There are many books and resources written directly for people who struggle with pornography. But what about books written for pastors, counselors, friends, and family members who are helping people who are addicted?
To this end, pastors and biblical counselors Deepak Reju and Jonathan Holmes have written two books—Rescue Plan: Charting a Course to Restore Prisoners of Pornography and Rescue Skills: Essential Skills for Restoring the Sexually Broken:— to help equip people who want to walk with those who battle sexual sin. The books are available beginning November 10 on paperback and Kindle.
The first is Rescue Plan: “Rescue Plan teaches you theory—explaining the nature of pornography addiction and what it looks like when it shows up in different stages of a person’s life,” the authors write. In other words, it offers a framework to think about the struggles of pornography.
The second is Rescue Skills. “Rescue Skills is how to interact with a believer who struggles with pornography,” the write. It teaches strategies to guide someone toward recovery, such as how to listen well, ask the right questions, and understand guilt and shame.
The authors encourage people to read both books as they complement each other. As the books say, “Rescue Plan is about what, when, and why; Rescue Skills is about how.”
To explain their ministry, Deepak Reju and Jonathan Holmes joined Tim St. John, counseling pastor and SOLA editorial board member, to talk about the importance of addressing this problem. They also talk about how pastors should preach a beautiful vision of sexuality, the importance of discipleship, and the need for helpers to come alongside those who are addicted to sexual sin.
Watch their encouraging conversation here. Editor’s Note: Please note that there are automated captions embedded in the video, and they may contain errors.
Editor’s Note: Below is an automated transcript of their conversation. There may be typos and other discrepancies from the video. You can listen to the audio here.
Tim St. John: Well, welcome to the SOLA podcast. My name is Tim St. John. I’m one of the editors here at the SOLA Network and today I have the unique joy of interviewing some dear friends, Deepak Reju and Jonathan Holmes. Welcome brothers. Thanks for being here.
Jonathan Holmes: Thanks for having us.
Tim St. John: So, just to introduce everyone to Deepak and Jonathan. Deepak serves as the pastor of biblical counseling and families at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, DC. He and his wife Sarah, I believe just celebrated their 20th anniversary. Is that right? That’s right. Awesome. And they have five beautiful children. So, Deepak has authored many books, all of which our church has benefited from, but two that have particularly helped us have been on guard preventing and responding to child abuse at church. We’ve had our whole children’s ministry team go through that look at the appendix is do safety planning is really helpful. And also his book, The pastor and counseling which he wrote with Jeremy Pierre, which has been translated into Spanish and we use that as a textbook for our short term counselor trainings in Mexico, which we do about twice a year. So we’re really thankful for those resources.
And then Jonathan Holmes serves as counseling pastor at Parkside church in Cleveland, Ohio, and he’s the founder and executive director of fieldstone counseling. So he and his wife Jen have four beautiful daughters. Jonathan is not only a dear friend of mine, but he also has mentored me for the past two years on an almost monthly basis through the many challenges I faced in my own counseling ministry. At Lighthouse Community Church here in Torrance. So Jonathan’s books, the company we keep and counsel for couples have been staples in our ministry. And Jonathan, I think your marriage book is the only one with a chapter on in laws, and also a chapter on abuse. And so I honestly, it’s been so helpful to our counselors. Well, today, we want to look at the latest books, you guys have written “Rescue Skills” and “Rescue Plan.” So it’s unique to go on with two books at the same time on a specific topic. So maybe Deepak you could just open us up and share a little bit about what led you and Jonathan to write these two books together?
Deepak Reju: Yeah, and what was the initial burden was there’s a lot of really solid books on the market for strugglers, and yet there’s a niche in the market that needs to be filled, for helping out the helper. So the pastor, the counselor, the small group leader, the best friend, the parent of a teen, the accountability partner, the roommate, the person who’s in the trench, with the struggler and needs to know more of how to come alongside of them, how to give them hope, how to ask questions, how to explore the heart, what to do with a dead conscience, just all the things that comes alongside of dealing with addiction. I love writing books with friends. So it really is it’s excuse to build a friendship. And you can only do that with like-minded friends. You know, writing a book with someone who you don’t agree with is like, basically putting a debt to the relationship. Writing a book with a like minded friend, it strengthens the friendship. So I approached Jonathan and said, Would you do this with me? And he said, Yes. And hence started the partnership in US writing the two books.
