Porn - The Gateway Drug Into Total Destruction - The Wholehearted Family

You're listening to The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

As a Christian, I know that no matter how entrenched and poor you are, God's grace is bigger.

And that he is able to do more than we could ever hope or even imagine.

At The Road, our vision is to raise up wholehearted disciples of Jesus Christ.

For more information on The Road, visit theroad.org.

We hope you are encouraged by today's message from Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

To you that were uh here, and for you that might have come in late, I mentioned that the message today is PG 13.

And so if you have kids that are under 13, then I would encourage them to you could take, if you're concerned about this message, because it is going to deal with uh pornography, um, then you we have room in the children's ministry for them.

I would say this, someone recently, a pastor, I was I was speaking at a pastor's conference this week, and I heard this, I thought it was a great point that someone asked the question, what do you think is the proper age for kids to have a smartphone?

And I thought this pastor's response was really good.

At the age where you want them exposed to pornography, that's the perfect age.

And so it's really true.

So turn in your Bibles to 1 Thessalonians.

I want to start with 1 Thessalonians 5, and this is really a different message for me because it's kind of one-off.

Usually I do books of the Bible, usually I do a series.

This is a one-off today.

And I believe because of our commitment at the road of building whole-hearted people, this is one of the most powerful passages in the New Testament about being wholehearted.

As a matter of fact, be a good one to memorize.

It'd be a this is this is a plaque, this is plaque material.

This is the kind of stuff you could put on a plaque.

But 1 Thessalonians chapter 5, verse 23, sums up this letter to probably Paul's favorite church.

1 Thessalonians 5:23

Probably the Philippian church and the Thessalonians were some of his favorite believers.

It's a very, very positive, joyful book.

And he ends it with this, though.

Look at verse 23.

1 Thessalonians 5.23 from the New King James Version.

Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, not partially, completely.

And may your whole spirit, soul, and body.

So what he means is your whole spirit, your whole soul, and your whole body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

So, Father, in the name of Jesus, we ask you to bless this message today.

May it honor you, may it be true to the text.

In your name we pray.

Amen.

The vision of the road of building wholehearted disciples of Jesus.

I don't want anything that I do, and I'm not perfect at this, but I endeavor with my life that I would not have anything within my life that would sabotage my whole body, my whole spirit, and my brain, and my mind.

Because for me, at least in my position, it would affect every one of you if I was taken out by the enemy.

It would affect the whole church, it would affect the city, it would affect other pastors, it would affect everyone.

I don't want to have anything in my life that would sabotage the tenacity and commitment I have to being a wholehearted disciple for my family.

Lose your wife, lose your husband, lose your family, lose your kids.

In some ways, you lose everything.

And many of you know because you've been through this experience of divorce and you've been through difficult times.

You know how devastating that is.

I don't want to be doing anything that I knew ahead of time would sabotage my body, would sabotage my spirit, would actually cause my brain to atrophy.

It's gonna atrophy anyway.

Alright?

And so, and so why speed it up?

So, what I'm gonna talk about today is what I believe is of epidemic proportions.

It would be malpractice as a pastor for me not to address what I think could be the most important topic and the most deceptive disease in our culture today, and it's pornography.

Pornography is taking men and women out daily.

I posted, as many of you know, yesterday on Facebook, and I think the last count was like 23 comments, 16 shares, and I think I was close to 100 likes, and I did it at the wrong time.

By the way, you're supposed to post on Facebook about 10 a.m.

on Tuesday.

Okay?

That's the best time of the week.

So I just take for the worst, you know.

Everybody's watching college football.

But I didn't care, I just went on and posted it.

The reality is this is that it is an epidemic and it's and it's proliferating our society, and I and I have and I have guns in my house, but I also have a safe.

And there's a proper place for guns because you never know when someone who doesn't know how to properly use a gun could pick up a loaded weapon and do something devastating with it, right?

