007 - History of Pure Desire

Before we start the podcast today, we wanted to let you know about an upcoming event, Pure Desire's Redeemed Men's Conference, September 15th through 17th at Cascades Camp in Yelm, Washington. This will be a time to gather together as men where we will worship together, hear world class teachings, learn from experienced workshop speakers and learn more about how to battle for purity in Christ. Come escape the noise and distraction of everyday life. Join us 9-15-17 and rest in what Christ calls you. Redeemed. To register, visit PureDesire.org redeemed We hope.

To see you there.

Hey there.

I'm your host, Trevor Windsor and we're so thankful you're taking time out of your day to hang out with us. I'm here as always with my co host Nick Stumbo.

Present.

He is present and we are sitting here with some very special guests today. We have the founders in the house, Dr. Ted and Diane Roberts. If you don't know who they are, these two are the founders of Pure Desire Ministries and we love them. Ted, Diane, thanks for being on the PD podcast.

Thanks for having us.

We're so excited to have you guys. So today what we want to do is we want to spend some time hearing the story of Pure Desire. We're going to talk through the history of the ministry, the struggles that Ted and Diane encountered and then the victories they've experienced through starting this ministry. But before we jump in, can you guys just tell us a little bit about yourselves for some of our listeners who maybe don't know you guys very well?

Okay. I met Christ in a bunker in Vietnam after kill people at close range in the middle of a rocket attack. I came back to the United States, got drafted in ministry. That was my start. Went back home, left this beautiful life wife that God had given me and he started ministering through us to people by the hundreds and thousands of.

Yeah, we've been married almost 50 years next year. Wow. And when I first met him, he was not a Christian and I was just a new Christian. So I didn't do. I didn't know any better. And Ted always says that he's so handsome I couldn't resist.

So I mean Ted, you are a good looking guy, I'll give you that for sure.

Sure.

So after being drafted into ministry, we were in a number of churches and finally ended up at east hill Church for 24 years. And as a result we encountered a lot of unchurched and de churched people and really hurting people. And so I guess it was about the mid-90s that we realized how many people were dealing with sexual addiction in the church. And so that's kind of when that started.

So let's go back to that era then, when Pure Desire would have launched. We know in the 90s, Ted wrote the book Pure Desire. But if we could go back to that time in your ministry, what is it for you guys that first sparked the idea we need to start a ministry for sexual addiction? Pastoral ministry is hard enough without tackling that topic. So what led you to that moment?

Well, initially I was called to be a healing evangelist. That's what God put on my life from the get go. Not just an evangelist. I just passed a bit of healing evangelist. And we took over a church which was going downhill rapidly. And God turned it around. And within 10 years, it grew from zero to 7,000 people. And I had such a heart for the people. I listened to them very carefully. And I realized most of the people walking in the front door were addicts, and most of the leadership was sexual addicts. So I didn't have anywhere to go. In church, you get some help. So I went and got trained by Dr. Patrick Carnes, is a warmer nun expert, became a good friend, and I asked him if I could take his research and put it under a biblical basis. And he said, okay. So I announced it at the church. We were going to start the ministry, and the first time I showed up, 200 guys showed up to get healed, and I started training them. I said, it's going to take at least a year to get you guys trained. So I started the process. And about halfway into that, this group of guys, eight guys, pounded on my front door and said, we need to talk to you tonight. So I invited him in. They sat down. One guy said, this is my last hope. I was headed down to 82nd street to get a prostitute. Another guy said I'd get drunk to come here. Another guy just started cussing a blue streak. And I said, welcome to the church, guys, and began the ministry.

Wow.

So what made you find Dr. Patrick Carnes? I think particularly at that time, it was rare for a pastor to go to an secular resource. Had you encountered his writings or what drew you to that approach?

Well, first, there was nothing in the Christian community, absolutely zero, other than try harder and suck it up and keep praying more. How's that working for you? Didn't work. And then I read one of his books and I said, this guy's. His solutions were not biblical, but his analysis was absolutely prophetic. I went to one of his conferences and I was Immediately touched by his heart for. For people. That's what started the process.

Wow.

And, Diane, when. When Ted started to feel this, were you on the same page with him, or was it like, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold up, hold up.

No, I was not on the same page at all. I mean, I care about hurting people. But when women started coming to me after Ted started the groups and women were saying, okay, I just found out about my husband. What do I do? And so I thought, well, I've got to have something for them. So I started going to training with Ted and started developing material. And then I had women coming to me who were struggling with the same issues that men were. And they said, what about us? You've got everybody else covered, but not us. I'm struggling with love addiction. I'm struggling with sexual addiction. So that's when I decided, okay, I've got to have two groups, different groups for women. So that's when those groups started.