Tim St. John: Praise God. That’s great. Why? I’ve had a chance to read “Rescue skills” and I’m partway through “Rescue Plan.” But I know that’s only because I have advanced copies by God’s grace. The books are coming out officially November 10. I know this is going to be a tremendous resource for all the churches that are able to get their hands on it. But just to kind of give a picture of the need for these books. Maybe Jonathan, you could address this just how serious of a problem would you say pornography is in the church today?
Jonathan Holmes: Yeah, Tim, it’s a great question. I think that I would say pornography is an issue that I think when I’m going into counseling conversations and conversations with lay leaders in the church, to some degree, I just assumed that it is a problem that pretty much at some point, every individual’s life is going to be touched by this issue either like Deepak was saying either as a parent, a friend or roommate, a best friend, or personally as a struggler. And so it is still one of those issues, that there is still some stick attached to it in terms of discussing it. But that I would say the vast majority of people that I talked to, this is at least something in their past or something in the present. This is an issue that is a struggle for them and that you know, needs thoughtful care and discussion to kind of bring that out into the light. So I definitely think it’s a significant issue for us of the church.
Tim St. John: That’s really that’s really good. Yeah, I’ve never met anyone who said what Is pornography in the church? Right? It touches everybody’s life. Yeah.
Deepak Reju: Well, I can mention a stat I looked up this morning. Yes, please. Yeah, I mean, I just thought in looking at your questions, I thought, okay, let’s see what carbonize stats page says. It had 64% of men. 15% of women say they watch porn at least once a month. And then we put in the book we put on our chapter dealing with women in porn. Even a Pornhub is one of the top ranking sites in the world 42 billion hits in 2019 and 15 million visits per day. The 2019 report had, when it talked about women that women viewers made up a minimum of 10% of all hits worldwide, in several places in the world, when made up 50% of the viewers, and the worldwide average for women on PornHub was 32%. So you just start looking at the stats, and you just see the nature of the problem that you we know it’s a problem. Now you put numbers behind it, to see how common it is and how many people are being affected.
Tim St. John: And then, and then you put number of resources next to those numbers, and especially resources for women. Right. And it’s yeah, they are left in the dust. Yeah, so I’m so thankful. Yeah. Yeah. For you guys writing these books. I mean, so trying to address this problem isn’t something new. So maybe Deepak you could help us understand how have you seen churches try to address this problem historically, and maybe mistakes that have been made important lessons, we should learn from the history of how churches have tried to address this issue in the past.
Deepak Reju: Okay, so let’s think about the problem. Churches often don’t have sex messages because biblical sexual immorality is in the Bible. So of course, they do teach on those texts. But then what you rarely hear in the pulpit is a beautiful vision for what God intends and sexuality. So how often have you heard a sermon on Song of Songs? How often have you heard a series on Song of Songs? Well, not that often. And you know, the guys who actually do it, it’s not surprising that everybody’s a bit setback, because even just reading the text feels awkward for everyone in the pew, let alone preaching the text. And yet, we’re preaching about sexual immorality, because it’s in the Bible, but we’re not preaching about God’s beautiful vision for it. So is it no surprise, and there’s a deficit and people’s understanding about what God really does intend for sexuality. And the beauty of that, that picture of what it really is, then add in in terms of church culture, there’s usually not a culture where members are really heavily engaged with one another. So it kind of gospel culture where people pursue each other, are invested in each other’s lives, or asking each other hard questions. If that’s not the norm, you just add all these together. You’re not surprised that people show up with a mask on in church. They show up in the generic question of like, well, how are you doing today? They say, Oh, well, I’m fine. And in fact, you know, their life is a wreck, but they’re not going to pull the mess down on Sunday morning. If somebody were to say, like, Well, my my, my life is a mess. Right now. I’m struggling with pornography. My wife hates me and my teenagers are rebelling, mostly will be like, Whoa, hold on. You need to call the counseling pastor. You can call Tim more, or Jonathan, because I don’t know how to handle those issues. But that’s what I think we’re facing in a lot of churches. That’s part of the problem. What do we do about it? Break the silence. Man, a lot of churches. This is not a conversation about what do we do about pornography, let alone what do we do about sexual sin as a whole, the only thing they hear is just don’t do it. Then preach a positive view of God’s intentions for sexuality. You know, you can draw a line from the pulpit to every ministry in the church. And if the pulpits not preaching a beautiful vision of sexuality, then you’re not going to hear in any other ministries. And then established a culture where people are invested in each other, like discipling. It’s a high priority that the pastors talk about the value of one on one discipling being invested in others, but gospel culture where we’re connected to each other. And the members start by just simply showing humility in their relationships with other people. They’re just open and honest with each other. That’s how they, you know, because I as a member, I can’t change the whole culture of my church. But I can start with the two or three religions Just I had, but being honest. And you know, how does it? How does culture change, but I’m more people getting it and acting out and doing. It’s just a few thoughts to thinking about.