Well, well, sex in the confines of marriage with two believers who passionately love each other and desire to be wholehearted is the most beautiful, most exciting, most uh vibrant, most dynamic thing uh physically that you can have in your life.

Even chemically, because of the endorphins and the adrenaline that's involved with the intimacy relationship is good for you.

It's actually healthy.

Wouldn't it be like Satan to come in and sabotage and work to ruin one of the most beautiful things in our life?

Research in the United States has shown that 66% of men and 41% of women consume pornography on a monthly basis.

That means the majority of the men in this room are very much tempted if not involved in pornography.

An estimated 50% of all internet traffic is related to sex.

The Huffington Post reports that the average age that kids are being exposed to pornography is now 11 years old.

Focus on the family's research indicates that the average is eight years old.

The reality is that many of you in this room are addicted to porn and no one knows.

It's your secret.

And because of our committed to wholehearted living and because of how often we talk about vulnerability, the challenge today is that you're here and now you're gonna have information I think in most cases you may not be familiar with.

I can just say that as of a month ago, I wasn't familiar with it.

And uh so I'm gonna I'm gonna attack this not so much from a moral perspective as much as a chemical drug addiction perspective.

The reason is that I believe most of us, if you got up this morning, you had your coffee, you may have even had a quiet time, been in the word, you came to church, you probably know the moral issues.

I'll cover it maybe slightly, but I want to talk more about what it does to your brain, what it does to your life, and what it does to your relationships from the perspective of what neurosurgeons are actually saying about it.

So we're gonna have a, we're gonna post up here on the on the top here uh in our PowerPoint a picture of a brain, and uh and it'll it'll be a little bit difficult to read.

You'll have to kind of close in.

It's actually done very well there.

You see the frontal cortex, the nucleus, acumens, and the VTA.

This comes from the book by Dr.

Donald L.

Hilton, who's a neurosurgeon, called Pornography and the Brain, Understanding the Addiction.

Now I'm gonna read a lot of this so I get it right, so bear with me.

Viewing pornography results in a real change in brain chemistry.

These changes in dopamine metabolism and in receptor numbers can be measured with fMRI, PET, and SPECT scans.

Four studies done on brain atrophy have shown, listen, this is really important, that pharmaceutical drug addiction and natural brain production drug addiction basically are the same and both bring an atrophy in the frontal control areas of the brain.

Drugs like adrenaline, also known as epiphrine, are used in hospitals and crash cars to help start back the heart.

Our bodies, though, can produce adrenaline on their own.

The locus corellus of the brain produces adrenaline during the anticipation and acting out phase of pornography addiction.

Dr.

Hilton writes, is it a drug only if the pharmaceutical lab makes it?

And not if the brain makes the same chemical?

I think not.

Dr.

Hilton continues, alongside adrenaline is a drug that your body produces, your brain produces called dopamine, which functions as an excitatory neurotransmitter and is important in the brain's pleasure symptoms and an integral component in pornography addiction.

Dr.

Hilton writes.

Now I'm going to read this other part too about the frontal cortex.

The frontal cortex is important in control and judgment.

It's really important.

Not a good area of your brain to be atrophying.

Let me read it again.

The frontal cortex is important for control, self-control, judgment.

Nucleus encombins, which you can see on the diagram, plays a central role in the reward circuit.

The VTA, the ventral tegmental area, is the is the nucleus of a of your dopamine.

Dopamine is produced here.

Dr.

Hilton writes, when a stimulus from the cortex comes into the brain stem, the VTA causes dopamine to be released from the ends of the nerve cells where it crosses the synaptic cleft, the space between the nerve cells, and binds to receptors on the pleasure cells in the nucleus ocamens.

There are five primary chemicals released through sexual arousal and responsive, the most significant being dopamine, the chemical of reward-driven behavior.

Every type of reward that has been studied increases the level of dopamine transmission in the brain.

Now let me give a sideline.

