“What’s the one piece of advice you would give
to someone struggling with porn addiction?”
Jon Snyder is the founder of Mighty Man Ministries.
Connect with Jon
Website: www.mightymanministries.com
Twitter: @MightyManMin
Books: Mighty Man Manual
Check out all the “One Thing” video interviews here.
Transcript
Steve: Hey, guys! Steve here with Belt of Truth Ministries. I’m on the line with Jon Snyder. Jon is the founder of Mighty Men Ministries. Jon, thanks for joining us today.
Jon: It’s my pleasure, Steve. Thanks for having me today.
Steve: Yes. If you can give one piece of advice to guys struggling with porn addiction, what would you say?
Jon: Okay. Well, you’ve prepped me nicely on the question but I wouldn’t have needed to think long and hard about it at all. I think the number one thing that most guys and actually, most Christians, this is a broader issue than even just porn addiction. But certainly, all the guys who’ve come to our ministry, I think the number one thing that keeps guys tripped up over and over again is just not being in right relationship with God as it relates to how they respond to a fall and how they are connecting with God in order to receive what they need from Him in order to get the heart healed and the wounds healed. So I can unpack that a little bit. I know that we’ve got a few minutes. But do you have any questions before we kind of like go into expanding on that a little bit?
Steve: No. Yeah, why don’t you unpack that? I think that will be good for people to hear kind of some details on that.
Jon: Yeah. Good. Okay. So the Bible says that there’s a right way and a wrong way to repent. Not a lot of people realize that. In 2 Corinthians 7, it says that there is worldly sorrow that leads to death but godly sorrow creates zeal, indignation, vehement desire, no regrets, all these very healthy emotional fruits that should be present when we repent. So the way that you can judge whether you’re repenting properly in a godly fashion or whether you’re stuck in this whole worldly sorrow thing is immediately after you fall. What do you do? Do you feel like you have a desire to run right to God? Do you feel like a fall actually improves your relationship with God? And I can get into that in a minute. What I find that most guy’s experience is the opposite of that. After a fall, you get into this like “I can’t believe I did that. I’m such an idiot. I am just so dirty. I’m like the scum that dirt washes off of itself.” So there’s all this self-beratement, there’s all this shame. And people feel like it’s driven a wedge between them and God. I believe the statistics is something like 92% of Christian men, when they were asked if they feel like pornography affects their relationship with God, the answer is yes. And that shows that at least 92%, and in my experience more, at least 92% of guys are responding to God out of the old men rather than responding out of who they are in Christ. And the reason that’s such a big deal is because you literally can’t get out of this. And God doesn’t give you help to get out of this until you’re relating to Him properly because it shows there’s a few things happening in your heart. It shows that you are trusting in your performance to make you acceptable to God more than you’re trusting in what Christ has already performed to make you acceptable to God. That is worse in God’s eyes than you struggling with porn. It shows that you have a worth that’s based in works and God says, “No. I want you to come to know that your worth is based in something far deeper than that.” So it’s all about Jesus Christ and your dirt doesn’t make his righteousness dirty. So I always tell guys when they come to our ministry, I say, “If you are upset with you when you fail, it was your strength that you were relying on and not Christ’s strength for you.” So the bible talks how do we actually overcome sin? Well, the bible says in 1 John 2:5, it says, “If anyone is able to keep his word, truly the love of God has been perfected in him.” And so we tend to think “I got to clean up my act, I got to get it all right, and then I can come to God.” It’s not. It’s the exact opposite of that. It says “If you run to Me, then I can give you what you need in your heart” that’s going to give you a healing of the heart wound that took you down that path in the first place. It’s going to give you the love and acceptance that you need for that love to go deep so that like the bible says if you can keep his word, the love of God is perfected in you. That’s what we should be going after. And so when we blow it, if I can take just one more minute, kind of the process that I’m going through in my life, at first, it’s going to take some rehearsing for the guys who are out there because it’s completely foreign because most of us have just been immersed in this whole you feel unapproachable with God until you clean up your act, and that’s completely backwards. So what I’ve done is I’ve got kind of a bunch of life scriptures that I’ve just kind of jotted down so I remember them for this interview but it creates a dialogue that I started to rehearse with God. So when I would feel dirty or when I would feel unacceptable, or whatever the case may be, I would have these things that I would talk about with God. I was “reminding” God of what his words says but really I’m reminding my own soul so that I don’t go down that path again. One of them I love in Hebrews 7:25, if anybody wants to look it up, it says that we have this high priest who is able to sympathize with us [inaudible 6:08] weakness so that we can come boldly to the throne of grace, find help in time of need, and it says that he always lives to make intercession for his saints. So that means at our dirtiest, right after we messed up, if we could run into heaven, what we would see is Jesus interceding for us, doing the same