As a young pastor, Ryan thought he was ready to get married, but soon after the wedding, he had a big problem.
When I'm doing counseling, I tell people oftentimes that I had the worst beginning six months of a marriage that I know of, and so I'm a qualified counselor for them. And what really began to give me a 180 in my marriage and in understanding my role as a husband was just the ministry of focus on the family. Now, Pastor Ryan points his congregation to all the resources we provide for families because we're still helping him today. Focus on the family empowers me in my marriage because I can understand that other people have gone through the same thing that I'm going through and I'm not alone in the struggles that I face, and my wife and I can gain hope from the stories that are shared on air. I'm Jim Daly. Help us give families hope today.
Donate and your gift will be doubled at focusonthefamily.com slash gift. It had such a hold on me that I couldn't break. And so my senior year of high school, I was so entrenched in it that I was watching content on school computers. I was staying up late at night.
My grades were suffering, and I had this moment of, I need to put this back in its box. I still felt like it had a place in my life, but realized that it had gotten way out of control. That's Jessica Harris describing her struggles with pornography, and it's a powerful addiction that was eating her alive. Today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly, we'll hear a lot more of Jessica's challenging story, and ultimately how God rescued her from this evil. I'm John Fuller. Thanks for joining us.
Please be advised, this is not going to be a conversation suitable for younger listeners. John, the first scripture that was ever referenced for me, I think I was 15, I had made a commitment to the Lord through fellowship of Christian athletes. And this couple, who was the mom and dad of a friend of mine in school, gave me a Bible, and they wrote John 10-10. And I went to that scripture and read it, and it really does summarize the battle in this life, that the thief, meaning Satan, comes to steal, kill, and destroy. And Jesus says, I have come that you might have life and life more abundantly.
The older I get in the faith, the more I understand that scripture. It is all about the battle of good and evil. And it's not just out there, it's in our own heart. Everybody's heart battles good and evil. And this is the whole context for why Jesus has come to die for us, because we're sinners, saved by grace. We're living in a world, as Paul the apostle wrote, the things I wish I did, I don't do, and the things I shouldn't do, I do.
And that's part of the human experience. And today we want to talk to an incredible young woman who had an incredible journey, and we're going to be very bold and open so that many, many people will be helped today. Yeah, and Jessica Harris is an author and speaker, and she and her husband Michael have three young children. Jessica has written a book that will be the basis for our conversation today, and the title is Quenched, Discovering God's Abundant Grace for Women Struggling with Pornography and Sexual Shame.
We've got details about that book in the show notes for you. Jessica, welcome to the program. Thank you guys for having me here. First time here. Yes.
Yeah, and I so appreciate, before we unfold the story for everyone, I just want to say how much I appreciate your courage and your vulnerability. And, you know, this is what we need more of in the church, because this is where real life happens. And some of the statistics when it comes to pornography back that up, right?
Yes. Even for women now, it's a growing problem. It's something in the 60s percentile of men that I think the measure is look at pornography at least once a month. Sixty-eight percent I think is one research result that I saw. And ironically and sadly, it's kind of the same for Christian men in the church. It's in the 60s, 65, 68 percentile, so there's not much difference between the world and the church. And unfortunately for women, it's a growing number.
Twenty-five, 30 percent of women are now experiencing an addiction or an engagement with pornography. So that's the context for today. It is a big issue. And I would only say if you want to put your head in the sand as a believer, okay, but why don't we talk about this so we can actually bring people help? That's the heart and soul of this. So if you're upset we're talking about it, we get it, we know that it's going to be tender, but we believe in talking about things in the light so that the Lord can work through our hearts to make us conform better to Him, right? I'm sure, Jessica, that's part of your motivation in doing this. Who wants to talk about this?
You'd love to lock this in a closet and never talk about it again. Yes. But that's what I mean by that courage because you were struggling with this. You've decided, I'm going to talk about it.
Why? Yeah. So, I mean, from where I stand now, looking back, I go, well, if you're silent about the sin, then you're silent about the grace. But the journey that led me to that place was really just going, God, what do you want me to do with my life?
And this is like 14 years ago. And feeling like He said, you're going to share your story. I said, under no circumstance am I going to share my story. Like, absolutely not.
And so I did it anonymously at first, thinking that still I was the only woman in the world who had this struggle, kind of angry with God. Like, I don't want to do this. This isn't necessary. This isn't needed. This is embarrassing.
