Bonus – John Foubert

When I go into a Christian college to speak at a chapel service or just give an anti-porn talk, I spend most of my time on the harms and just a little bit of time on scripture because they've heard the scripture. And I'm all for beating that scripture home, but they need to hear about the harms. That's where the real action is. It's like, wait a minute, this is hurting me?

Not just the sin of it, but other ways, tell me more. What's the audience respond like in those college? Gaping mouths open.

Really? Yeah, because they haven't heard the research before because it's not something that's getting out as much as it should. Or they didn't realize that their porn use was leading to their sexual dysfunction or that their porn use was leading to their anxiety or to their depression. So it's making those connections that can come up in those talks that I give that are just wonderful to see.

It's not always easy to talk about pornography, but over the time I've become more readily able to talk about it because I see that there's so much good we can do in educating people about its harms. Do you think that, I'm gonna ask both you guys this, do you think that as men struggle and struggle, they repent, they struggle again. They repent, they struggle, so they keep falling back into it. Do you feel like men eventually pull away from God feeling like I'm just defeated and I can't win? There's some who do, but I think they're engaged in a pattern that they shouldn't be engaged in.

What do you mean? They should be repenting and doing one more thing that restricts their use from pornography than what they're doing before. They should be, if they have an accountability partner, they need an accountability group. If they have an accountability group, maybe they also need to go to celebrate recovery, which I think does a good job. Which is the opposite.

Usually if they fail, they keep pulling inward, inward, inward, it's darker, it's more secret. Yeah, you're saying what you're doing is not working. So you gotta change something besides just confess and repent. Get rid of that smartphone. What do you mean get rid of my smartphone? I live off my smartphone. I'm gonna get somewhere without my maps. So you need to figure out how to get out of there.

I know one man who has no apps on his phone, and so his wife is the only way that he can get any access, and she has a password on her phone that only she knows. But I think that's smart, but I know sometimes the women can feel like, am I his mom? What do you think about that?

Is that a good thing? This is a fight that we're in together. And so no, you're not his mom, but you're engaging in helping to protect your husband. His ally. Yeah, absolutely, his ally. I don't think that wives should be their primary accountability partner.

I think that's a good role to play by another man, but to be part of your team of people who are helping to fight against this, critical. What about the wife who says, I just don't wanna know. I don't wanna know. You go tell somebody else, I don't wanna know. You're playing into the hands of Satan. You would say that. I would say that, I would say that.

I just don't wanna know. Well, you need to be part of the battle so that you help your husband to leave this behind, because you can be part of the motivation for him to leave this behind. One of the things that I say to her when a wife says that, I said, but don't you wanna know all of him? Like to be married is to be one, and that's part of what he's struggling with.

I'm glad that I know everything about Dave, that there are no secrets and it's not pretty, and my stuff isn't pretty either, but that's the beauty of oneness. Yeah, and it's so hard for the husband, and again, I know it's not just husbands that struggle with this. It sounds like that's the only one, but I know for the husband or the one who's gonna confess to his spouse, they don't wanna hurt their spouse. And so, part of their motivation to keep it in the dark, and it's really, it's a rationalization. I'm not gonna tell you, because I don't wanna hurt you, you're really just afraid to tell anyone, but there is a sense that, man, I just, because you said earlier, John, it's not about her.

I don't think she understands that, but it isn't about her, but when you confess to her, then she's gonna think it is about her, and it's gonna destroy her and destroy your marriage, and so it's like, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna win this battle on my own. I'll do it, I'll do it, I'll do it. I can do this, and you can't.

You can't win this one by yourself. Right, you need prayer partners, you need prayer warriors, and you need people who are standing in your corner. And your kids can't either. I was gonna say, what about kids who are struggling? Maybe they're 13, maybe they're 18, but teenagers, maybe even 11-year-olds, as we began that, who do they have?

How do they get help? One of the greatest people for a 13-year-old is a youth group leader, and there have been studies that have actually been shown that the more attached a 13-year-old is to a youth group leader, the less likely he is to use porn. And so I think we need to be very conscious of the fact that our youth group leaders do some of the greatest work in our ministries, and I would include people who work on college campuses with students in that as well, that when you look up to a youth leader, you feel more comfortable discussing difficult topics with them, and this can come up more, and you can get the help that you need. You can get another person praying with you, get someone else to set the settings on your phone and set a password so you can't get to them.

I mean, there are lots of different tricks of the trade that you can use with that, but if you struggle once, you need to be doing something more extreme the next time to get you from struggling again, not just the same old things. For the listener who's thinking, well, you have a 14 and 12-year-old. I do.

So you understand this. If you have, if one of your kids would say, I hate our youth group, it's terrible, I don't want to go, so they don't have access. As a parent, would you force that?

How would you maneuver that? Sometimes there's a youth group at a neighboring congregation where they can fit in. I know that that's something that has worked in our family, that there's a youth group at a neighboring congregation that my daughter really likes to go to, and they're a larger church, and perhaps have more programs in that regard. So, and they're open to kids from other churches attending their youth group, and so we have her attend that youth group, and so that can be helpful. But the real key is not necessarily the group itself, but the leader, and establishing that bond with the group leader. It's interesting, but our son was going on, just his small group, they were going to an overnight get-together with their youth group leader.

He was in his 20s, they loved him. There were about 10 guys, and I think they were about 16 at the time, and they put on these t-shirts that had these big letters, N-M-M. I'm like, oh, you guys have, you have some t-shirts that you're wearing to this thing?

Do you remember this? Yeah. And I said, what's that stand for? And he said, no more masturbation. No.

On the t-shirts made. Wow. And I'm thinking, oh, I didn't even know how to respond, oh, oh. Oh, that's nice.

Yeah, you're going on your, and then he said, that's the theme for the weekend. Wow. Which was, I mean, there's a part of me that's thinking, what? And then there's another part that I'm thinking, wow. Right.

Way to go. Way to have a group of guys that you're accountable, you're talking about this. I thought that was, and I was glad that he told me what it meant. Absolutely. He could have made up something. He could have made up something good on that one, but yeah, no, that's- And that's exactly what you're saying. It was really led by his youth leader. Yeah, yeah. They're some of the unsung heroes of the ministry movement.