't want to do it, right? We also offer a great tool.
Speaker 4:It's called the Victory app by Covenant Eyes. And within the Victory app, which is free, there are more than 20 courses within there that help you understand, how did I get stuck? Why do I often feel like I'm staying stuck? How can I really live in freedom?
Speaker 3:That's really good, Sam.
Speaker 4:Listen, we often we and I think it's important for mentors to understand that basic principle. How do people get stuck? Why is it often and and you guys deal with some serious issues. You deal with some kids that have come through some real brokenness in their lives. And so I think it's important to really dive into why do people often feel stuck with pornography?
Speaker 4:So I find 3 parts. 1 is that early exposure. And early exposure is often a foundational block. It's a building block upon which other behaviors and thoughts and perspectives are built. And regardless of Christian counselors all agree that that formative experience of early exposure to pornography is very impactful to that young brain that's neither been knows what pornography is or understands.
Speaker 4:Children are often going today because of their smartphone world, they're going from, I don't know anything about sex to the very worst of the worst because pornography today is mainly video. It's often debasing, violent, and really ugly. So that formative experience is very impactful. It can be traumatic in itself. And that's another part that I'll come back to.
Speaker 3:I I think just definitely from my own experience, like when I was in junior high, I vividly remember coming across a website that I think I think I saw my brother surfing. And it I mean, it had so many mutilating videos where it it wasn't necessarily sexual, but it was just every kind of thing you can think of that's just up in your face that that really you know you shouldn't be seeing. You know that you're in a dark part of the world or a part of the web, but as a kid, it just kind of like you're attached to it, and you can't look away. I mean, it's like having MTV up on the TV, and you're just mindlessly watching it as a as a kid because it's just flashing, and it's and it's it's catching your attention. And yeah.
Speaker 3:I mean, it's it's yeah. Early exposure just kinda it kinda draws you in, and you don't know what you're looking for.
Speaker 4:Hard for a child to look away because there's a natural curiosity. Every child is curious about what the opposite sex looks like without clothes. It's gonna light up the neurocircuitry of the brain. God designed our brains for healthy sexuality and for it to be stimulating. So it is going to be stimulating the child.
Speaker 4:It's gonna be hard for them to look away. The dopamine focuses your attention and that's, it also makes you feel good. And so dopamine can focus your attention to the point of tunnel vision where the rest of the world disappears and you're focused on one thing. And pornography is not sex, it's a hijacking of what God created. The number 2 part of this that I think is important to notice is the repetition, because our brains are more plastic than they are ceramic.
Speaker 4:It used to be thought, it's called neuroplasticity. And it used to be thought that our brains are at a certain age would be very malleable until you got to like age 26 or mid twenties, and then you were stuck. But the truth is our brains are more plastic than they are ceramic and they can build new neural pathways throughout their lifetime. But that early exposure and the repetition that goes with it creates neural pathways that begin to crave pornography. And the more that they see it, the less, the more desensitized they become to it, the more they up the ante to chase that original high and the neural pathways go deeper and deeper into wanting and desiring pornography.
Speaker 4:And that's where we get sort of these habits, where we get the habits from. Now, the other part of this, the third part, one was early exposure. 2nd was repetition and ongoing use. Number 3 is drama or trauma, and especially early in life. Pornography becomes escapism.
Speaker 4:And if you're angry or sad or frustrated or irritated, you can flee to pornography. When you're that those things expand to feeling bored. It'd be may use pornography just to manage your moods. And a bad day, you can run to pornography. But through a process, not only do you understand these aren't excuses of why I might struggle so hard with pornography.
Speaker 4:It's an understanding to say, okay, I know I was exposed early. I know that I've been using pornography for a long time. And yeah, when I'm angry, that's probably a real trigger for me to use pornography. When I feel low self esteem, that's likely an opportune time that I use pornography. And so we call these triggers that lead you to pornography.
Speaker 4:And so understanding that gives us a little bit of a leg up and we can begin to understand this is how I feel. We need a name or emotions and we can surrender that through a process of one another and to Christ. And the Holy Spirit can move in and do its healing work. But when we bottle it up and we don't tell anybody, that secrecy makes us weak. A lone sheep is a dead sheep.
Speaker 3:Man.
Speaker 4:And if you're struggling with pornography today and you're listening, you have to understand that you have tried harder again and again and again. You have worked, tried to do this on your own over and over and you've not found freedom. So why not try something a little different? And listen, I know this from a personal level. I was exposed at the age of 10.