Tim St. John: That’s helpful. I know, Jonathan, would you have anything to add there just things you’ve seen from just problems historically, in the church lessons, lessons we should learn from that history.
Jonathan Holmes: Yeah, I mean, I’ll just double down and emphasize, you know, like what you just said, especially about relationships, we definitely have a pornography problem in the church, but we really have a relationship problem, we have a discipleship problem. And one of the things we talked about in the book is we have given over the discipleship of people in our church, on issues of sexuality to the culture, and the culture is more than happy to disciple our kids, our wives, and our husbands when it comes to sexuality. And the church has got to take a step forward. I think that, you know, again, a lot of what Deepak was saying, from the pulpit, in small groups in relationships, but we’ve got to get people engaged and embedded in relationships, so that those conversations can happen so that when somebody you know, confesses a struggle, or even alludes to a struggle or temptation, the default isn’t, well, you should go talk to a pastor or an elder or someone in leadership. But well, hey, let me ask you some more questions. Tell me a little bit more about that. How can I pray for you? So,
Tim St. John: So good? Well, I’m so glad that you both are speaking about the importance of this issue here. And then also that you wrote strategically to really, I don’t know, inner, intercede for the church and help churches. Be prepared to address these challenges and to maybe blame Blaze some better trails going forward for the churches. So just maybe, Jonathan, you could just share, I know, November 10? Is the date these books come out? My whole scouting staff is excited to get their hands on them. But what are just some of your hopes for “Rescue Skills” and “Rescue plan” and how they will be used to kind of address some of the needs we see?
Jonathan Holmes: Yeah, well, two things I’ll talk about each of the books. So with “Rescue Plan,” I think that our goal in “Rescue Plan” is to offer a plan to offer a little bit of a framework for people to think about, just the strugglers experience. I think a lot of times when you’re coming alongside someone who’s struggling with pornography, the trajectory of the relationship can feel very flat. And what I mean by that is, it’s, Hey, that’s bad, it’s lustful, God doesn’t approve that stop, get a filter. It’s very oriented around what you can do and what you should be doing. And I think oftentimes gets routed and guilt and shame there. That’s really bad. You don’t want to be associated with that, stop doing it. And what Dee and I have tried to do in the book is lay out a four fold framework of how do you think about this struggle and thinking about it in relationship to God relationship to other people, relationship to yourself, and then we’re your relationship to the world, the culture that we live in, in understanding how all of those four relationships, the ways that we engage those, how all of those play a part. And then we also offer four different ways that we, that the readers can read about a little bit later. Things like accessibility, anonymity, atheism, access, things of that nature, that all need to be practically addressed. I think the word that I’ve used when I talked to people is that we want to provide a holistic approach to how people address the struggle. It’s not as simple as read your Bible, go to church and stop looking at porn. It’s not less than that. But I think of the vision for a flourishing life as laid out in Scripture. It’s a lot more than that, right? We want to see people more than just porn free. We want to see people loving their spouse engaged in service discipling others and so in rescue plan, we tried to address a lot of those dynamics as well as some individual relationships and dynamics that you would encounter with children, teens, women, et cetera.