Somewhere around the ages of 13 to around 21, some say 24, is your dopamine buildup, dopamine-rich years.

That's the reason on your X games, when you see guys doing stuff on snowboards and skis and they're doing flips and they're doing spins and all the stuff they do that's just like crazy stuff.

You're like, wow, these young people are crazy.

No, those are the dopamine-rich years.

And so they have the dopamine to do stuff that drives them to do crazy stuff, which I'm going to explain in just a moment.

And this is really important as it relates to pornography.

Dopamine, listen, has been called the novel drug, N-O-V-E-L, the novel drug.

Dopamine surges when a person is exposed to novel stimuli, particularly if it's sexual.

Porn today is way more interesting than porn in the past because of what experts say, quote, unending novelty.

So a guy or a gal on porn can see more than, can see more images in 20 minutes than our parents and grandparents saw in a lifetime put together.

So dopamine needs, listen, novelty.

With novelty, it produces more.

With novelty, it continues to produce, and you become addicted to novelty.

Now I was a gymnast in college.

You guys remember that?

And I can't I can't even believe the nutty stuff that I not only did in gymnastics, but off diving boards, cliffs, bridges over water.

I was a Looney Tune.

No, I was addicted to dopamine and I didn't even know it.

And so you're not, it's not just physical that guys and gals aren't doing triple back double somersaults off of jumps with skis on at 32.

It's called the Coolidge effect.

It's this idea that the novel drug in our brain is dopamine, and dopamine needs more and more novel experiences to reach the same levels of relief.

A person can see more novel bodies in 20 minutes than we've ever seen in the past in a lifetime.

Erotic imagery, this is important, erotic imagery triggers dopamine more than actual sex with a familiar partner and leads to, quote unquote, what experts call arousal addiction and teaches the brain to prefer an image and become less satisfied with a real life partner.

And this is the scary part.

It actually rewires your brain.

Dopamine digs ditches in the brain.

The brain is rewired with each click of the mouse, leading to desiring more and more and more.

It's called arousal addiction.

Here's what they're finding it leads to.

It leads to ADHD, it leads to OCD, social anxiety, depression, performance anxiety, and even suicide.

One particular study that I looked at talked about voyeurism.

And if you don't know what voyeurism, you can look it up.

But the issue of voyeurism becomes a part of that for the seeking out for more and more novelty.

One study said that a dopamine surge results in a binge mechanism kicking in the molecular switch called Delta FOSB, FOS B, which accumulates, leading to craving more.

This changes literally the structure of the brain, leading to needing more and more and more.

And just like drug consumption, this leads to a structural brain change leading to three things.

Here's the three things they found that it leads to in the brain.

Number one, numbed pleasure responses.

Numbed pleasure responses.

Everyday pleasures no longer satisfy a porn addict.

Number two, hyperreactivity to porn.

Hyperreactivity to porn.

Everything else in the addict's life becomes boring, but porn, and it becomes the most exciting thing.

And then three, and this is really important, willpower erosion, self-control erosion.

And even the frontal cortex is changing.

Dr.

Hilton writes, the person is overstimulated with a specific pleasure to the point of addiction.

And the brain decreases the production of dopamine and the number of receptors on the pleasure cells of the nucleus occupans in an attempt to return to normal.

And dopamine producing cells in the nucleus occupans and frontal control neurons actually atrophy and shrink.

So you see what I'm saying?

You have to have more because you're actually destroying what you have.

To return to satisfaction, like any other form of drugs like cocaine, meth, and heroin, the person in addiction must act out and boost the dopamine levels with more and more stimuli.

So the question is: can we be set free?

Can we be set free?

It's interesting, the latest data is that if you got involved in porn between the ages of 14 and 21, in the high-speed internet age, it's extremely difficult.

Because what's happened is the ditches have been dug in your brain.

The ditches have been dug in your brain.

Your frontal cortex has actually got ditches in it coming from the VTA that's difficult to cover up.