Speaker 4:I saw my brother who's about 19 years older than me looking at a magazine sideways, standing out in our driveway. And I couldn't understand why would you read sideways? That didn't make any sense. And so I walked up to him and his friend and said, Hey, what are you guys looking at? And they turned it around and showed me.
Speaker 4:And I was naturally curious. I didn't step away or look the other way. I stepped forward. I wanted a closer look. And his friend unfolds it and says, hey, you don't wanna miss the good part, but I didn't have any understanding what he was talking about.
Speaker 4:I didn't even understand the basic mechanics of sex. But nonetheless, my dopamine level went up. I was very focused. I can remember that entire scene. I don't remember anything else about that day, but I remembered what happened there.
Speaker 4:That's how, because dopamine also helps you learn and helps with the help of norepinephrine and her things, it helps burn those memories into the brain. Well, I also had a friend and his dad had pornography that was falling out of his closet. I mean, it looked like a waterfall. There was this shelf up top and stacks of pornography and it was all kind of leaning over and there was a pile of it on the floor and I could take anything I wanted and I did. And so pornography would follow me from middle school to high school, through college, into my marriage.
Speaker 4:And I'm among the most fortunate and let me let me let me pause there for a second. The third part of this is I I I grew up in a home that even though it was Christian, it was hypocritically violent. And what I didn't realize at the time that when I felt fear or anger or frustration and all the above, I could run to a self soothing of pornography. If I felt bored or if I didn't do well at school, or if I got picked on at school, I could run to pornography as an escape. And that would follow me all the way into my marriage.
Speaker 4:And I have to be one of the most fortunate men you're ever going to meet. I was attending a small church here in our little town. Actually, my I was an agnostic by this point and my wife was attending the church and she came to me one day and said, hey, would you be willing to go with me to our church where they're doing a marriage class? And I knew our help. Our marriage needed help.
Speaker 4:And when we went to that classroom, the instructors would close the door and they would say, this is a safe place. What's said here stays here. Now they had been alcoholics and struggled with other things that a couple that lived it. And they understood the value of a safe place with the safe process. And within that that church framework, within that safe place, people were honest about the ugly things they were saying to their spouse, how they felt about their spouse, how they would hold back in anger and all these other things that was going on in their marriage.
Speaker 4:Man, I couldn't believe Christians were this kind of honest because I didn't grow up with that experience. But that is also where I learned that pornography could be addictive and compulsive. And that was a great relief to me because that meant God didn't make me this way. Evolution didn't make me this way from an agnostic perspective. And I didn't have to stay this way.
Speaker 4:And with the help of men like you, Stephen, I got to learn to live and grow in freedom. And so right in the Healing Church, right mentoring other men, serving with an organization called the Samson Society, which you can find at samsonsociety.com. It's a community of Christian men who are supporting one another in their journey to freedom. Through that, I get to live in freedom today from that. And it's something that I guard and protect for certain, but freedom is real.
Speaker 4:And I don't, and there's, again, I wanna go back to that earlier conversation that we had because there's some listeners here saying, no, I think this is something I'll always have to struggle with. And that is a lie. That is not truth. You can live in freedom. And you can pass that freedom on to those you are mentoring.
Speaker 3:That's really good. I I think, generally speaking, starting this conversation, my mind was like, okay. Sam, just tell us, you know, how to help our mentees with this issue. And you spent this first half of our conversation saying, we gotta deal with you. We gotta deal with getting getting you free, getting you into the light.
Speaker 3:And even just from both of us sharing our stories, we both said, well, we blamed our brother for for exposing us. And then we started hiding away in this and using it as a coping mechanism. And then, I guess for me, I kind of reduced the the impact or the effect it was having on my life and saying, well, this isn't this isn't a problem. And then inevitably, it becomes like an entrenched behavior that shows itself throughout my entire life of relationships, where I'm self focused, I'm looking to be looking for a release, looking for coping mechanisms to deal with the stress of life, and I'm just me centered, me centered, me centered. And I mean, I just think it's good for us to have that conversation, mentors, mentoring leaders.
