Tag: accountability

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Podcasts Sexual Purity

What Do You Want From Your Recovery In 2021? Pt.1 (PODCAST)

If I were to ask you to make a wish list of your top five destinations you’d love to travel to in the entire world,  what would they be? Or what about a bucket list of ten or twenty things you’d like to do in your lifetime? No doubt many of you have already had those dreams.  Here’s a question: What do you want from your recovery in 2021? If I were to ask you to envision what kind of person you’d like to be on December 31, 2021, what kind of person would that be?  I really believe every year around this time we should be looking in two directions: backwards at the previous year we just walked through and forwards towards the new year. How have we grown? What lessons have we learned? Perhaps even a couple harder questions: Where have we struggled? Where have we declined in our progress?

We hope you you enjoy the first part of this series from Pure Gold! 

SHOW NOTES:

VIDEO:

AUDIO:

If you and your spouse are struggling and would like help on your journey, please feel free to contact us! Or, if you’re a wife and need some extra help from another wife who’s walked through what you have, head on over to the “Support for Wives” section and shoot Tracey a message by filling out the contact form. All communication is strictly confidential.

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Blog Sexual Purity

What Do You Want From Your Recovery In 2021? (BLOG)

If I were to ask you to make a wish list of your top five destinations you’d love to travel to in the entire world,  what would they be? Or what about a bucket list of ten or twenty things you’d like to do in your lifetime? No doubt many of you have already had those dreams.

Here’s a question: What do you want from your recovery in 2021? If I were to ask you to envision what kind of person you’d like to be on December 31, 2021, what kind of person would that be?

I really believe every year around this time we should be looking in two directions: backwards at the previous year we just walked through and forwards towards the new year. How have we grown? What lessons have we learned? Perhaps even a couple harder questions: Where have we struggled? Where have we declined in our progress?

But even more importantly, WHO do you want to become in 2021? No matter what 2020 was like, we need to press forward with the constant desire to get better. To heal more. To grow more. Remember that any mistakes you made this past year doesn’t discount all the progress you made. You’re not starting over from scratch. You have to keep moving.

No matter if you’re in your first year of recovery or your twentieth, there’s something you can do to get better. Consider your progress in the following areas and ask yourself where you can be strengthened:

  1. Community — Are you in a weekly small group or support group with others who share similar struggles that you have? There’s an element of healing that can only take place with other people by your side. Small Groups Online offers an excellent opportunity for you to find such a group.
  2. Accountability — Have you sought out 2-3 individuals in which you’re communicating with on a daily basis? As I’ve always stated, these need to be safe and healthy individuals who care about your heart. People who are spiritually mature and will be able to ask you the hard questions.
  3. Access — What does your access to the internet and social media look like? Is the door wide open or do you have specific software set up on your devices to guard you from sexually explicit content and/or things that would trigger you to act out? There are so many great solutions out there including Ever Accountable, which I would highly recommend.
  4. Heart — Last, and certainly the greatest as it relates to work you can be doing on your own: Are you actively taking care of your heart by giving it healthy outlets to process painful emotions and experiences? Have you discovered what specific triggers you have and what causes you to act out? Keeping the pulse on your heart should always be a priority.

Here’s the bottom line: Once you stop learning, you stop growing. I can remember the kind of person I was eleven years ago. And I never want to go back to being him again. I’ve worked too hard. Grown too much. Traveled too far.

2021 has the potential to be your greatest year yet! But it first requires a vision of where you want to be at the end of it. You’ll have all year to work at it, make progress, fall down, and get back up again. I’m so thankful for the grace that awaits us in 2021. 

As mentioned earlier, if you’re looking for an authentic community to share your struggles with, look no further than Small Groups Online. SGO is an incredible opportunity for you to meet others who are struggling the same way you are. It promises a safe and healthy atmosphere. Through communication with others in the group about your addiction, you will find a renewed sense of courage spring up in you to become a person of sexual integrity.

Check out Small Groups Online today!

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Blog Sexual Purity

5 People You Should Be Honest With About Your Porn Addiction

“Honesty is the best policy.” Perhaps you remember hearing this often repeated phrase in your childhood. I know I remember hearing it. As a child, I grew up learning that good things came from being honest. And bad things came from lying. Conviction came very easily for me a child as I think I had a pretty sensitive heart, which I would later learn could be both good and bad depending on the situation. But for the most part, I tried to be honest in everything I did. I knew that lying was wrong. It wasn’t until my world was literally shattered when I viewed hardcore pornography for the first time that I really began to learn how to lie.

What happened? The diabolical mixture of both excitement and shame broke down the walls of my heart and my mind. I entered a world that I didn’t know how to get out of. It was as if I could’t get enough of what I was watching. And yet at the same time, I hated it. This pattern continued in my life for 13 years — through middle school, high school, college, and even through a ministry position I took in a church. Thankfully, by the grace of God, I found freedom. I found a way out of the darkness. But it wasn’t until I rediscovered something I had lost early in adolescence: Honesty.