I'm not going to do this. And I shared my story anonymously and women started to email and reach out and say, oh my goodness, me too. I thought I was alone too. And that shocked you. It did. Because you thought you were the only one.
I did. And I would say that kind of theme played out through your whole battle with pornography, that many people that you would talk to about it had kind of that response, like women don't have this problem. Exactly. Yes. So it probably made you feel even more isolated. Yes.
Right. Even though there were people, women saying, yeah, me too, but still the interactions that I read in your book, people were saying, it couldn't have been you. Especially when you hear that from like leadership, where people that you expect to know more stories than just your own. Obviously I know my story, but if I look to you and think that you as a pastor's wife or you as a Dean of a college know more, and you're going, women do not have this issue.
Then that makes me go, man, I really am alone. Do you know, to set the table a bit with this, you know, we've had some notable Christian leadership failures in this area. And you know, I even talked to our leadership team here at Focus. I said, it seems to me there's three ways that we fail. It's pride, it's sex, or it's money. And before we're too hard at casting judgment, the thing that I'm learning again as I get older is we don't know the full story. You see a symptom of something that works itself out and it becomes public, especially for pastors or Christian leaders who are trying their best to live a life that's pleasing to God.
And then all of a sudden this is happening. I have found that when you peel the onion back, you're going to find the antecedents, the beginnings of that, usually in childhood. So in that regard for you, what took place as a little girl that really began to set you on this path?
Well, it's a few different things. I think, um, I was first off, I was raised in a Christian home. So I think that's, I always want to start with that because it's not like I was raised by heathen parents. And so I was raised in a Christian home when I was early in elementary school, maybe first or second grade, my father just left. And so that impacted how I understood love.
Love became something that was fragile and could break and had to be earned. It also impacted how I viewed God because people say, God is your father. And I thought, if my earthly dad can cause so much pain and so much harm, and I did nothing like I didn't do anything wrong to deserve that, what on earth will a holy God do to me? And it just casts this image of God being ready to strike me down. And that plays into my story later, because when I was introduced to pornography at 13, I thought this is one of those things that God's going to strike me down for, like, this is it. And I can't let anybody find this out. I can't let God even know about this because this is one of those things that's going to drive him away from me. I'm going to separate me from him. And this is one of the ways that I'm failing him and he can never love me because of what I'm struggling with because of this struggle.
So that was a setup I also experienced. I was sexually molested in elementary school by a classmate at a Christian school who was the son of one of our church leaders. And when I resisted his continued friendship over the years, I was told, Oh, you gotta be nice.
He's one of the deacon's sons. You've got to be kind. There was this culture almost of authority and you have to do what the church says and you have to put on this happy face and you just have to keep it together. Let me ask you this because we have parents of eight, nine, 10 year olds watching, listening. What would have been a facilitation and this isn't about your parents. I'm just saying in general, thinking back to that, what could parents do to better facilitate dialogue with that young daughter, particularly where there's potential. And of course, parents today, we, you never know raising a daughter, where this interaction is going to occur at what age, but assume it could happen at a young age.
What could have helped to facilitate your vocabulary? So I have two little girls, myself, they're four and two and with our four year old, even we have started to set the framework for this. Even cause the same framework that protects against something like this protects against exposure to pornography. So talking about how our bodies are good and, but there are parts of them that are meant to be private and that no one should be asking to see those parts of your body. So that's establishing a boundary, even at four years old, even at four years old, she even my oldest, a few weeks ago, we had someone come over and she, my oldest was changing in her room getting ready for the day. And she looked at my friend and she said, you need to leave the room because you are not allowed to see these parts of my body. And my friend was like, all right.
And so she stepped out of the room. So having that kind of a dialogue and also being aware of when your kids feel unsafe, because the statistics say that these sorts of incidents often happen with people that parents trust their family members, their leaders in the church. And so if my daughter says, I don't like so-and-so that is a red flag for me to figure out why correct not to just to turn around and tell her, be nice, behave. That's not very kind. I want to know why she recently told us that she doesn't like one of our family members. And so my husband and I sat down and we said, can you tell us why you don't like this family member? And we weren't sure. And she goes, I just don't like his mustache. We're like, okay.
