Intersection | Oxytocin and Porn

How we doing Richmond campus?

You guys good?

I love it.

Got a full house today.

That's always fun.

Hey, I also want to welcome everyone at our Missouri City campus with us.

We love you guys, everyone downtown at our West End campus.

So much love for you guys.

Of course, all you vacationers watching online with us.

I wore a vacation shirt just for you.

I woke up wanting to be in Hawaii today and I couldn't, so I dressed the part, I guess.

And uh let's do this at every campus.

I want the men to feel the love.

I want them to hear it.

All of the men at the Ramsey unit are God behind bars campus.

Can we welcome them?

We love you, gentlemen.

So we're about to do this.

We're about to jump into week three of our series we've titled Intersection.

But before we do that, I got a what I call a sermon before the sermon.

Uh, and this is super important because I come bearing good news, and I love good news just like you do.

Um several months ago, I did a two-week mini-series um uh speaking specifically about generosity in terms of finances, which is a huge subject for a multitude of reasons, especially in church.

And man, I felt like our church uh received it about as well as a pastor could hope for um in terms of feedback and and stuff like that.

Um I really challenged our church, and I said this one thing, and I want to say it again, um, and not all of you will trust me equally, because trust has to be earned, but I said this and I say it again and I say it with my chest because I mean it with all my heart.

When I I talk to you about anything, but particularly finances, I genuinely don't want something from you.

I want something for you.

And I mean that from the bottom of my heart.

There is such power that opens up in our lives in any form of generosity, not just talking finances, any spirit of generosity that is given for the good of someone else at the expense of your resource of any kind.

You are honoring God.

That is the heart of God, that is the character and the mind of God.

He is a generous God, for God so loved the world that he what?

He gave.

He gave his first and he gave his best.

And when we implement that spirit into our own hearts and lives, uh not only do we win, which is beautiful, but the community wins.

People around us, people on the receiving end of your generosity win.

And so the good news is this uh we we have been climbing out of a bit of a financial hole for the last three years and the last two years that I have uh been here, and churches go through cycles like that.

It just is what it is.

And so I also a little bit gave some practical uh thoughts about where we are at, and I just challenged some people, if this was your first time to give maybe ever to a church or or specifically to River Point and West End.

Uh man, I I just I just want to challenge you that we want something for you, not something from you.

And when we started that series, we had about 2,200 families uh statistically that were giving and participating financially in the church uh out of about seven some thousand that usually come on a weekend.

And um one of the months since then, we had as high as 2,800 families giving to the church, and I could just not be more grateful, not more inspired.

We're still climbing up, we still got a ways to go, but man, I have nothing but faith and hope that we are gonna um have every need met according to God's riches and glory, as the Bible says, Um, but it still is a burden.

And I just want to say a personal thank you because part of my role as what's called lead pastor is sometimes I can lose sleep over budget because the implications are big.

And we have a lot we want to do, and we have a lot around here at all of our campuses that we have to take care of.

And so when the church steps up like that and responds, man, it puts faith in me, it puts strength in me, it puts courage in me.

And and and I just want to personally also, not just our team, but but I want to say thank you from the bottom of my heart.

So, what we're gonna do once a month moving forward is we're gonna take a little moment like this, just a few minutes, and we are gonna pray over our finances.

We're gonna pray as families, um, single people, everybody in between, we are going to lock arms and in faith, we are gonna call out to the living God, the one who the Bible says owns it all.

The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof.

He owns every cattle on every hill.

He is a God of endless supply.

Supply is not the problem, it's understanding God's way of doing things in his kingdom.

And so we're gonna pray over our debts, we're gonna pray over unemployment, we're gonna pray over the health of our finances and just asking that um God would just teach us, continue to teach us, give us wisdom.

Here's a big one that's hard.

Give us self-control, God.

I know I could use a whole bunch more of that in so many different areas.

And so at every campus, if you do this right now, we're gonna burn a few more calories before you can sit and just let me burn the calories.

Uh, would you guys stand at every campus in honor of uh praying to God?

If you're okay with this and you want to, if you're with your family, uh wife, husband, would you guys just lock arms, man?

Would you guys hold hands uh with your kiddos?

This is a family thing.

If you're here today at any campus and you're single, just don't pray about finances.

Pray about that spouse coming up.

You know, like we're good.

Like, no, I'm just kidding.

Pray over your finances.

Like, gentlemen, pray over your singlemen, like make money.

It's attractive, okay?

We're praying over your finances.

Treat her like the princess she is, okay?

So we're praying.

But I genuinely believe this isn't just a religious activity or I wouldn't do it.

I believe there's power when we put our collective faith together and we call upon the God who will supply all of our needs according to his riches and glory.

I didn't say all our wants.

Calm down, everyone.

I said all of our needs.

And when needs are met, health enters homes.

Health enters marriages, health enters families.

So let's pray.

Heavenly Father, I thank you for um the beauty of um giving.

I thank you for what happens, the consequences of a generous life, God.