Honesty was and continues to be to this day one of the greatest keys to my freedom. Who did I need to get honest with? They are the same people I believe every man and woman must be honest with if they are to find the same freedom and healing I did. You must learn to cultivate honesty with the following people:

  1. Yourself — This is the first place that healing either starts or stops in a person’s life. For me, I had to come to a broken place, a place of reckoning where I became so aware of the state of my heart and how my addiction was affecting those around me. You’ve probably heard it described many times before as a “rock bottom” place. But even when I hit the bottom, I had to drop the shovel I was carrying. I had to stop digging the hole even deeper in an attempt to find fulfillment. My point of honesty finally occurred in two different places: In the face of complete devastation from my fiancé which then led me to a counselor’s office. I had to realize I wasn’t healthy. I was sick. My life was a complete lie. It wasn’t until I was really willing to bring all of the ugly into the light that I could take the first step.
  2. Your Spouse — The next person you need to be honest with is the person you’re meant to become one with: your spouse. And therein lies the reason why we always need to be 100% honest with them. To achieve that kind of unity with your husband or wife requires that they really know you. That you allow them to see inside of you. You don’t hide anything. You don’t keep secrets. You allow them to see the good, the bad, and the ugly. Even the ugly you think is too shameful. Perhaps you’re reading this and you’re not married yet. All the more reason why it’s so important to cultivate honesty in your life! If you are desiring to become married, your credibility tank needs to be full before, not after you say “I do” on the altar. Be honest with your spouse. Or, if you’re not married, be a person that someone can trust their life to when the day comes.
  3. Your Accountability Partner(s) — This may be one person or a few in your life. But an accountability partner’s specific job is to know you. And your specific job is to allow them to know you. It requires honesty with someone in order for them to effectively encourage and challenge you to be better. More than ourselves and our spouses, we need other men and women who are at a healthy place to be able to ask us the hard questions we don’t want to answer. Because the reality is we can’t walk on this journey alone. We can’t expect to get healthy by ourselves. We were never designed to live life alone.
  4. Your Support Group or Small Group — Another group of people we should be honest with about our pornography addiction is a support group or small group. The difference here between accountability partners and members of a support group is that within a support group there are other individuals like yourself who are also struggling. Part of the journey of healing is walking with others who need community just like you. Others whose lives have been broken because of addiction. One other note on this: The men and women in a support group are not only meant to be there for us, but we’re meant to be there for them too. You have something so valuable to offer to those without hope.
  5. Your God — Assuming you’re a person of faith, your honesty with the One who created you is so important. The ironic thing about this is that our God knows everything there is to know about us (see Psalm 139) and yet His desire is for truth to come from our lives. I love what Psalm 51:6 says in The Passion Translation: “I know that you delight to set your truth deep in my spirit. So come into the hidden places of my heart and teach me wisdom.” As I referenced earlier, it was only by the grace of God that I found ultimate freedom in my life. I believe this is one person that we cannot ignore on our quest to become healthy. He not only cares about your eternity…He cares about your heart too.

One of the greatest ways you could start your journey towards honesty is to become apart of a community that values and fosters the truth each and every week. Small Groups Online is that community. It promises a safe and healthy atmosphere with other men who struggle just like you. Through sharing time and communication with others in the group about your addiction, you will find a renewed sense of courage spring up in you to become a person of sexual integrity.

Don’t buy the lies anymore! Join Small Groups Online today!

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Blog

Are You Doing Accountability The Wrong Way?

Has someone talked to you about the importance of community recently?

How about the value of vulnerability?

I bet you’ve seen content on both subjects at least once in the last six months.

Interestingly enough – science has shown the percentage of people in this world without ANY confidants (not even one) has doubled in the last 20 years. Somehow, loneliness is on the rise. 

I talk to men regularly who struggle with pornography.

Each of their stories is unique, but one thing remains the same. 

The man has felt or currently feels lonely without fail. 

Then I ask… what have you done about it?

The answer usually includes one of the following:

-They told a trusted leader and never followed up with them

-No one in their friend circle can be trusted with the details of their struggle

-Tried an accountability partner system and it’s not working

All of these experiences can cause a lot of frustration, but I have a particular bone to pick about the accountability partner system that is so commonly preached.

Almost every guy I talk to that is looking to get free of porn has tried a form of accountability at some point.

Here are some examples:

  • A client of mine attended a workshop on freedom from lust and sexual sin. In the end, he was matched up with a stranger to be his accountability partner. They texted back and forth for about three weeks and haven’t communicated since.
  • A university student asked a respected leader in his community to be his accountability partner. The arrangement? He would text him after he watched porn and ask for prayer. The leader would write back, “praying for you!” This lasted for about three months. 
  • A friend created a penalty system. Every time he looked at porn, he had to give a $500 donation to a charitable organization! 

The upsetting part is that accountability is a good thing! When it’s done properly, it can be so helpful. But most of the systems out there are so lackluster that they usually make the problem much worse. 

Here are a few common mistakes that I see a lot of men making when it comes to accountability.

Source: XXXchurch

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016: Developing Healthy Discipline(s) In Recovery

how-to-discipline-yourself-with-10-habits

Recovery from addiction is a battle fought on many fronts. There is not one key to freedom and healing, but a culmination of little & big decisions that a person must make to get healthy again. It’s developing a fierce tenacity and commitment to doing the right thing even if you slip up. But it’s also about putting the right practices in place to help you when you’re facing a battle. This week on the podcast, we talk about the discipline we must have in recovery & hear from a guest therapist about developing healthy disciplines to guide you along the way. Enjoy the podcast!

If you and your spouse are struggling and would like help on your journey, please feel free to contact us! Or, if you’re a wife and need some extra help from another wife who’s walked through what you have, head on over to the “Support for Wives” section and shoot Tracey a a message by filling out the contact form. All communication is strictly confidential.