Yeah, no, I mean, but that's really right. Good parenting, having those open conversations. And I think so often in the mom and dad role, we just, you know, one, you don't want to open that Pandora's box too early. So we're probably quiet too long and there's where the vulnerability could happen when you're not having good constructive dialogue at an age appropriate in an age appropriate way.
That's so important. Let's move down to the exposure that you had then as a 13 year old, I think of pornography, what happened and how did that, how did that grip you? Right. So this is back in the age of dial-up internet and floppy disks. I'm a millennial and we, the internet was actually kind of new.
This was 1999. So this was new on the scene. I don't think people really understood the dangers of pornography on the internet at that point. And I was just researching for school, honest to goodness, just researching for a science project and there was a porn video on the website that I was popped up.
It was just there. And when I clicked on it because the thumbnail was like really dark and I didn't know what it was. So I clicked on out of curiosity.
It just started springing these pop-up windows like one after the other that just drew me right into a site. And at 13 I remember thinking, Oh, this is that thing that no one wants to talk about this. Ah, this is what it is.
And so then it became curiosity almost. This is that mysterious world that no one wants me to, to think about or to do anything about, but I'm going to express myself in this way because it seemed safe, right? It's not, I'm not going to get an STD.
I'm not going to get pregnant. This is a safe way to explore this. And so it started as curiosity and then over the years it just became this, what I would say was a full fledged addiction to it. Yeah. And you know, again, parents, just trying to guide them in this moment, really regardless of the age of their children.
I mean, it's important to be aware and develop a plan, a game plan. You mentioned in the book research that shows that when children are exposed to pornography, how the parents or the family members respond becomes critical. And I can only imagine it's such a variety, a spectrum of response. It can be shame and Oh my goodness, what have you done to Oh, okay, no big deal. Describe what is the healthy response for a parent or a family member when this happens to a boy or a girl?
Right. I think it's important for parents to understand that pornography is not something bad your kid does. It's a predator that is after your child. And when you frame it that way, you come at it without all of the guilt that rides on me as a parent. So if my daughter finds pornography, I'm not going, I have failed you as a mom.
Like I'm, you have failed me as a daughter. There's none of that. It's more of a, Oh, this has snuck into our home, not on my watch. And it lets me kind of take that role of protecting her from that. Right. So the right enemy is the right enemy, not the child.
Exactly. And I think a lot of parents think, how could you do this to me? You child, how could you do this to me as a mom? As a Christian, right. As a Christian mom, like we have, we have raised you better than this.
Right. And then that just tells this child, Oh, my parents aren't safe to talk to about this. It's not a, it's not a conversation we can have in this family. And so even if they feel stuck in it and they would want to go to their mom and dad for help, mom and dad have essentially burned that bridge and said, you can't talk to us about this because we're so angry at you for being here.
Get yourself out of it. Well, my caution would be at that moment, you could do great damage in your relationship with your son or daughter. You know, I think typically it's going to be your son, but we're saying not necessarily right. That's 60% ish and 30% of women of girls could be addicted to porn or be looking at porn.
So you have to have your eyes wide open as a parent that both your daughter and your son could be impacted, but you that reaction can really alienate and put a lifetime barrier between you if you don't respond in a way that's healthy. Right. Let me ask you, your addiction to porn continued to grow to the point that you actually wanted to get caught. That sounds odd because I would think the natural thing is you're trying to be secretive.
You don't want to be known for this thing. Why were you seeking to be caught? You think because it was so, it had such a hold on me that I couldn't break. And so my senior year of high school, I was so entrenched in it that I was watching content on school computers. I was staying up late at night.
My grades were suffering and I had this moment of I need to put this back in its box. I still felt like it had a place in my life but realized that it had gotten way out of control. And when I tried to control it, when I tried to say, okay, no more, I couldn't stop.
When I tried to say, okay, two hours a day, I'd still watch for hours. And so it was this feeling of, I'm out of control and I need help, but I don't know who to talk to about this. And it's a really scary conversation to start.
Oh yeah. Like who do I, do I walk up to one of my pastor's wives and tell her like, who, who do I tell about this? I don't tell my mom. I don't tell the church.