You're becoming brain dead.

Your chance at a happy marriage is is very, very low.

It takes about four to six months.

If you can start getting yourself free for four to six months, you will start to actually start to think again.

You'll actually become creative again.

You'll actually find passion again.

You'll actually find joy again.

For those that are 40 and uh and above, it takes about one to two months.

Because you came before there was high-speed internet.

So your ditches aren't quite as deep.

Matt Fraud is the author of the book, Delivered: The True Stories of Men and Women Who Turned From Porn to Purity.

He writes.

Many people ask me, usually at the end of one of my presentations, about the effects of pornography, if it's truly possible to be free from porn.

They feel they've tried everything and they're beginning to despair.

They're beginning to think that while it might be possible for some people to break free from porn, it's not possible for them.

I know that freedom from porn is possible, and I know this for two reasons.

Number one, I know of many people who have begun to get freedom and have walked in freedom for many years, but they felt the same way you do right now.

Number two, as a Christian, I know that no matter how entrenched in porn you are, God's grace is bigger.

And that He is able to do more than we could ever hope or even imagine.

Before we engage in the practical steps, though, I want to give you three things, three thoughts here.

Number one, you should think about sex.

Everybody look at me.

You should, you heard it from a pastor.

You should think about sex.

Not tease about it, not joke about it, not make up stories about it, not talk about fantasies with it, but think about it.

Nobody thinks about sex.

Like, what's his purpose?

Why do we have sex?

Who does it come from?

It's interesting that the very first command when Adam and Eve were brought together in the book of Genesis is to be fruitful and multiply.

It wasn't grow pineapples and plant corn.

God thinks sex is great, and he wants it to be fun, and he wants it to be joyful, and he wants it to be pleasurable.

Think about sex.

Don't joke about it.

Read articles.

That are out there about sex from Playboy or Cosmos or Fifty Shades of Stupid.

But think about it.

Christianity is not about the annihilation of sexual desire, it's about the reorientation of sexual desire.

Many people get confused because they think that strong sexual desire is the same thing as lust.

It's not.

Here's the difference lust says, this is your body taken by me, and love says, this is my body given up for you.

God created sex and love in the confines and the beauty of marriage to be enjoyed.

Number two, freedom from porn is one day at a time.

Freedom from porn is one day at a time.

To say I'm gonna now get set free from porn is ridiculous.

So don't say that today.

Say that today I'm gonna be free from porn.

Tomorrow, when tomorrow comes, I'm gonna be free from porn.

I'm gonna love God today with all of my heart, soul, mind, and strength.

I'm gonna be a whole person, body, soul, and spirit, today.

Just take one day at a time.

And then one day becomes two days.

And two days becomes three days, and three days becomes four days, and before you know it, a month has gone by and a year has gone by, and you're finding new, new abilities, new thoughts, new entrepreneurial ideas are coming to you because you're now building back your brain.

The brain is amazing, you guys.

You know that?

How it heals itself?

God has created the brain to heal itself.

You can be healed.

You can redig the dishes and cover up the old ones because you're a new creation in Christ and you begin to rethink this.

But it's one day at a time.

Number three, you're not gonna like.

I mean, you're gonna be like, what is he talking about?

You should struggle, you should struggle with temptation to look at porn.

So anybody says, I don't struggle with that.

That's either he's a liar or he's a weirdo.

Okay, you should struggle with porn.

Many Christians I encounter seem to think that the word struggle is synonymous with give into.

We hear people say, I've been struggling with porn, and we assume they mean I've been giving into porn.

And that is what they mean.

That is what they mean.

But struggle doesn't have to mean giving into.

In fact, it can mean the opposite.

It means that you're contending against spiritual forces to walk in purity.

And to walk in purity is a struggle.

It always has been throughout every generation, but it really is today.

We contend with an adversary.

Like Terry Cruz.

Anybody know who Terry Cruz is?