I think our hope for “Rescue Skills” is twofold, again, that we want to equip the helper and we also want to equip the struggler and like Deepak was saying, there’s, I would say more literature on the struggler side, not as much on the helper side, on the helper side and rescue skills. We’re trying to equip people with what I call her just the soft skills of care, just the soft skills of like, how do I move towards other people? How do I talk about you know, the heart? How do I ask questions? What does active listening look like? I think we probably not put myself in this game. We tend to think that we’re better listeners than we are. But we always can grow in that. And so what are ways that we can do that and we try to give you in rescue skills, some really practical, doable, accessible, soft skills to help you come alongside the struggler.
Tim St. John: That’s really helpful you Deepak would you have anything to add there just ways we can implement use these books understand strategically? How to bring them to bear on the issues of the pornography in the church?
Deepak Reju: Yeah. Okay. So you’ll be surprised by my entry to this. Jonathan is a much better cook than I am. If you get to his Instagram accounts and you see the photos there, they’re all almost Martha Stewart like photos of the food that he prepares. And I am like this moderate, you know, I wouldn’t make it on the Great British baking show. I’m such a bad amateur, though I try. When regards to cooking. There are real skills involved when you think of different professions and different things that you do. Lawyers have skills. Baker’s have skills, accountants have skills. Well, we’re saying there’s discipleship skills involved, when you’re coming alongside a struggler there are there are these things that you need to learn to do that will help you to be a better help to those who are struggling. So that’s all the soft skills that Jonathan talking about. We had our original plan of having a few skills and rescue plan. And the skill is expanded from four to 22. Hence, we didn’t intend for two books. But that’s the way sometimes things work. And there are enough skills involved in helping both the disciple or know what to do but also then how can the disciple or help the struggler?
There’s two categories in that rescue skills book. What do you need to know as a disciple? And what skills do you want to help the struggler know how to do also and how can you come alongside them with that? We’re really trying to do that. So I’m excited to help the helpers. We’re thinking pastor, counselors, small group leader, parent of teen accountability partner, best friend, but I had a Navy Chaplain write me yesterday, he texted me an old friend. He said, Hey, I saw the books coming out. Tell me about them. And so I told him a little bit about them, we texted back and forth. And then he said, he regularly has Sailors and Marines and Coast Guard men come and confess to him. So we wrote one text Sunday after service, I had a young man, age 20 come up to me and asked if we could chat. He was weeping, and said he believes porn is ruining his life. This is not an uncommon conversation that I have with young men. So I told him, Well, the books are for you. I mean, you’re on the front line with all of these young men who are coming and confessing to you, I want to help you know what to do. Exactly that kind of relationship. So that’s what our hope is, you know, obviously excited to put that in the hands of a Navy chaplain, who’s going to have tons of conversations in his 20 to 30 year career with young men who are struggling. Well, I want to equip him to know what to do in that situation.
Tim St. John: That’s excellent. Yeah, I have so many books, I feel like they just self help is is can be a helpful category in a certain way. But honestly, to deal with the real struggles of our hearts that are just stick to us. And then we don’t make progress. And we need helpers. And there aren’t too many books on relational help. specific categories of since I’m glad at least for pornography, we now have rescue skills to connect people to like, here’s the how to of walking alongside someone, and then also rescue plan to really understand the why someone is struggling and the theory of basically the heart and pornography, and what’s going on beneath the surface. Yeah. Well, you know, Jonathan, you mentioned the silence, and Deepak opted to just there can be a lot of fear and shame in the church around this struggle. And we need to break the silence that this book can help. But what are just some practical steps you would say to pastors, small group leaders, just things that churches can do right now to really lift the shame of confessing this sin?