I thank you for the absolute purpose behind generosity, the way it adds so much life and life to the fullest when we start to catch the Spirit and participate, God.

Lord, there are thousands of people in our church that every week faithfully, sacrificially in worship to you, give of theirs to uh go to something that is bigger than just themselves.

And this is a high act of worship to you.

I know, God, this makes you smile because God, money is what we use for everything.

And so there's very few acts of worship that are more profoundly beautiful and courageous than when we give.

And so, God, I am praying now a blessing over every uh person, their homes, their finances, for everyone who walked into church today with the 900-pound gorilla of debt over their homes, over their marriages, Father God.

I know what that's like to feel that pressure.

I know how it can affect day-to-day relationships.

I pray, God, that you would teach us what it looks like to cancel debts.

You would give us the self-control and contentment we need to cancel debts.

I pray for every person in our church that is currently unemployed and stressed and anxious and fearful about the future.

God, I pray provision in the name of Jesus.

I pray favor when they interview for jobs, that those managers interviewing them would see something different, God, that they would say, This is the person we want.

I pray that you would get us all back to work that are not currently working in need and want to work, Father God, for your glory, for your witness, for our health, God.

We pray for every home that is in great financial um health right now.

I thank you for those homes.

May they teach us, God, what they've learned.

God, may they be the most generous knowing how you have most blessed them, Father God.

I just thank you, God, for what you're doing at River Point Church.

And we are able to continue in your mission because of the faithfulness, generosity, and kindness of these amazing people, I pray for.

And so, God, everything we've asked for and we've prayed for, we pray it in the precious name of Jesus.

And everyone said, Amen.

You guys can be seated.

Let's get going.

I want to make a disclaimer real quick as we enter week three.

If you have younger children, uh, maybe ten and under, depending, every parent's different.

There's no right or wrong.

It's it's it's up to you and your values.

But we are going to use some language that might be different or confusing to uh your kids.

And if you're not ready for this to be the first time they're hearing that language, uh, now is an awesome time to maybe go out into the foyer and kind of listen and let them do their thing.

Or we have amazing kids and youth programs.

You can walk them over and come back.

Uh, or as like some people did last service, you can just get up and leave.

That's also okay too, because you are in charge of you and yours and your family.

But we are gonna use a little bit, and I'm gonna uh be as as tame as I can possibly be, but there's some words we have to say and that we have to use because the significance and the implications of what we're gonna talk about this week are significant.

So, like I said, we're in week three of a series that we've titled Intersection, and in simple terms, we really wanted to draw an intersection between God and science.

As I said in week one, uh I grew up in a church environment when those two things seemed to be endlessly at odds.

And as a young analytical kid, that never really made a whole lot of sense to me.

It didn't seem like, you know, science should be secularized and God should just be fully spiritualized.

I was like, God's the author of science.

And so what we wanted to do in this world of information, we're blessed in 2026 for all the difficulties, to have more information and understanding at our fingertips, and we wanted in this series to tap into that.

And so we're doing a series, yes, about science, but more specifically, if we're really narrowing it down to the science of neurology and physiology and biology.

We're really camping on the brain, and last week we did a message Chad Harold did called the dopamine dilemma.

Can we just stop and give it up for Chad Harold?

And what an amazing message he preached last week.

Chad, if you're if you're listening over at the Missouri City campus, man, I do not want to follow that up.

Thanks, buddy.

We'll talk later.

No, it was so good.

If you missed last week, please, please, please go back and listen because all of these messages in this series are kind of building on each other.

He did one called the dopamine dilemma, and I'm gonna add uh a couple other words from the brain and the chemicals in the brain, and then next week we're gonna add a couple more words, but we're still gonna talk about dopamine today as well.

I'm gonna add the word with dopamine like oxytocin and vasopressin and uh maybe some others if I nerd out with my time.

We'll see what happens.

But uh the Apostle Paul, and this is kind of a theme verse for the series, he says this in Romans 12, too.

He says, Do not conform any longer to the patterns of this world.

Now there's a term we use in modern day for the term world.

We use the word culture.

Do not conform any longer to the patterns that culture create, but instead do what?

Be transformed.

Not conform, transform by what?

How you treat this thing right here.

By the renewing of your mind back to not only God's truth, but to an understanding and a submission to God's original design before sin entered the picture and got us in all these kinds of trouble.

We walk in here today, all of us to some degree, finding ourselves in, he says, do not conform any longer to, here's the key word, patterns.

And you want to know why we wanted to use that verse while talking about the brain week in and week out, is because the brain is a pattern recognizer.

And that's an oversimplification.

Don't email me, neurologist.

I know I know it's an oversimplification, but the brain works off patterns or habits.

And it simply does this, it just evolves and it moves to whatever patterns you are telling the brain to deal with in the human body and the biological uh experience of whatever habits you're creating.

And the brain is unbelievably dynamic in how it responds and what it does.

And so we're going to look at different things our brain does when we are confronting different patterns.