thing He did on the cross. “Father, forgive them. They don’t know what they’re doing.” He has the sympathy for us. So I would say things like “Jesus, right now, even at though I feel like I just blew it so bad, You’re interceding for me.” I would do other things like in some of the verses that just blow my mind is John 17:23 and John 15:9. That’s when Jesus is talking to the disciples and he says, “Father, help them to know that as You have loved me, so I love them.” So Jesus loves us as much as the Father loves Jesus. That’s crazy to me. And then He also says in 17:23, He says, “I pray that they would come to know and understand that as You love me, You also love them.” So the Father loves us as much as He loves Jesus, do I would include that in my dialogue with God. I would say, “God, You are radically in love with me. You love me as much as you love your perfect Son, Jesus,” awesome stuff. “You die for me all over again if it were even possible.” That comes right out of Romans 5:8-9. It says He died for sinners, how much more than those who are saved? Paul said when he’s struggling with sinning, “That’s no longer me who sins. The sin dwelled in me.” So I would say things like “That’s not the real me. That was just some dead guy,” things like that. I am the righteousness of Christ, not I have the righteousness of Christ because that might say it can come and go. But the bible says in 2 Corinthians 5, it says that we have become the righteousness of Christ. So just like if you think would Jesus have any shame coming before the Father? Would he have any hesitation asking the Father for something? No. And He would have this full confidence that He can receive from God. So I would come with that same confidence, and I would say, “God, there is nothing standing between You and me because I am the very righteousness of Christ. I have as much right to be in Your presence as He does even at my worst.” So this is some of the dialogue that I’ve developed with God. And I allow that so that if I were to fall, I would get up, I would run to God right away rather than go on to hiding, rather than go on to that downward spiral for a while. I would run and fall forward if you will and say, “God, you love me. You’re radically in love with me. I have as much right to talk to you now as Jesus does.” And just go through these things that the bible said to me until I had this. And at first, it’s like “Man, do I even believe that? No.” But as you rehearse what the bible says about you, it becomes part of who you are. And that puts you in the place in right relationship with God so that you can receive everything that you need to overcome. And it’s all about Him anyways. It’s not by our might, it’s not by our power but it’s by God’s spirit. If we walk in the spirit, we don’t carry out the desires of the flesh. So this is so foundational to being able to walk in the spirit and to have the access to the Father that we need to heal the heart to overcome the sin. And if you don’t have this right relationship with God, you don’t have any of the tools spiritually that you need in order to overcome. So that’s why I think it’s the first and most fundamental thing that I would tell anybody struggling. You need to be in right relationship with God. You need to be operating out of this new man and relating to God on that level so that you can receive what you need to get over the sins that are ensnaring you.
Steve: Yeah, you’re telling my story, man. That was one of the first major turning points in my recovery journey was exactly what you talked about there. For years, every time I sinned, I felt like I had to hide from God, I had to clean myself up…
Jon: Yeah.
Steve: Before He would accept me.
Jon: Yeah.
Steve: All the shame and guilt would come in and it wasn’t till I realized like those verses that you shared, those were the same verses. “Come to the throne of grace in my time of deepest need.” Well when does my time of deepest need?”
Jon: Yeah. Right.
Steve: You know for me, it was when I just looked at porn.
Jon: Yeah.
Steve: And so realizing that God loved me in that moment…
Jon: That’s right.
Steve: And so then what happened, instead of responding with shame, I would start like every time I would fall, I would start responding, “Lord, thank You that this doesn’t define me. Thank You that Jesus paid for this.”
Jon: Yeah.
Steve: “Thank You that I’m forgiven for this sin and this doesn’t separate me from You.” And I would start…
Jon: Yeah.
Steve: Praying those verses. And like you said, it’s crazy. It’s like it’s almost as if your sin starts drawing you closer to God.
Jon: That’s exactly it!
Steve: Yeah.
Jon: That’s exactly it. You just hit the nail in the head and you got to repeat that for the guys. If your sin is driving you away from God, your whole paradigm needs to flip upside down. Your sin needs to drive you into God’s arms. And when that’s happening, then you’re in right relationship with God. So good, Steven.
Steve: Yeah. Well hey, thanks for sharing all that. Jon, tell people where they can find out more about your ministry and what you do and all that.
Jon: Okay. Check out Mightymenministries.com for more about us. There’s all kinds of great resources on there, and the Mighty Men Manual, and the work book if you want to do it with your small group at your church or whatever, two great resources where we take guys through all these foundational steps, then we give them tools, and then we take them through like just good old identity change. So it’s kind of this three full process that builds a platform to kind of get up and out of addiction.
Steve: Awesome! We will be sure to link to all that in the show notes. Thanks again for your time.
Jon: Thanks, Steven!
Steve: And all the awesome stuff you’re doing for the Kingdom, so keep it up.
Jon: Likewise. Alright!
Steve: See you!
Jon: Blessings!