Who am I supposed to tell? But I thought if I get caught, yes is easy. So if someone says, Jessica, are you watching porn? I think I can squeak out a yes. I think I can take a deep breath and say yes, but there's no way that I can walk into a room, start the meeting and say, hi, I'm Jessica and I'm struggling with pornography. Like that just seems so daunting and scary, but yes, seemed really easy. So I wanted to get caught, but I also didn't want to get caught.
So I was like praying to get caught, but then also trying to make sure I didn't get caught at the same time. Well, we're talking today about addictions, specifically sexual addiction and our guest on focus on the family with Jim Bailey is Jessica Harris. We have a lot of resources here at the ministry to help you if this is a struggle.
One of those of course would be Jessica's book quenched, and you can learn more about the variety of help we have for you in that book in particular, when you stop by the show notes, or you can call us. Our number is 800, the letter a and the word family. Jessica, you mentioned that stats kind of numb, and I think that's true. I mean, we talk about 68% of men. What does that mean?
Is it me? You know, it, it has to become personal and stats can depersonalize. Cause it's just some number when there's 10 guys in a room, 6.8% of them may be addicted to porn. That's what that's meaning. But who is it speak to the, the statistics that God cares about.
I thought this was really good coming out of your book. And this is good for all of us and any of us that have some form of idolatry that we may not even recognize. Right. And this came from when I was actually speaking to pastors about this. Cause I think when we're in church leadership positions, you got to channel your resources somewhere. And so you look at what the need is, Oh, 68% of men. So we're going to pour our resources into that. And it's fair. I mean, we can't, you can't be everything to all people.
Right. But what about that one woman who's in your church who does struggle, you know, cause God cares about those, those numbers. He cares about all, all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. There's none righteous.
And then anyone who calls in the name of the Lord can be saved. Those are the statistics that he cares about. He doesn't care if it's 50%, 20%, 80%. That's what he cares about is the one. Yeah. And that's such a good reminder of what Jesus has come to do for us.
Right. I didn't come for the healthy. I came for those who are sick. And that's basically all of humanity. If we're humble enough to recognize that, but some people don't get there.
They think they're better than the other person and that's good enough. And certainly God will love me. You're probably in the most vulnerable spiritual position at that point, because you think you're so good. A major theme in your book quenched is about the destructive force of shame.
We've kind of touched on that, but I want to hit it head on. And that shame could be about all different kinds of sin again. I mean, any sin creates some form of shame, probably because of the cultural influence, some are weighted heavier. I think this idea of addiction to pornography carries a heavy weight of shame. And it usually starts as a teenager when it's exposed and you blow your parents up and everything you said a moment ago, we thought we were better than this. How could, because it reflects upon us as parents and we carry the shame then that this kid who I bore is looking at something that is so terrible, but speak to that idea of shame and the need for parents to draw that down so they don't damage their child.
Right. Well, I think a lot of that comes from that, that reaction of parents actually comes from our own experiences of pornography. Like talk to anybody and you would be hard pressed to find someone who hasn't been impacted by pornography in some way. They might not have seen it themselves, but they might have an uncle who was addicted to it and it tore apart their family. They might have a father who was, you know, struggled with it. They might have a sister who they, all of us have been impacted by this in some way.
It's so pervasive. And it can be so painful as adults as we watch it tear families apart. And then we take all of that pain. And when our kids struggle with it, we just throw them 20 years in the future and picture this womanizing home wrecker, our 12 year old child. And so I think it's important for us as adults and as Christians to work through that healing and understanding grace in that circumstance and realizing that the decision that my 12 year old makes now doesn't destined them for anything at 30. Like we teach them grace and we teach them God's forgiveness and we teach them that the choices they make now don't doom them. Coming in on the ending here, let's go to the woman at the well because you do a great job connecting that biblical story with this particular issue. So how did that speak to you, the woman at the well?
Oh man, this was several years ago. I was just sitting and thinking on this story and I grew up in church and I call it the coloring page approach to the Bible. We just have these snippets of stories.
So like you think of David and everyone's like, Oh, Goliath. And that's the happy story. We don't have a coloring page for David and Bathsheba, right? And we don't talk about that part in church. That's a later conversation, right?
Yeah. And so this woman at the well, I was just thinking about it the one day and thinking about Jesus being a living water, but then I just started to walk through the story and had this realization of, man, I'm the woman at the well, this woman who just lived in shame and she made this choice to essentially punish herself by drawing water in the heat of the day. And I can imagine that every step was just a reminder of what she'd done.