Chad talked a lot about our phones last week, and this will not be even close to the last time we talk about our phones because I call it the 215th organ of the human body.

It is just a part of our world now.

Many of your kids grew up in a world where phones had long already existed.

They know no different.

The goal isn't to try and uh get them away.

The goal is to learn, just like with money, how to steward them for holy purposes.

Phones are amoral, just like money.

They are not powerful, good or bad, until they're put into the palm of you or me.

Right?

So the goal isn't, man, phone, everyone get a flip phone.

We're gonna have a revival of flip phones.

If you do that, that's great.

See how long it lasts, but that's great.

But the goal is to go, God, how can we leverage this advancement, this piece of technology that has so much potential for good?

How can we as believers leverage it for your glory?

Well, uh making sure patterns that these phones create don't get the best of us.

And there is a particular pattern in culture right now, and it is globally, when I say culture, that is conforming.

Do you hear me using Romans language?

There is a pattern in culture right now that has absolutely conformed to something we're gonna talk about today.

And you might think I'm being the exaggerating pastor, but I am telling you this pattern we've conformed to and accepted now as a globe has epidemic level consequences if we do not discuss this and be open about this topic.

And so I'm going to talk about this.

Uh, when I was 13, I was playing base uh basketball in the neighborhood at a friend of mine's house.

I hadn't been to his house very often, and we were out playing, and I had to go to the bathroom really bad, and so he just said, Go into the house.

I went into the house, I used the restroom, I know I'm sorry, TMI, but it is what it is.

I use a restroom, went to wash my hands, and there was nothing uh in the restroom to wash my hands with that I could see, so I got into the cupboard down below, and I was looking for some toilet paper or a towel or something, and there was a stack of magazines.

And this was probably 1989 when I was 13, I think, or so, 88, 89.

And there were these magazines called Playboy.

And I knew that term and I knew what it was, but I had, of course, never seen one.

You had to be 21 to buy one, and it was just almost impossible for a kid.

But I I guess his dad had some down there in the bathroom, and for the first time as a 13-year-old, every parent's nightmare happened.

Innocence was lost in a young, formidable 13-year-old boy.

And every parent has to go through this, and every parent has to experience it, and it's one of the hardest things we as parents will be asked to do.

And my parents for a long time never even knew that that had happened, but that was the first time I had ever seen a pornographic image of a naked woman.

And for everything it maybe did spiritually, and everything it maybe did emotionally, do you know what happened physiologically?

Instantly my brain made a cocktail of dopamine and oxytocin and vasopressin with a little sprinkling of endorphin on top.

And I felt the type of way that as a 13-year-old boy I'd never felt before, and I didn't know how to put language around it, and I didn't know how to define it, but I knew something was different at that point.

I knew there was a world that had been opened up to me, not just spiritually or emotionally, but also neurologically, that would forever invite me into a battle and into a fight that every man and we'll see shortly, every woman now is faced with.

And because of the accessibility that our phones give us in terms of pornography, because of the uh most of it being uh able to even be free, right?

The affordability, and because it's right there all the time, the availability of it, it is now reached levels, as I said, of epidemic proportion.

And if you do not believe me, just listen to a few stats.

And I could have given you hundreds more that I read, but I just picked out some to show us where we're at.

Pornographic content accounts for 35% of all internet downloads.

35%.

Sites hosting it receive more monthly visitors than Netflix, Amazon, and Twitter or X combined.

Did you hear my voice crack on that?

That sh that was real.

Netflix, Amazon, and Twitter combined, one out of eight online searches globally in terms of internet traffic, are for porn.

This one is heartbreaking and telling as to why we would take a whole series to talk about stuff like this.

The average age of porn exposure for uh a boy is 11 years old now.

We have to talk about this.

58% of men in the ages of 18 to 24 view porn daily or at least several times weekly.

70% of users are married or in some kind of uh significant romantic relationship.

Teenagers from the age of 13 to 17, 50% of boys and 33% of girls view porn at least once or more weekly.

College students, it goes to 68% men and 41% women.

Listen to this, it's about to get real in church.

One out of five Christian men admitted to being addicted, not viewing, addicted to porn.

30% of Christian women admitted to viewing to some degree porn.

Fifty-two percent of pastors admitted to viewing porn.

Let me stop there for a minute.

Pray for your pastors, y'all.

I do not ask that selfishly.

I do not ask that with anything in mind other than I have eyes just like you do.

The Bible says if the eyes, Jesus said this, if the eyes are good, the whole body will be full of light.

You guys want pastors who are full of light.

We're not perfect, we struggle like everyone else.

Pray for me.

Pray for our pastors, pray that we're people, men and women of integrity, men and women who fight the good fight, men and women who stay accountable and open and honest.

Pray for us.

Gen Z, this one crushed me.

Gen Z female porn use is up 200% since 2017.

This is no longer, like when I grew up, the man's problem.

It's everyone's problem.