Jonathan Holmes: Well, Deepak, I’ll take a stab at this. You know, I, again, a lot of it is just I would think more of a broader church culture issue of how do we talk about our neediness? How do we talk about our sin and our need for God’s grace and forgiveness? And I think that is a part of our culture in a church where the image we’re trying to project is no, we all have it together. Everything’s going okay. We’ve got excellent theology, excellent preaching, and nobody really struggles. Then, yeah, it’s going to be really difficult for people to come in to talk about not only I would say, this struggle, but just any struggle, marital problems, problems with their children, etc. And so I think a lot of It starts with how we model vulnerability and talk about issues like this in the church. So, you know, I think that there’s ways that leaders can be thoughtfully vulnerable and transparent about their own struggles. I think that there are ways that we can play sexual sin, not in just a category by itself, but also talk about a lot of the other sins that feed sexual sin, right? Sometimes we can isolate out pornography, and pornography becomes the main problem. Pornography is the problem. But one of the things that we’ll talk about in the book, there’s a lot of different reasons and motivations, why people pursue pornography. And a lot of those motivators and catalysts for porn usage, actually are quite similar to a lot of other sins that we struggle with as well. Things like, you know, seeking comfort in all the wrong places, or wanting to be affirmed when we don’t find that in our everyday relationships. So I think that when we can go a little bit deeper, and go a little bit wider in our conversations, and in our struggles, I think that helps the conversation not feel so weighted and so shameful, right? There’s almost this sense of like, you’re in a small group of guys, you’re talking, inevitably, that question comes up of, hey, they have anything they want to talk about the struggles. One guy kind of, you know, decides to take a step and talks about porn, and everybody kind of has this, this awkward sense, where we all know what we all know what we’re talking about, that still feels awkward. That’s where it’s like, I would love to see that sense and that dynamic in that group become less awkward. And for there to be an additional follow up question. Tell me Tell us a little bit more about that, you know, tell us a little bit more about that struggle, and to be able internally to manage our own senses of awkwardness or embarrassment when this topic comes up and just place it in a wider category of No, the Lord’s grace is sufficient for this. We can talk about it, we can address it together. That’s,
Tim St. John: That’s really good. And I think you bring up an important point there, like, as churches, if we’re not ready to address this, we can actually add to the shame, right? So if someone confesses this sin, like, and we say, you know, by our lack of words, or the wrong words, we’re saying to them, you’ve made this awkward by confessing your sins, and not only do you struggle with sin, that you’ve done something to us, and you’re you know, you’re the problem. You’re just adding more shame. And yeah, it can be even longer than for them to actually open up and get help down the road. Yeah, yeah. No, it’s so good.
Jonathan Holmes: We know, in you, I know, you just recently spoken on this topic as well with cultural shame. But, I mean, pornography isolates pornography is rarely something that you do with a lot of other people. It’s, it’s, it’s isolating, it’s secretive. It’s something that pulls you into darkness. And so then further adds to that in a church setting, right? Like, that’s gonna feel very isolating. If when somebody confesses, or somebody is transparent or vulnerable, we move away from them and not move towards them. And, again, when we move away from people, I think that that’s only going to communicate, Hey, you are other than you were different. You belong in this camp, you were dirty, you’re unclean, you know, you don’t belong with the rest of us. And that’s where I think in terms of how we talk about it, and how we deal with we’ve got to move towards those things. Move away from them.
Tim St. John: That’s excellent. Yeah. No, I Well, if I could put this in a particularly challenging context, and maybe a Deepak I’ll ask you this question. So let’s say not only a church member is struggling, let’s say it’s a pastor or a ministry leader. What did they do? I mean, talk about struggling with shame of confessing a sin. I mean, no, no pastor I know has ever confessed to their small group, that they struggled with pornography. And I’ve even heard of seminary professors telling students that if they’ve ever looked at porn, then they should not even pursue ministry that they’re permanently disqualified. So there’s, I mean, it is systemic, the shame around the sin, and the stigma. But I know there’s statistics that tell us that pastors do struggle a lot, and they don’t talk about it. So I mean, maybe Deepak you could just share, like, what should a pastor or ministry leader do if they are struggling or they’re afraid to talk about it?