Speaker 3:Just because you're leading a mentoring organization doesn't mean that you're absolved from having to deal with your past. And bring it before the Lord, confess your sin, pray for one another so you might be healed, and allow God to lead in that in in your vulnerability as you bring those things into the light, that there is healing for you. I I'm even thinking I while you were sharing, Sam, for years, I would go back to my parents' house, and I would stand on top of a toilet near my brother and I's room, and I'd look for the magazines that I used to look at, knowing that they were gone. I mean, it's it was decades after us being kids and us hiding those things from our parents. But I would just find myself always going to stand on top of the toilet and look to see if they were still there.
Speaker 3:And I I mean, I just I think it it's given me an appreciation for a sobriety within all of my experiences as a kid. And as a mentor, it makes me think, my mentee, what he needs me to be is what I needed when I was in junior high and high school. And I had a very formative experience where my dad walked in on me while I was masturbating, and we didn't have a conversation about it. He closed the door after he opened it, and it was never mentioned again in in conversation. And I think what I needed in that moment was someone to have a conversation with me about pornography, about sex, and about I mean, I knew it was wrong, and I think he knew it was wrong and and felt that I didn't need he didn't need to say anything, but it was just the act of catching me was enough.
Speaker 3:But I don't think it was enough. I think I think I needed someone to walk with me and become a safe haven for me to process these behaviors that were becoming a lifestyle, an entrenched lifestyle of seeking to be fulfilled in something that, like you said, that has been hijacked by the enemy, something that God made for good. And so I don't know
Speaker 4:what Just a quick question there. When your dad walked in on you and he walked out, what did you feel?
Speaker 3:I felt well, initially, I felt shame. And I I think moving forward from that, I felt I think because it never became a conversation, was that these are not the things that I talk to dad about, because a a conversation is not desired. And so if there's not a conversation desired, I can't go to you. Yeah. I mean, it's like
Speaker 4:Those are two great things you just stated. And shame, if I always tell parents, you will never shame your child out of viewing pornography or something else. Shame cements further the deepening struggle. Shame is the opposite of healing. And as shame grows in our life, and people carry lots of shame about lots of different things from what side of the tracks we grew up on, to our financial status, to our life, to our education, to our achievement, to how we look, to all the above.
Speaker 4:I mean, shame is just Satan's tool. And often with pornography and its continued use, shame becomes that self hatred at my expense. Shame, s h a m e, self hatred at my expense. And so we begin to bury the things in us that we don't like, or we don't want any other, anyone to see. So we don't tell anybody about our struggle with pornography.
Speaker 4:And it often becomes like flipping a coin. On one side of the coin is how good I am, how my grandiosity, how much I can serve others. And then the coin gets flipped and you're on the other side is self hatred at my expense. I'm not good enough. I'm never gonna get this right.
Speaker 4:God, why won't you take this away from me? This is terrible. I I can't believe I failed again. What's going on in my life? And so this this self loathing, And then that only that lasts for a little while, and then we have a little bit of behavior and we flip it back to I'm gonna serve, I'm gonna do better, I'm gonna try harder until we can no longer keep up that facade, and we flip the coin again.
Speaker 4:Okay. The other part of that that you said was, I just discovered I couldn't have, that's something I couldn't talk to my dad about. And what I really try to tell parents and mentors is that you need to be a safe place where your son or daughter or your mentee can talk to you about anything. Yeah. Because as soon as one thing becomes off limits, then they will come to you about the other things in life.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 4:And so it is sort of, we've heard the parable about the talents and how we use small amount. What we were given in small, we increased, and we were trusted with a small thing, and now we can be trusted with larger things. And that's often what I believe our sons and daughters and our mentees are going to test with us, test us with. And that is, I'm giving you the small thing. Now, can I trust you with something bigger?
Speaker 4:And as those become bigger and we shut down, you probably talk to your dad about many things. But when you were trusting him with, when you were, he had this came up, this was one thing that couldn't be trusted. So often likely, at least in my home, whenever dad did want to talk about sex or anything else like that, I didn't think he was safe to talk to. So I never trusted him with those things. And so I often I've I heard recently from someone that they their only conversation with their father about sex was, do you know what sex is?
Speaker 4:I said, yeah. Well, don't do it. And that was it. That was the only conversation they had about sex.
Speaker 3:Wow.
Speaker 4:So having that open environment, we listen with both our eyes. We don't just listen with our hearing. We listen with the tone of our eyes. Are they soft? Are they caring?
Speaker 4:Are they speak well? We we listen to with our body posture. Are we tense? Are we arms folded? Are we guarded?