And if you don't think so, my elderly brothers and sisters, 19% of porn searches are by people 62 years and older.

I remember when my dad was in his 50s, and I was in my 20s, early 20s, I said, hey dad, we're pretty close, we have a real relationship.

I said, when did lust quit being a problem?

At what age?

And he said, I'll tell you what age, son, as soon as I get there.

And it was really weird to hear my dad say that.

And it was really important to hear my dad say that.

It is a battle that we will fight as long as we bleed red on this side of eternity.

Just a few mental health implications.

And again, I could have given you hundreds.

People who expose themselves to pornography are frequently used mental health-wise.

It's linked to uh 20% higher depression rates, 30% higher rates of anxiety disorders, 15% increase in impulsive behavior.

I hate this one so much, 35% higher body image dissatisfaction and dysmorphia.

51% increase in low self-esteem.

You can kind of see that it wasn't God's original design.

And I say that simply because culture has normalized the use of pornography.

I get it.

When something becomes normative, to stay sane and be okay, everyone just has to say, if you do it, I do it.

Ah, it's just a part of the world we live in now.

It is what it is.

But here's the problem.

Well, culture and the world has normalized pornography.

The brain hasn't.

And it never will.

The brain works on principles that are the same yesterday, today, and forever.

The brain works on systems and laws that are the same yesterday, today, and forever.

And the brain does incredible things to the uh uh mental health of us, and also listen to some physiological implications, just a few.

Uh people who watch uh pornography or view it have weakened immune systems.

It doubles your chances for chronic fatigue, headaches, and migraines.

You're two and a half more times more likely for sleep apnea.

This is a big one.

And 18% they found spike in higher cortisol levels.

And if you study cortisol, you know it's a mitigating factor in so many different Diseases and sicknesses.

When that hormone and chemical is used at a heightened rate, it is not good for the human body.

It's like the Word of God in its ancient language is just reinforcing that we have to be so careful with our sexuality.

We have to be so careful, not because God's the big cosmic killjoy, not because he's trying to ruin our fun, not because he's trying to set us up for failure, but because he designed it to be beautiful and honoring and a pleasure to be enjoyed, but he put walls and parameters around it.

Why?

Because the creator, inventor of the brain, Yahweh himself, knew exactly how he designed the brain to be when it's done in a dysfunctional wrong way.

The New York Times, I'll end with this, gave this quote in an article about the current usage of pornography.

Not focus on the family I'm reading here.

Not a quote from a pastor who wrote a book about it.

This is the very progressive, evolved New York Times.

Porn, they say, is the internet's grotesque open secret, a societal mainstay that shapes childhoods, ruins marriages, or excuse me, haunts marriages, and dominates global traffic, all while we collectively pretend that its pervasive multi-billion dollar industry isn't, listen to this, fundamentally warping reality.

Again, that's not a pastor saying that or focus on the family.

That's literally the New York Times saying, and I quote, warping our reality.

We know the statistics, we know the implications, so we're gonna do this, we're gonna go to God's word, and I could spend an hour just going through everything God says in terms of sexual ethic and his original intent and beauty and purpose behind it, but I'm just gonna go back to the place I started two weeks ago in the intro.

1 Corinthians 6.

I read two sentences about the body, the human body being the physical temple of the Holy Spirit.

Therefore, honor God with your body.

But what I didn't read for time's sake then was the context leading up to when Paul said that.

And you know what he was talking about when he made that statement that the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, therefore honor God with your body.

He was talking about sexual ethic.

And so I want to challenge you today.

Whenever we read about a command, I don't know if you're like me.

Let me not say everyone, but if you're like me, sometimes when you read about a command from God and it's intense in light of culture, you might feel this or have this mind game.

God, that seems pretty archaic or unevolved.

God, it kind of seems out of touch with the real world that we live in.

Or have you ever said this?

Because I have.

ears to hear and eyes to see.

What have we got to lose?

Anytime speaks his word over us, man, it's for our flourishing.

It's to restore life and life to the fullest.

So let's read.

1 Corinthians chapter 6, starting in verse 12.

1 Corinthians 6 · chapter mention

Paul starts out by quoting uh the Platonian, like I talked about in week one.

Plato was their biggest influence for the last 400 years.

These are new converts to Jesus who grew up in the Greek culture.

And the Greek culture, religiously and practically, was driven by Plato's thinking as their last prophet, so to speak.

And so he quotes their way of thinking.

I have the right to do anything, he puts in quotes, you say, but not everything is beneficial.

I have the right to do anything, but I will not be mastered by anything.

And in some ways that's valid.

But it's incomplete.

He goes on to say another one of their proverbial statements: Food for the stomach, you say, and stomach for the food, and God will destroy them both.

Or they would have said, and the gods will destroy them both.

Here's why, as I said in week one, if you missed it, let me play catch-up.

Plato had this belief and philosophy that the soul of a man and woman is deeply sacred.

And the intellect of a man or woman is equally sacred.