And in that context for people that don't get that, she went at the heat of the day where nobody else would be there. So she wouldn't need to interact with anyone. It's normally like a social events where women, I joke that women do everything together.
We go to the bathroom together. So like we go draw water together at the well, and she's purposefully choosing to be on her own or from the village needs to be on her own, but she is doing this on her own. And I imagine just every step is just a reminder of you're never going to be good enough. You're never going to fit in.
You're always going to be a failure. And this is a punishment for her, this long walk to the well. And then this day she meets Jesus there and he's not supposed to be there. He's, he is a Jewish man and he's going to start talking to her.
This is all levels of scandalous. He's breaking all sorts of cultural and ethnic norms here, and he's flipping things on their heads and he starts talking to her. And I imagine this being a defensive conversation where she's thinking, you shouldn't even be talking to me. And she kind of opens with that when he says, give me some water. She's like, if you knew, like, you don't know the rules, let me explain the rules to you.
You are not supposed to be talking to me. And then he says, well, you know, if you knew who I was, and I just love kind of the banter back and forth. And then she continues to be defensive. And then he pushes on that pain points of go get your husband. Like, here's the living water. I've offered you living water. You want it, go get your husband.
Oh, I don't have one. And then you just see this story that this whole time she's a religious woman who struggles with shame because she asks about worship. So she's not a non-religious like, and God doesn't, Jesus doesn't say to her worship, look back on topic here, please. Instead he, he offers himself to her. He says, I am Messiah. I'm the one who you've been looking for. And I, as I sat there, I just thought this is such a powerful truth for women who have walked this story of God's not disgusted with us.
Sin, yes, but he welcomes us into himself and he offers living water to quench our thirst. And that offer stands for us. That offer stood for her. He knew everything she did. That's her testimony that she takes back to the village.
She says, come and see this person who's told me everything I've ever done. That was her testimony that brought the people to Jesus. And even knowing everything she ever did, he offered her living water. He offered himself. He had a conversation with her and that just seemed so powerful to me. I thought, wow, the God of the universe, the Jesus of the gospel wants to give himself to me. Like he wants to offer that to me. And if we had that message in church, I think it would set so many people free.
It certainly would. And that message of grace that Jessica experienced really does exemplify how God feels about us, where nothing we could ever do will separate us from his love. That's reassuring.
That's a wonderful reassurance. And as we've shared today, God knows our struggles. He knows how powerful our desires are and that temptation can grab us.
He wants to help us put a boundary on that for our good, to create the intimacy in the context of marriage, which is his gift and it is healthy and good in that context. That's why we in the Christian community need to address this topic now more than ever. We need to let people know that healing and restoration are possible and that they can be set free. Focus on the Family is here to help, to help you if you're struggling in this area. We have caring Christian counselors who are available to hear your story, pray with you, and then get you started on a better, more godly path. And we have great resources like Jessica's book, Quench, Discovering God's Abundant Grace for Women Struggling with Pornography and Sexual Shame.
This may be the tool you need or someone you know might need it for their healing. Get a copy of the book, Quench, when you make a donation of any amount to Focus today. That's our way of saying thank you for partnering with us and enabling us to make shows like this, to offer resources like our counseling team, and to generally, in so many ways, give families hope, especially at the end of the year here. Well, let me speak to that partnership, John. Focus on the Family is listener supported.
That's why we talk about it. We need to. It means you provide the necessary fuel in the engine here for doing everything that we do, for strengthening and supporting families, providing counseling when people need it, and offering resources to help those people who are hurting, like Jessica was. And Year in Giving is where the bulk of our ministry budget comes from, so we're looking to you for the funds that will be needed to help families in 2025. Every little bit helps. No gift is too small, because when we work together, God can do amazing things through all of us in the ministry of Focus on the Family. We welcome your support, so donate today, 800, the letter A, and the word family. That's 800-232-6459. We'll be happy to accept your contribution, tell you more about Jessica's book, Quenched, or connect you with one of our counselors. And of course, we'll have all the details in the show notes. Thanks for joining us for this episode of Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. We'll continue the conversation with Jessica Harris next time, and for now, I'm John Fuller inviting you back then, as we once more help you and your family thrive in Christ. Help them become a functional adult. Get feeding the mouth that bites you at focusonthefamily.com slash store.