Deepak Reju: Yeah, I think the first thing is, if they don’t have in ministry, the kind of friendships that allow them to be honest and transparent. It’s fairly common for pastors to be isolated by the nature of their role, and being a spiritual authority figure within a congregation, then they need to have those kinds of relationships as a precursor for us even being able to have this conversation. If there’s nobody who knows your soul nobody’s walking alongside of you. I mean, we, my, my wife and I were having a pretty hard moment with something not in our marriage, but with one of our children. And I just, I texted one of my best friends. And I said, I just need somebody to know right now that we’re struggling with this right now. I didn’t, I just needed somebody to know, we were having a really hard day with this. We just need friendships. Because, you know, pastors are human beings. They’re they’re members. They’re Christians, they need grace. They have sin and suffering, too. So I want to be able to be honest with people who are close to me in my life. And I hope especially that we’re in congregations where we believe leadership was often a plurality of elders. So whether that’s your leadership structure or not, for us, being able to be honest with the other pastors in the church, and let them as mature men be able to walk through things with you. If I can’t start there, with other mature godly people, I don’t know where else I could start. So I want to be able to do that. Now, let’s just say in your circumstance, where forever reason you can’t say you’re in a deeply unhealthy church situation, just want to acknowledge that reality. And you look around you think, Well, I don’t have that I don’t have any close friends, I don’t have, I don’t have a plurality of elders, and I’m mature, godly people leading with me, well, then I would find a counselor who’s committed to the scriptures in your community, and just go and start being honest. And let them walk alongside of you. And alongside of that, hopefully, if you’re in ministry, you’ve had spiritual fathers, spiritual mentors, along the path that have poured into you, you just want to find the most, you know, one, you’re still in touch with one that’s godly and available, and then go talk to them too. So I’m going to leave the possibility that you’re in an unhealthy situation. So there’s nobody in your local church that you seem like you can be honest with. So just find some godly people who you can open up to and get that kind of help. And, you know, be honest, like, I want to leave room for people to struggle, but there are biblical qualifications. And it’s a consistent pattern struggling with porn, you are probably disqualified. So you just don’t want to, you don’t want to hide because that does more damage to your ministry. In doing that, the state of your soul matters much more than your ministry job. That’s the bottom line for this. So you hide and let this sin grow, you’re doing more detriment to the gospel, but also to yourself. That’s a significant issue. For the state of your soul to be withering away. And yet you’re standing up there preaching the gospel to people that in itself has a version of hypocrisy. That is just not good for ministry at all. Now, does that mean people in ministry never struggle with sexual related sin? No. I mean, of course, of course not. In our were men who sit in an overseer, we walk around in over sexualized culture, and are tempted all the time. But are there biblical qualifications in which we need to be able to live behind like, for example, self control and being above reproach in order to be able to preserve our Gospel witness? Yes. And so, yeah, man, it’s a hard balance to maintain. It gets all the way back to the question of like, are you isolated, and hiding, even in your own ministry role, even though people see you publicly all the time? And so how do we begin to break down that wall? Well break the silence. Back to what I said earlier. It applies even to people in ministry, break the silence and start to open up to a few people you can trust.
Tim St. John: That’s really excellent. Thank you Deepak. If you’re a pastor, and you’re listening, I pray you’ll listen to this council and, and break the silence. I mean, if I can make a quick plug for fieldstone actually, if you feel like you don’t have a counselor, or someone you can talk to you. Fieldstone does offer remote counseling and I believe they also have a center for pastoral care layout for caring for shepherds. Is that right, Jonathan?
Jonathan Holmes: No, we too into deep exploit we realize is for many pastors a luxury to be able to have a plurality of elders to be a part of a denominational structure whatnot. There are a lot of just solo pastors laboring away by themselves and so the Center for Shepherd care field so we offer counseling from pastors themselves to other pastors. And so yeah, definitely resonate with what Deepak is saying there about breaking the silence I’d also add, you know, in a situation like that, if the first if the first movement In your heart is, am I disqualified? Am I going to lose my job? That’s a high bar that’s going to set a threshold of fear for you to be able to break that silence. But if the threshold is, is this a step for me to grow in my faith? Is this a step for me to grow in godliness? Is this a step towards wholeness of emotional, spiritual, physical health and well being? I think that’s going to be a much more positive impetus. If the question gets phrased, well, if you confess this, you might lose your job. I mean, we all have large families, right? I don’t want to lose my job. And we hear Pastor after pastor coming in. That’s why we were nervous about talking about it. So you know, if you’re a lay elder out there, and assistant pastor, you’re serving in a denomination or a care team, like, foster a type of vulnerability that allows for those types of conversations to happen. Without the first line being, well, you might lose your job, right? And you might get fired, or you might need to go, you know, do whatever. So I think that it’s an important question for us to ask, we do need to break the silence on it. But I think that we can create a better context in an environment where pastors can be open and honest about those things without the first recourse paying. Well, you’re gonna lose your job and you need to just look.