But the house with which the soul and the intellect are housed is deeply poisonous, the body.

And Paul, in this bit we just read, is confronting that false notion that the body isn't holy, that it's somehow different or compartmentalized from the soul or spirit of a man and the intellect of a man.

We are triune, just like God.

We bear his image.

Well, he's Father, Son, and Spirit.

He made us body, mind, and spirit.

We cannot discount the body.

He said the body was a prison, and Paul's trying to say, no, no, no, your body is precious.

Plato said, when you die, your body goes from being a prison to being a tomb, and Paul says, no, no, no, no, no.

Your body's a temple of the Holy Spirit of God that dwells in you.

So that's what's happening there.

And then here's his exhortation to us.

He says, the body, however, this would have been brand new thinking for them, maybe for some of you today.

The body, however, is not meant for sexual immorality.

Let me stop there for a minute.

That uh two-word English phrase, sexual immorality, is actually in the Greek translation of the original just one word.

And you know what ironically the word is in Greek for sexual immorality?

Pornea.

The body, however, is not meant for pornea.

Forty-two different times that word is used in terms of a warning to the church.

Sexual immorality for the uh but for the Lord.

The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.

By his power God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us also.

He says, Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ Himself?

Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute?

Whole nother sermon for another day.

Uh I don't have time, but I can make some real sense of why he chose that thing.

Uh never, he says, he says, Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute or another person that you're not in relationship or married to, or a pixelated image on your phone or your computer or on the TV screen, don't you know that when you unite with that, you are one with them in body?

And that's not just spiritually, it's spiritual, it's emotional attachment and bonding.

I grew up they called it a soul tie, and that was scary.

But it's true.

But when you look at the neurology and the biology and the physiology behind it, it's equally true.

Do you know the chief chemical that gets excreted during uh any type of sexual uh behavior?

Whatever it is, is oxytocin.

Do you know what oxytocin, the love hormone, the the the cuddle chemical?

Do you know what it ultimately does?

It's a bonding mechanism.

Isn't it crazy?

It's not the only one.

Dopamine's what gets you in the backseat of the car.

Oxytocin's what keeps you coming back to the backseat of the car after midnight.

You know what I'm saying?

To put it in simple terms, and then throw in a little vasopressin to go with it just to add to it, and then a little bit of a sprinkle of endorphins, and next thing you know, for just a few isolated minutes, you feel on top of the world.

It's euphoric.

It's ecstasy.

It's a pleasure God always wanted us to enjoy and to experience.

But the danger is it's a bonding mechanism that was reserved for two people that are committed in a covenant relationship.

Because of how much sex bonds us spiritually and emotionally, physically, God said, do it in the boundaries of covenant.

Because when you bond to something, you need them to love you.

You need them to be loyal to you, you need them to stick with you through thick and thin, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health.

There's that kind of unique bond that only comes when the brain starts adjusting itself to the pleasure God gave us, this beautiful thing of sex.

So Paul just has strong language.

You're one with her in body, and then he does what we like to do around here.

He does some ethnology, and just to reaffirm it, that it's an endless, timeless truth, he quotes Genesis 2.24.

He says, the two shall become what?

One flesh.

But whoever is united with the Lord is one with him in spirit.

Listen, all sin is created equal when it comes to eternal consequence.

The Bible says, for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

That's the most unifying fact of this room right now.

All sin is created equal when it comes to eternal consequence, but please hear me.

And Paul's trying to say this to them: not all sin is created equal when it comes to earthly and instant consequence.

And he's putting boundaries around sect because he knows what we often haven't either been taught or believed that with sexual activity outside of covenant, there are huge earthly consequences that we don't realize.

So he says this flee.

You know what that means in the Greek?

Turn the opposite way of where you are and run.

Not just, oh, be a little more careful.

Oh, just watch out.

Flee from all pornea, sexual immorality.

All other sins a person commits are outside of the body, but whoever sins sexually sins against their own body.

Now that's not literally true.

There's other sins where we sin against our own body.

Paul knows this.

He's not dumb.

He's trying to categorize it in a way that says, listen, even some of the other sins that are done with and through your body, nothing compares to this one in terms of immediate and human earthly consequence.

That's why he says, flee.

Do you not know, and this is what we read in week one, that your bodies, this would have been revolutionary thought for them, that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have received from God.

You are not your own, therefore what?

You were bought at a price, so please, Paul's saying to his people he loves, please honor God with your bodies.

Take this stuff seriously.

And so, with the last few minutes I have, I would be crazy after setting this up and then and then letting us sit under the tension of painfully beautiful exhortation and conviction from the Word of God through the Apostle Paul to not only the church in Greece, but now to the church in Sugarland and Missouri City and downtown and at the Ramsey Unit to give us some very practical things that we can do because just from the statistics I read, this isn't a problem we need to pray about so the world will change.

This is equally a problem we have to pray about because of what's going on inside our doors.

And you don't have to feel bad about that.

I'm not here to make you feel bad.