Okay, Terry Cruz, many of you do.

NFL football star, star of the TV comedy Brooklyn 99, star in the movie The Expendables, has graced the cover of Men's Fitness Magazine.

So in night in 2016, he actually came out about his porn addiction in Men's Fitness Magazine.

And here's what he said.

For years and years and years, my dirty little secret was that I was addicted to pornography, he says in his first video.

It really, really messed up my life in a lot of ways, he said.

I didn't tell anybody.

It was my secret.

Nobody knew.

And that followed it to grow, and it allowed it to grow.

And by not telling people, it became more powerful.

But when you put it out there in the open, just like I'm doing right now, it loses its power.

Pornography changes the way you think about people.

People become objects, people become body parts, they become things to be used rather than people to be loved.

And so, right on the verge of losing his marriage and losing his family, Terry Cruz said no to pornography.

And when he said no to pornography, his life was turned upside down and he began a new life of excitement and joy.

It was seven years ago.

And since then, he's done three videos dealing with porn.

One former porn addict who quit wrote, I feel like the next Sir Isaac Newton.

Now, this might be a little bit over the top, but anyway, I thought it was interesting.

I feel like the next Sir Isaac Newton or Leonardo da Vinci.

I've literally, I've literally started a business, taken up a piano, been studying French every day, been programming, drawing, and have more awesome ideas than I know what to do with.

My confidence is sky high, and I feel like I can talk to girls again.

How about a remedy for all you shy guys?

Don't do porn.

You might become the next Leonardo da Vinci.

Okay, I want to throw something out as I close, and that is in God and oxytocin we trust.

In God and oxytocin we trust.

Now, many of you ladies know what oxytocin is.

Sometimes it's given to you during pregnancy to stimulate labor.

Oxytocin, your body naturally produces for a woman when she's breastfeeding, and it's released through that.

It's called the happiness drug.

It's called the happiness chimburg.

You know what stimulates oxytocin in your life?

Hugging, friendships, setting and accomplishing goals.

Hanging out with a family, hanging out with people, and the laughter and that feeling you have at Christmas.

You know Christmas?

Christmas is just a big oxytocin-filled holiday.

It really is.

So what they're finding though, scientists, neurosurgeons, doctors, and addiction counselors are finding that the key for heroin and cocaine addicts is oxytocin.

That if they can start getting these men and women who are addicted to meth and methamphetamines and heroin and cocaine addicted on people and relationships in the proper way, it speeds up their withdrawal and breaks the power of the addiction because they're flooding their frontal cortex with oxytocin.

So men and women, let me give you five things that work.

And all of them, probably except for one, has to do with oxytocin.

Here's the first.

The first is this.

And this is this is flooding your brain with oxytocin.

You got to be honest.

You gotta have some blood-stained allies.

You gotta have some friends you're honest with about your porn addiction.

And four out of ten women in this room, you struggle with it.

More than six out of ten men in this room struggle with it.

Some of you are addicted to it.

So let's just say at the road at Chapel Hills, all of us struggle with it.

And if you don't, that's great.

That's awesome, but most of us do.

And so let's be honest.

So you need some people you can share it with.

And you need to do it in the next 24 hours.

You need to share in the next 24 hours someone.

I've got to struggle with this.

Would you uh pray with me?

Would you be uh would you be a bloodstained ally?

I want to get set free.

I do not want to be kind of a spiritual Alzheimer's victim.

That's what you're gonna become.

I mean, some of the kids that were possibly medicating with chemicals and drugs with ADHD and OCD and stuff like that might actually have a porn addiction.

And what I found in the data, which I don't have time to go into because of time, was that when they broke the porn addiction, all those other symptoms went away.

Now it took about four to six months, but their brain re-engineered itself and was healed.

So, first of all, you need a bloodstained ally.

Second of all, this is what you need a blood-stained ally for, and that is you've got to put something on your phone and on your computer to keep you accountable.