Tim St. John: Yeah, I mean, because then I think that creates a host of other issues that have to be addressed immediately, in the short term, and then we lose the whole conversation about his heart and pornography. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I know, I think that’s good. Let’s put the first things first in terms of addressing the heart. Yeah. Well, maybe just a couple other questions here. I you know, I’ve spoken with both men and women who have had just pornography exploding in their lives during the COVID lock downs. I mean, the sins of isolation have just, you know, blown through the roof. During the season, especially in like LA County, where I am and lock downs have been a lot more severe. Where would you start with maybe with a believer who’s in this situation whose life has been overrun by porn? Maybe Deepak you could address that.
Deepak Reju: Sure. Just a couple of things to think about. access. Access is really important. Everybody talks about access, we got to be brutal and cutting off access. I mean, this Matthew five G’s uses a hyperbolic graphic language to tell us to gouge out our eye to cut off our arm to communicate the seriousness of sin. I think most people, if they’re fighting pornography struggles, probably locked down their phones 50 to 70% of the way and haven’t figured out how to like completely cut it off. So appreciate Garrett Kel, who’s also author of the pure in heart that just came out from crossway written for strugglers, excellent, excellent book for them to think through things. He just said to a guy and discipling he said this just a few weeks ago, he said, If I handed you if you asked me to find something on my phone, I’m just not going to be able to access it. I’m not going to be able you can put a gun to my head, and I can’t access pornography. Well, he has shut down his phone. He has completely locked everything out in a way that he doesn’t even know what to do anymore to get to it. I don’t think most people set that standard. I mean, the contrast, is I am talking to a guy another day. And I just asked him, Are there any access points, you know, in your life? He said, Yeah, there’s one and I haven’t dealt with it. And I said, okay, in the moment temptation when you’re weak, what happens? He said, I think about that point. I think about like, okay, I can take advantage of that. That well, okay, well, that’s, that’s why I’m talking about being brutal. Cut it off. Second, you’ve got to be connected to a gospel preaching church. You just got to be fed the word, you got to be connected to a gospel preaching community. You can’t do this in isolation. So you got to fight sin in community as a whole. That’s not just for pornography. That’s for sanctification. I got to be locking arms with other believers in my destination towards heaven. I can’t be trying to run towards heaven all by myself. That’s a false American notion that individualism, and expressive individualism kills us. So we’ve got to be able to do this within community. And then the subset of that is in community. Go find the most godliest person you know, and just say, please help me that that’s where the process starts. Let them step in, you know, it starts with your humility, and finding a really mature person. And you know, you’ll you might stumble in figuring it out together how to fight this, but you’ll figure If you’re both persistent at it, in helping each other out, and if you can’t think of a mature person in your congregation, well then go talk to the pastor. And then the last thing I would say, and there’s a number of things I could say in terms of dealing with it is I pray, just beg God for His mercy. Pray that God would help you to deal with this. Now, there’s dozens of other things that are covered in the book, shame, dealing with heart issues, adding encouragement, being consistent. You know, there’s all kinds of things I didn’t mention, but there’s just a few to start us off.
Tim St. John: That’s so helpful. If you’re listening, I pray you’re encouraged and you take, you know, the packaging very seriously. I uh, one thing I’ll say, in a first session, when I’m counseling someone with struggling pornography is actually kind of like, what you’re saying what your friend was saying. I think in some ways, pornography and its strictest definition is a toothless paper tiger, that if we just get really, like real help addressing all the access points, for at least a season, we’ve got it, we’ve got to shut it off, you know, make your smartphone a fancy camera that you can text with? Yeah, I think it really starts with if the house is on fire. Let’s put out the fire before we go and rooting to see all the sources of the fire. And the long term things is short term goals fronting those, I think it’s really helpful. Jonathan,
Deepak Reju: I would just say we’re in it for the long game. So there, I just emphasize axes on the front end, because that gives us opportunity to go after the hard issues, to go up to the deeper motivations after that, and we’re gonna persevere over the course of a long time and helping someone out. But yeah, I mean, like, what would you just say in terms of making your your phone.
Tim St. John: Fancy camera, fancy camera tweetable line.
Deepak Reju: We gotta put that.
Jonathan Holmes: We’re gonna steal that.