This isn't going to be the church that punishes you more than you're already punishing yourself.

We're here to be a safe and soft landing.

That doesn't mean affirming of you, that doesn't mean we turn our backs and ignore real truths.

That means when you come here, our goal is liberation, our goal is freedom in Christ Jesus, our goal is breakthrough, and we are working towards that, and there will not be any condemnation for those of you who are in Christ Jesus.

We want to help.

We want to be the change that we all desire for our own selves.

So I just could have had 40 points here, but I just put four that were really strongest on my heart.

The ones I've found helpful.

And the first one is this on your phones, let's let's use them for holy purposes, right?

Many of you have the app called Find Your Friends.

How many of you got that?

And you use it.

Find your friends, right?

Well, if you didn't raise your hand, I'm praying friends for your life.

2027.

My goodness.

Well, I'm not talking about an app.

I am talking about a principle.

Find your friends.

If pornography's gotten a grip on you in your life, I really believe with all my heart and faith you're going to be okay.

You're going to see victory.

You're going to be a walking testimony of the goodness and kindness of God.

However, it won't happen without community.

And there is such a stigma, particularly in the church world, about having these kind of conversations that we don't even want to tell our friends.

I'm talking people that might take a bullet for you.

Definitely don't want to talk to our spouses about it.

There's too much at stake there, right?

But here's the problem with not having a few people, and you just need a few.

If you got 30, praise God, but that's not normal.

I'm talking those friends where no matter what you bring to them, no matter how they respond, you know at the end of the day they're not going anywhere and they have unconditional love and they have nothing more than their best interest in mind.

See, the book of Proverbs says this wounds from a friend can be trusted.

Doesn't mean they don't take you off, doesn't mean they don't trigger you when they call you to the carpet on something.

But eventually, when the adrenaline of being triggered wears off, you'll come back and go, man, I know they love me.

I know they said that because they want better for me.

It says, but an enemy multiplies kisses.

And this is what culture's doing, particularly around the issue of pornography.

Hey, if you do it, I'll do it.

Hey, it's normal.

It's just the world we live in.

It's just too easy now.

You normalize it.

That's that's enemy behavior, even when we don't think we're doing that.

Well, I don't think I can stop.

It's a pretty powerful force, this addiction, and I don't think you're gonna stop, so we might as well normalize it.

That's multiplying kisses.

That's not an act of love.

An act of love is declaring war.

Paul said, I fought the good fight.

This, this, this, how we're gonna go forward with this issue of this epidemic level of pornography, addiction, and viewership is gonna be a fight, y'all.

But it is a good and noble fight.

And we need to be on the front lines of it.

So find a friend and do this.

Confess.

And let me start by saying this, and and I'm gonna sound like old school preacher, but I'm saying it with my chest unapologetically.

What a friend we have in Jesus, first and foremost.

You ever grow up singing that?

I did.

I'm not gonna sing it because I'm not that person, but what a friend we have in Jesus.

He sticks closer than a brother, like confess first to God.

1 John 1 9 puts it this way: if you confess your sins to God, he, listen to this, is faithful and just to cleanse you and purify you of all unrighteousness.

Hebrews 4, and it won't come up, but I love this verse so much.

Because we do not have a high priest, Jesus, who's unable to empathize with our weaknesses, because he has been tempted in every way that you and I have been, except he was without sin, you now have permission to approach his throne of what?

Grace.

With confidence, it says, to receive mercy in your time of need.

Do not hide from God.

Like Adam and Eve, especially when it comes to something like pornography, you're gonna be tempted to isolate and to hide and to keep it to yourself.

And because there's anonymity with these phones, it's never been easier to stay on an island and choose loneliness over confession.

But there is such power in confession.

And when you confess to God, when you put your trust in his goodness, he is uh slow to anger, he is rich in love.

That is the God you are confessing to.

When you do that, there says, it just said there's cleansing properties, there's purification properties that come instantaneously, even before the addiction's been uh uh figured out and freed from.

Run to the throne of grace.

But here's what's crazy the Bible says it doesn't stop there, and here's where it gets even more scary, and it demands even more bravery than confessing to God.

Listen to James 5 and 16.

It says this.

Therefore, confess your sins.

Uh-oh, this is tough, to each other.

And pray for each other.

And then what happens along with purity and cleansing?

That you may be healed.

There is something so healing about looking another human in the face and coming clean.

It's not easy, it's not fun.

You put your heart out there to potentially be stomped on, to be judged, to be misjudged, to be used, to be abused.

I get it, it is a daring, brave, courageous thing.

And this is why the church has to be on the front lines of being the safest, softest landing for people.

Because you cannot get the liberty and freedom from any addiction, including pornography, until you find a safe place to be able to confess one to another.

That does not mean when you confess that your friends are just gonna let it happen more or just have all kinds of great, wonderful, loving.

No, they're gonna challenge you.

Wounds from a friend, though, can be trusted.

Confess your sins one to another that you may be healed.