So the two that I'm gonna recommend are covenant eyes.

That's what we're now putting on all of our computers and phones at all the road staff.

So we all have covenant eyes.

What that does is it alerts each week you get a report of what that person was looking at on all of the websites and all of the stuff that they use it.

And it's not everything in the sense that every little thing, but all of the websites are listed there.

Or X3 watch.

X3 watch for your phone.

And by the way, if you're not writing these down and you don't have them, you're an idiot.

I D I O T.

Exclamation point.

You're an idiot.

Or you're a robot, and if you're a robot, then it doesn't matter.

But if you're a human being, you know, with a pumping heart, have passions in your life, you better have this stuff on your phone and on your computer.

A number of years ago, we had a young lady in our house that we were kind of counseling working with, and she was doing homeschooling with our kids, and she stole stuff all the time.

And we lost two phones and probably two or three thousand dollars worth of stuff.

And we kept saying, honey, we we've never lost these things before until you came into our house.

She goes, Well, I didn't do it.

I didn't do it.

So Isaac, my smart little investigative son, went online and found out that you could get these little cameras for$2.50.

That they you can put them in the corner, they move with people in the room, they have a red light that beeps because you have a triple A battery in it.

And it's got a wire that looks like it goes into the wall.

It doesn't do anything.

It's a fake camera.

So the next time she was at our house, I said, Hey honey, um, why don't you see something new that we're doing here?

Look, every room has a camera in the corner.

Isn't that neat?

And when you walk in, it follows you.

Isn't that cool?

And it and it can and it can see the whole room.

It's really super cool.

Isn't it neat where technology has taken us?

Nothing ever got stolen again.

But she didn't do it.

So the reality is that we all need accountability.

We all need accountability in our lives, and this is one way to do that.

So, covenant eyes, X3 watch, I would encourage you to have that.

And then what I would do is whoever is your bloodstained ally, and I would say probably not husbands and wives and wives and husbands, but another one of the same gender, they would get your report each week, and then they should do their report with you.

So you do it together.

And then we do a thing here at the road called PBJ, Prayer, Bible, and Journal.

This is the newest one.

It's out today.

You can pick up as you're leaving.

And this is a Bible reading plan to just start each day in God's Word with PB and J.

Fourthly, if you're married, have an active sex life.

If you got problems there, you guys need to work that out.

Get some help.

But you should be having an active sex life.

If you're not married, don't have an active sex life.

Be pure.

God's in control.

And then fifthly, and this may seem a little odd, but work out.

Work out releases endorphins.

So we're back into another drug thing again.

Endorphins are good for you.

They release chemicals that are good for you.

They help with the receptors in your brain.

They reduce the perception of pain.

They help you with your addiction.

So work out.

Work out hard two, three, four times a week if you can.

It's good for you.

It helps you.

So there you go.

That's the message today.

You can be set free.

Everybody go like this if you say, if you believe you can be set free.

All right, you can be set free, okay?

If you want to be.

But nobody can put the want in you but you.

And for some reason, God made our brains to release drugs, to release chemicals into our system.

They're free.

Endorphins are free.

You don't have to go and get a prescription.

You gotta work out.

Dopamine is a beautiful drug used properly.

It's what soldiers need when they're in emergency situations.

It's what our emergency technicians and our doctors and our lawyers and our nurses are fire, they need dopamine.

They need adrenaline in its proper place.

And then we need oxytocin.

It gives us joy, it makes us happy.

So let's work with our bodies.

Let's work with our systems because here's what he's saying again in Thessalonians.

Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit, whole soul, and whole body peepers are blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

You've been listening to The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

We hope you have been blessed by today's message.

To connect with us further, visit theroad.org.

If you are walking through a difficult time, we want to pray for you.

Go to theroad.org, click on the ministries tab, and go to our prayer page to send us your prayer request.

Thanks again for tuning in today, and be sure to listen to the next edition of The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.