Speaker 4:Are we frowning? It's something I had to be very rehearsed myself with my own kids because I have a tendency to frown when I think. And my wife would say, hey, Sam, you're frowning. So I had I paid attention that when my kids were talking to me about something, I wanted to make sure, am I I don't wanna frown because I want them to feel that they come to me with anything.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah. So I I think if I'm a if I'm a mentor, I think I have some challenges on how to go about broaching this conversation. Obviously, there there may be some when it's not your own kid, I think I think there are some challenges to navigate. And so, I mean, I would just recommend that this is a conversation that the mentor has with the parent or guardian of the child first, saying, hey, I would And we we
Speaker 4:have some tools that can help with that. We have a a parenting internet generation or equipped raising godly digital natives. These are tools that you can use with the parent. You can introduce these to the parent to help them understand how they can have good conversations with their kids as well. Definitely offer some tools that can provide that support.
Speaker 3:That's great. And I think the feedback that I hear from moms of the boys in our program is that they're wanting us to have this conversation because they don't know how to have it. And and I don't know if that's just mom has, you know, provided, nurtured, walked her son through so many things in life, but when it comes to this, the feeling is that, well, I need a man to step in and have this conversation with my son. I don't know what that is, but it but it I think the mentor plays a significant role. When you just think about the father figures that were in your life, what conversations were they having with you that promoted your health?
Speaker 3:And I I just can't imagine me saying that I I would have rejected an older man in my life trying to have a conversation about this with me before I was exposed or or after I was exposed. It's just few and far between. I I can list only a few men in my life that have actually asked me about that, and I don't know what that is because I've had I've I mean, I've had hundreds of men pour into my life, but I can I can think of a handful that we've actually talked about this? And so when it comes to a boy who has, I mean, a relational deficit of men in their life, how many people are going to break ground in in this area and talk about pornography, talk about a healthy vision for sex and marriage. And I don't know what encouragement you would give to to a mentor or maybe reduce or challenge some assumptions that a mentor might carry into this of in their mentoring relationship, the the benefits and what whatever's holding them back from having these difficult conversations.
Speaker 4:Yes. Thank you. 1, and this is gonna sound self serving, but I believe it's being true, is I'm trying to get a copy of the Healing Church. And you can download the first chapter and the introduction from the healing church.com because I believe it will open a gateway to better understanding of your role in someone else's life and how you can serve them and and be become part of a healing process. Because without a doubt, you'll probably receive some pushback from young men, from even children.
Speaker 4:Adolescents have been probably using, seeing pornography for a long while. They've probably seen lots of it. They've probably been a lot of unguarded situations, even ones that they come from a good home, but that there are some things that are just not talked about. And the commonality, it's so common for children to expose other children to pornography or to find it on their own that, and if they don't have a safe place to talk about that, you may be the first person that's been willing to broach that subject with them. But they're also going to have been trained a little bit by pornography.
Speaker 4:Now you're saying, what do you mean by that, Sam? I remember an 8 year old who I've got I wanna be cautious and be careful to keep anonymity here, but it was an 8 year old who was in our our sphere, who had pornography on this device when I had a, let me see your device and there was pornography on us. Well, you know, listen, I'm just going to keep it for now and I'll show it to you and then your parent can return it. And his first words out of his mouth was just, they get paid to do that, you know? And so was an 8 year old with a justification that says pornography is okay because someone's getting paid for the abuse that they're receiving.
Speaker 4:Even though we don't know if that's always true, right? We don't, How often are people being trafficked and those who are being trafficked are those who are in pornography. And there's an industry that's rife with abuse and ugliness and sin and just it can be horrific. So we have to understand that pornography has been training a lot of those kids from an early age and whether you're dealing with an adolescent or an older teen, their perspectives, they just went had this amazing walk with you, drew closer to Christ with you, feeling strong. And and then when you address pornography, there's like, well, you know, I you know, they get paid.
Speaker 4:They get this. They get that. You know, it's just it's just for fun. It's just, there's like a 1,000 other excuses going on. So you need to be prepared for that conversation.
Speaker 4:And to be prepared for that conversation, I encourage you to do a little reading and understanding. That's what I, I'm making a full circle there. I think one of the most important things you can do is be equipped. Because if you're not equipped, then you, how do I, how do I have this conversation? What do I say?
Speaker 4:How, what am I ready? Am I prepared? And that's a big deal. So I encourage people to, I know the self serving, get a copy of the Healing Church. You can download the first chapter and the introduction at the healing church dot com just to get a taste of it.