I'm just trying to think of how my wife would respond if I'm like, hey, honey, I want to go hang out with a bunch of sex addicts and minister to them. So it just. That speaks to you guys. Faithfulness. It's amazing.

So, Ted, you mentioned these eight guys that came to your house from your living room. What happened?

When.

I imagine there was a point where you took it from the eight guys to, like, brought it back to this large church and said, hey, we're going to start this ministry. How did you announce it? What was your approach, and how did that go over in the church?

Well, East Hill Church was a place where it was okay not to be okay. So it came across really, really well. It's part of our natural life. And I shared with him my struggles and the freedom I had come to. And I said, there's freedom for everybody, but it's hard work, and I'll train you and let's go get church. Had no problem. We had about 200 people left, leaving. About three or 400 people step in the front door. Because the unchurched heard about us, and they went, there's this place where you get healed. We found out once we started Pure Desire, it was about 35% of the guys in the groups didn't attend any church. Became one of our major evangelism tools.

That's amazing.

Yeah.

And I remember the calling that Ted had on his life before we even came to East Hill Church. And God prophetically told him that you will touch people's lives who. People who are my people that don't Know they're my people yet.

Wow.

Yeah. I started a Bible study in the squadron I was last in, and 35% of the instructors came to Christ and 50% of the students came to Christ. It is like converting a brothel. It was amazing.

Wow.

Yeah.

Okay, so you guys start this ministry. And like you said, there was nothing in the church at the time. There was nothing. So what struggles did you encounter when trying to reach these people? I mean, because if you tell sex addicts you're a sex addict, their first reaction is usually, no, I'm not. So how did you do that? What were the struggles like when you first brought this to the church?

When I first brought it to the church here was no problem. And it worked so well. I thought, every church is going to want this. So I took weeks off and I went on the road and shared with other churches. No one wanted to receive it. And the first time I was asked to speak today, large church conference about sexual addiction, foreign pastors. I thought, man, this is great. I'm finally going to have an opportunity this year. They're all going to want to do it. And so I was very careful. I made sure I started off biblically, and I talked about David, the classic sex addict. This guy stood up after I was doing it for about three minutes. I had three hours to share with him. He stood up and he said, how dare you? And I said, how dare you what? How dare you demean my hero of the faith? I went downhill from there.

Oh, man.

They barbecued me, basically. What happened?

Wow. But what is interesting, a year down the road, that same pastor that spoke against Ted called him confidentially and said, one of our pastors on staff has had moral failure. What do I do?

He never publicly apologized. So it's taken a lot of pain to do this ministry.

Yeah.

What is it that saying the first through the wall is always the bloodiest? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was a big wall you just ran through.

I've been hitting it for 20 years.

So as we look at research that's coming out, and it seems like every time research does come out, people are hopeful that they'll show better stats or fewer people. And actually, it seems like the trend is the opposite direction. So now we're seeing that 60 to 70% of guys and 30% of women in the church are struggling in this area, and yet a lot of churches are still pretty hesitant to have this kind of a ministry or to make it a part of their. Their rhythm. Why do you think that is?

There's three clear reasons number one, our research has shown that 50 to 50% of pastors are addicts. So they don't want to touch it with a 10 foot pole. It's just too embarrassing. And most churches, if you have any problem in this area, you're fired. So they're going to lose their job and they're stuck. The other half don't know what to do with it. If they ever open it up, the third group are in massive denial. Remember we did a sexy Christians conference at this one church I shared with the pastor. I said, the reason we're doing this, we've got to develop healthy sexuality in the church. Reason we're doing this is 60, 72% of guys sitting in your pew are sexual addicts. Looked at me and said, well, I preach the Word. We don't have that problem here.

Wow.

So I did a survey for the couples that signed up. I came up to them before we started. I handed them a sheet and I said, you're right, you're 73% of hysteria. The pastor caught it and the next weekend he started Pure desire ministry. And 70 guys showed up. He was there to train them. He really bought into it.

Yeah. We really have that conviction in the church that if we just preach the Word effectively, people will be changed and we don't have this issue. And it seems that still permeates our thinking. Even when we start to see data that says, boy, even in your church, even in your place of worship, what do you say to, you know, if a pastor isn't willing to maybe have the research done at his church and do the data, what do you say to a pastor to maybe help them consider you need to come out of denial and face this. Are there any encouragement you give them or words to just maybe help them face something they're not willing to face up to that point?