Look, you're only as sick as your secrets.

Nothing destroys intimacy faster and longer than hiding.

You cannot hide things from people you love most and remain inanimate to the level God designed you to be inanate.

You just can't.

Second thing is this.

Alright, speed round, I gotta go.

I just wrote firewall, firewall, firewall.

You guys know what firewalls are, right?

They're technological or other walls put up, literally or metaphorically, to what?

To keep unwanted dangers out.

We have them all over our computers, right?

You have to have firewalls.

You have to have systems at some point if you're ever gonna break free from this thing.

There are things, and I'll just say this quickly, there are things like uh uh apps or uh websites, like one's called Covenant Eyes.

And you can research it, and if you don't like it, there's plenty like it that uh that might be a little different.

But basically, what Covenant Eyes does is when you sign up, if you're struggling with pornography at any level, uh especially if you're addicted, um you get on this and you type in all your information, and um they send you a daily, weekly, and monthly report of where you've traveled on the internet, and they will also send it to one other person or two that you've requested to be your partner in this, that you trust.

Find a friend, and then firewall, firewall, firewall.

Some of you, and not all of you, are ready or prepared to do this, but the best person you can have it sent to is your spouse.

There is no greater line of accountability than knowing as soon as this happens, I'm gonna have a day with my spouse.

I'm gonna have a conversation that might not be as fun as I hoped we'd have tonight.

And that sounds crazy and that sounds intense, and I get it.

I'm I'm with you.

I remember the first time I ever confessed to my wife when I'd ever had as an adult a struggle with that for that week or that year or that month, whenever it was.

I remember thinking this could be it.

I'm done.

But it was everything.

Because intimacy was restored.

Because I wasn't hiding anymore.

And I'm not pretending to tell you, wife or husband, if you receive this news, how you're supposed to act.

I would be too audacious to do that, but I can tell you how my wife responded.

And I knew it hurt her.

And yet she dealt with that and is still here, and showed me that she is a safe landing for me to come and be able to talk to even the hardest things.

And do you know what that did for our relationship?

Do you know the intimacy that it opened up?

When you feel safe, you can be intimate.

When you know that they're here through the thick and the thin and the good and the bad and the ugly, so firewall, firewall, firewall.

Because as the scientists say, where the brain fires is eventually where the brain wires.

Three.

And then I'm gonna go over today, but if there was ever a time to go over, this is it.

I wrote, dear moms and dads.

May the good Lord teach us how to respond to this issue rather than react.

There is a big difference between responding as parents and reacting.

And here's what I mean.

Work hard.

And if this is the first you've ever heard of this, you're adults, you get to take it or leave it, but but here's my two cents.

Work really hard to have a pre planned response to your kids when they confess this to you, andor when they get caught.

And it is so important that you really work and prepare ahead of time for your response.

Because if they just get a reaction, even though you did it with a loving heart and you just freak out, and the world is over, and within two minutes, you're already talking about punishment and consequence.

And I'm not saying that shouldn't be a part of the process, but I'm saying it shouldn't be the first thing they see because you're sending them a message without knowing it that this is no longer a safe place to confess, that my parents are no longer qualified to be first, second, third, or fourth responders.

And here's what you lose, parents the thing you wanted most when you had your kids.

Intimacy.

Relationship.

When kids have to hide things from their parents, do you know what they can't do anymore very easily?

Be around their parents.

Deception does the heart bad.

They can't look at their parents in the eyes anymore.

They start to disconnect, they start to isolate, they start to be around more people than you more often.

You don't see them as much.

And come on, moms and dad, that's not what we want.

So pray to God, if this is new to you, pray to God that He would give you the grace to have not only a pre-planned response to how you want to handle that, but then the ability in the moment when it's heated and you hear this or see this or they get caught or they confess to you that you're ready to actually respond in a holy way that sends a message.

This is a safe place to come and talk to mom and dad about anything.

Doesn't mean we're gonna affirm what you did, it doesn't mean there might not be consequences for what you did.

We're not telling you that.

But it means the first response is gonna be meeting you where you were at in that moment, and then we will go from there.

And I am telling you, it doesn't solve all problems, but it does hold the intimacy of the relationship to large degrees intact.

Lastly, and I gotta wrap up, this is to the church as a whole.

We have to be on the front lines of destigmatizing this issue.

It's not going away.

It's not this secret that can be kept anymore.

If you don't tell, I won't tell.

Don't ask, don't tell.

This unwritten but very real agreement we've had about this subject for generations and generations, that no longer can work.

In fact, it never worked.

We have to be on the front lines about being unafraid to have these very real conversations.

And not only do we have to be on the front lines about having these very real conversations, we have to be people whose chief goal when confession takes place isn't to punish or to look down on or to uh start becoming self-righteous.

We have to be the place where people can come, and our only motive for them, however we respond, is we want liberty and freedom for you.

People walking into church doors struggling with addiction of any kind, not just pornography of any kind, they are already punishing themselves, and consequences of addiction are already punishing them enough.