Tim St. John: Well, that’s honestly, that’s still I’ll tell counselees. Like, I want my phone and my home environment to be such that on my weakest worst day, when I am tired, and my wife happens to be gone, and my kids are somewhere else that I just can’t get to it. And I just have to know that like, no matter how far I’ve come, no matter how well I understand my heart, and how much support and how many shame free relationships I have, where I can confess, I still need my home to be a place where I can be at the very bottom of my weakness, and I still can’t get to porn. I just need my own to be that way. And that’s just me know, in my heart. So I tell that to counselees, too. Yeah, yeah. Any other thoughts on that? One? Johnson? Like? Where are you might start with someone like that, or just anything you want to echo there?
Jonathan Holmes: Yeah, I think the access point is huge. And again, I think it’s an important issue that then does allow you to be able to kind of dig below the surface and understand what’s driving it, you know, Mike him as an illustration where he talks about, you know, choppy waters in the sea. It’s kind of hard to do scuba diving and deep sea exploration when there’s a huge storm on top of the water. So, hey, are there some things that we can do to kind of calm the waters on top, cut out the access points, install some accountability gets you into a better relationship with a gospel preaching church, and then go a little bit deeper and kind of explore motivation, family of origin, ways that you regulate your emotions? Why are you turning to this? I mean, there’s just a lot of things that you need to do, but kind of calming those waters on top will be important at the outset, to enable you to be able to do some of that deep sea exploration.
Tim St. John: So good. Well, thank you so much, brothers. I just want to maybe a final question here. If, if a believer is listening, and they’re struggling right now, any final words, maybe some words of encouragement, what would you want to say to them right now, maybe you both could answer that.
Deepak Reju: Well, the Gospel is the power of God to change people. If you’ve given up, you’ve given up on God changing you. And there is hope for you, no matter how bad the struggle there is nobody, absolutely nobody beyond God’s grace. So no matter what the problem is, no matter how bad the situation, redemption through Jesus Christ can save anyone from the plight that they’re in. There’s no pit too deep. There’s no problem too bad that God’s grace cannot transform through what Christ has done on the cross. Now that might sound like old news, but it is actually the best news we have to offer. And we’ve taken the time to parse out books and go into the deeper issues and work through shame and guilt and questions. And so we’ve done the hard work to not just Even at one generic truth, but we still at the end of the day go back to the gospel as the most fundamental thing that transforms people. That’s what I’d say, John, what do you want to add?
Jonathan Holmes: Yeah, right along those same lines, what I would want to end on is, you know what Keller says you were more sinful than you ever thought possible, but you are also so deeply loved by God. And this issue does not have to define you, there is hope. Sometimes, when it comes to pornography, I actually find a lot of people are somewhat defeatist, they say, well, it’s just, it’s just always gonna be like this, or, you know, maybe you can kind of crease your engagement with it. But you’ll probably always just have to struggle with this. And, and I don’t think that’s the case, I do think that there’s hope in Christ, but that hope in Christ comes with a message of you are loved and pursued by Christ. And I think about Romans five, eight, but God showed us his love in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. And it’s not about you working harder. It’s not about you doing more, to have Christ except you. It is about the fact that you are accepted, you are received into Christ’s family. And it’s because of that reality that motivates you then to live a godly and a holy life, not the other way around. So you’re not quitting porn to earn God’s approval. And I just think that’s a message sometimes that we know intellectually, that that really needs to be drilled deep down into our hearts.
Tim St. John: Well, thank you. Thanks, Jonathan. Thank you, brothers, both, both of you so much for this time. It’s been encouraging to my heart, and I’m excited for your books, rescue skills and rescue plan that come out November 10. And if you’re listening, please, I hope by now you’ve pre ordered them on Amazon. But maybe Deepak, you could just close our time in prayer and just pray for anyone who might be listening, who’s hurting right now.
Deepak Reju: Let’s pray. Lord, we’re grateful that the gospel that you have given us through your son does really transform and change. Thank You that You have given us your words so that we don’t have to survive on our own. So especially for anyone who’s listening right now and they have given up. They’re, they’re entrapped by the defeatist attitude that Jonathan just talked about. Lord, break in, break in, especially there and show them that you are real and that you will change them. So give us hope. Give each one of us hope in your son in a way that allows us to move not just to this day, but all the days that you call us to on this earth. We pray in Your Son’s name.
Tim St. John: Amen. Thank you guys.