Speaker 4:But within it, I do chapters that really help you understand how, how pornography impacts kids, how it can be so formative. And so I really, I want you to be equipped. Covenant Eyes also provides a lot of great resources and they're free. That really help you understand how pornography impacts the brain, what is happening within that industry, but also really how can we have godly conversations around this topic? And so I can't encourage you enough to come to the conversation prepared, because that's probably among the things that's keeping you held back.
Speaker 4:And, and here's a very important reason why you need to come prepared. Pornography has been preparing that adolescent or teenager for some years. It's been telling them lies for a long time. I remember an 8 year old who had his phone taken away from him and his instant response to the pornography that was on the device wasn't, oh, I'm sorry, or I did something wrong or whatever else. His instant first response, well, you know, those people get paid for that.
Speaker 4:As though we are, we should, it's okay to use other people in pornography. It's not. Even though he came from a good Christian home with a good Christian family, pornography had already taught him by the age of 8 that it's okay to view pornography because I don't know about the trafficking that happens within pornography. I don't know about the, how that person might have been abused or hurt or how their own, no, we don't know the pain that pornography performers have been through. Often they have been victims of child sexual abuse and many other things that got them to a point where they, and are being trafficked at the very moment.
Speaker 4:So anyway, what you need to do is come prepared for the conversation to be able to talk openly about it. And Covenant ICE has many resources. In addition to the Healing Church, we're going to provide some links here for you that can really equip you to have a conversation and do it well and not a single conversation. This is a conversation that can happen over time. This is, these tools can help you equip parents so they can have the conversation well too.
Speaker 4:And there's another great resource that I do recommend. It's called the sex talk. The sex talk dot com is where you can find it. I'll also provide you a link for that so you can have access to that information as well. It is a paid service, but there are other resources from Covenant Eyes that is all free.
Speaker 3:I love it, Sam. And I and I love your persistence in asking mentors and mentoring leaders to lead in this area, not abdicate that to somebody else and say, well well, you know, someone else is gonna have that conversation. Someone else is gonna provide curriculum. Someone else is gonna create space for this conversation, and kind of the resources and training that you guys have provided in your book, The Healing Church, but also in Covenant Eyes and in the, I mean, just vast library of resources. Really, you need people to go be the hands and feet who are having the conversation, making space in your organization, which which I'd say it is the Healing Church, but really any ministry leader, faith based mentoring program, I think all of the lessons I'm reading in this book apply to your leadership within your organization.
Speaker 3:And so I I would encourage anyone listening, would you even if you're a mentor, would you ask your mentoring leaders what is our vision here for having this conversation with kids from hard places? How do we navigate this alongside parents? What vision are we casting for for this conversation to happen? So mentoring, leaders, please go pick up this book. We will put it in the show notes.
Speaker 3:What other links did you say you're gonna provide us, Sam?
Speaker 4:The healing church dot com, covenant eyes dot com. We've got some I'll give you some links that will help you there, but also give you some specific links to resources, reebooks, as well as download the app to your phone or other smart devices. The Victory app by CovenantEyes. Again, the Victory app by CovenantEyes, Twenty separate courses within there more than that, and it can that library continues to grow, and they're all free. And you can download the app for free, and I I know you'll get a lot of benefit from it.
Speaker 3:Well, Sam, thank you so much for for your time on the podcast. Is there any other parting words you'd like to speak to maybe a a leader of a mentoring organization and any encouragement you would have for them? Oh, man.
Speaker 4:You know oh, thank you. Thank you for what you're doing because you are pouring back into kids' lives. As you already know, there's some puzzle pieces missing, And I just really want to encourage you to take advantage of these resources so that you're equipped to use a puzzle piece that you probably don't have right now. And that child probably isn't receiving it. It's probably a puzzle piece that you didn't receive in your own life.
Speaker 4:So instead of that puzzle piece just remaining missing, ongoing, take action today. Procrastination is the killer of good intentions. We wanna do the right thing. We put it off and then nothing happens. So please take advantage of the resources we've talked about today.
Speaker 4:Don't put it off, take action.
Speaker 3:Amen. Amen. Well, thank you so much, Sam. As we said, the Healing Church, you'll find it in the show notes. Thank you for writing this and yeah, for your time today, Sam.
Speaker 4:Honored to be here. Thanks so much, Steven.