Why would they want to come to another place or house or tabernacle where they're just gonna get a little bit more punished?

We have to be voices of love and hope.

We have to be here for them.

What do you need?

What can I do?

God loves you.

He doesn't love this thing you're currently involved in, but he absolutely loves you.

You know what we need to do?

Just treat our neighbor the same way we want to be treated if we walk in as the addict.

We as the church have an opportunity to have a revolution of it.

Doesn't have to be like this, but it won't just happen because of a good sermon.

It has to be each one of us as followers of Jesus looking over and over in the gospels and going, how did Jesus treat the outsider?

How did Jesus treat the one that society called the worst?

How did Jesus treat the ones that society had pushed to the margins and said, Hey, we all got issues, but your issues are just different.

What did Jesus naturally do?

He rebuked the people thinking like that, and he ran to the margins to meet people.

Some of the best, most heartwarming, preachworthy sermons we get from the gospels are when he goes away from the people you thought a rabbi would hang out with, and he goes to the people who need him most.

It's not about deserving, it's about needing.

There's a word for that: mercy.

Mercy isn't giving you what you deserve, it's giving you what you most need for your good and God's glory.

This is why the greatest act of mercy ever was Christ on the cross.

King David on the back end of committing adultery.

Guys, we're talking about King David.

Jesus is multiple times mentioned as the son of David in the bloodline of King David, the great warrior fighter, King David, committed adultery.

Eventually had the lady's husband murdered in war so he wouldn't have a PR nightmare.

This is King David.

And eventually, because he had his Find a Friends app, one of his closest friends, a prophet, came to him, told him a parable, and David was so mad at the injustice of the person, whoever it was in the parable, and then his friend looks at him and goes, David, I was actually talking about you.

And he's like, Oh shoot.

And you know what made David a man after God's own heart?

Not how good he was at obeying, it was how good he was at confessing.

And he writes this psalm of confession that I have drawn so much strength and accountability from since I've been reading the scriptures and known Jesus.

It's Psalm 51.

If you don't know it, write it down and read it.

Now that you know the context, he says so much gold in there.

He gives you a masterclass on what it looks like to confess and to do it with authenticity and honesty.

And one of the lines that I use for myself often is this, and I end with this as a line of prayer for all of us.

Struggling with any form of addiction today, especially for those of you this particular week struggling with any degree of uh pornographic temptation and usage, he says this.

He says, God, create in me a clean heart.

Would you please clean my heart up?

And then he says this, and renew a steadfast spirit in me.

He goes on to say another line.

He says, God, would you restore to me the joy of my salvation?

Notice he didn't say, Would you restore to me my salvation?

He already knew that was good.

He said, But I have lost my joy.

See, you can you can have the the the strongest pornographic addiction in all of our church.

And it's not salvation you're losing, my friend.

It's joy.

And joy is fuel.

Joy is what you deserve.

Joy is what God designed you for.

Joy is what God's always trying to bring us back to when we forfeit it.

So I got good news for you.

You're gonna be okay.

You can be healed, you can be delivered, you can do things different.

By God's grace, you get the chance to start again smarter.

I know because I've done that over and over and over.

I am simply here because of the mercy of God.

I think you are probably too.

God is slow to anger, He is rich in love, He simply wants the best for you, and so sometimes He's kind enough to give hard talks and hard truths that spit in the face of culture, that completely mock peer pressure and call us to be something different, and then through His Holy Spirit, he gives you the power of self-control to partner with his supernatural kindness so that liberation, freedom, and bondage from chains can be broken in the name of Jesus.

The minute we quit believing that is the minute we need to quit having church.

So at every campus, if you'd stand, I've created an absolute logistical nightmare for the parking team.

Please high-five them and be kind to them on the way out.

But this is uh this is so important that I had to keep talking.

So if you're in here right now, let's just pray that prayer.

We're not raising hands, we're not confessing right now, it's time and a place, this isn't appropriate.

But let's just all, for whatever it means to you currently in life right now, let's just bow our heads and pray very simply this.

God, would you create in every single one of us as we walk out of the doors into another week a clean heart?

God, no matter what we walked in here with today at any campus, would you renew a steadfast spirit in us?

To not quit, to not isolate, to not hide, to not give up, but to keep for your glory moving forward.

God, would you restore to us, particularly today, the addicts of any kind.

Restore to them the joy of their salvation, that they would walk in a fuel to move forward and to change and to find your grace and mercy to be and live different, God.

We all know what that's like.

Help us, God.

We are desperate humans, flawed and marred by sin, who put our whole hope and whole faith in Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ alone.

And Jesus, your finished work.

It's you we cry out to, it's you we depend on, it's you we worship, it's you we exalt, it's you we bend a humble knee to.

And so, Jesus, in your kindness, through the power of your cross, I pray deliverance from bondage in the name of Jesus.

Help us with this moving forward.

And it's in your awesome, mighty, healing name we pray.

And everyone said.