Well, I help them to understand the nature of addiction. We see it as church as primarily a moral problem, but the truth is it's primarily a brain problem. Sexual addicts have the same experience that cocaine addicts have. Their brain changes. Once they're in an addictive cycle, they can't get out. That's why train harder will not work. And to help them understand the nature of the brain, which. You had a podcast on this already?

Yeah, yeah. I was just gonna say people should listen to the one with Heather and on addiction.

Heather's great. And once they understand the nature of the brain, the shame factor goes way down. And then you can start helping people. But for pastors who really don't want to deal with it. I'd say the only way you're going to ever have a real revival in our church is you've got to deal with this issue.

Yeah. 60 to 70% of men, 30% of women, and we're not addressing it. We're not going to see the spirit be able to move. That's so true.

Well, the sad part, too, that I think pastors have to keep in mind when they tell people, just pray more, just read your Bible more. The shame factor in those that are really trying, they've tried doing all that, and what's the conclusion they come to? Either God's word doesn't work because I've been doing all this, or there's something wrong with me. Shame on me. So it drives the shame even deeper when that's the only message that the church is sharing with people.

Yeah.

Wow.

Okay.

That's.

I mean, recovering from that. It's a lot of really good stuff. But we want to kind of shift gears from kind of the history and the starting of your ministry to now where you guys are at. So over the last 25 years, what would you say is the biggest change or changes you've seen in working with addicts?

One phrase, sick and sicker. We're dealing with stuff now that has legal problems we never had to deal with 25 years ago. Sexual transmitted diseases have gone from 20 to 50%.

You mean.

No, 20. Different types of sexual addiction.

Oh, my goodness.

50. And categories of sexual addiction used to be 10 when I started. Now they're up to 21. We're specializing in sinfulness down the bottom of Romans, chapter one. We're hardly approving what else goes on. It's crazy. Younger addicts are more addicted than the older addicts because they have electronics working in their brain. And Internet porn is a crack cocaine and sexual addiction. It's ideally suited to bring the brain into bondage. But also, there's a positive side. The younger the pastor is, the more likely it is to get it because he sees his culture, he understands it. If he starts working on it, he can turn that culture around. Baby boomers are pretty well given up on my kill my generation their toes.

Oh, don't give up completely.

Well, I mean, as. As a millennial and one of the few on staff here, I am extremely thankful for that perspective because I grew up, you know, I didn't have an iPhone until, you know, until I was in college. That wasn't around until then. But, you know, I had the Internet. I always had the Internet. And I always had TV, and TV's getting worse, too. And so it's just. It's something that is definitely a problem in. In the younger ages. Working as a youth pastor, that's what I experienced. Kids are on their cell phones all the time, and they can run across on any social media platform, can run across pornography easily. Very accessible. And there's so many parents and leaders who aren't even aware that that's true.

I got on Twitter recently, and I dropped it immediately. I'm porn all over the place.

Yeah, you have to be wise about what you search for, that's for sure.

Well, the sad part for young people is that those search engines go looking for them so they can be really innocent on the Internet and will be pursued by those porn sites.

And, I mean, I've had conversations with students who literally were just typing in something just to figure out what it means, because all their friends are talking about it, and then they end up finding something that they shouldn't and then are hooked. It's incredible.

How about for you, Diane, changes you've seen in 25 years of ministering to couples and women?

Well, I think one of the constants is that women are usually the ones that want to pursue the healing more than men.

You mean we don't want to face our issues? Surprise, surprise.

So that pretty much has been true. But I think women from just observing is they seem to be looking for and pressing into, what do I do now? And so they're more on the search of, how do I figure this out? What do I do with this? And. And fortunately, a lot of them have found our materials and have found help.

I just heard about the one lady who went online and took the test for her husband.

Oh, yes. I had one gal that said, you know, we were talking about codependency, and then she was sharing how she found us. She said, I was looking everywhere, and I thought, oh, my gosh, there's a place in Gresham, Oregon. And then she said, oh, no, it's a church. She wasn't even a Christian on that site. I think we had a test that measured if the husband was sexually addicted. So she said, so I took it for him and decided he is an.

Addict, but I might be codependent.

Yeah, so that was kind of interesting. But women are more on the search, I think, because they see the problem. They don't know what to do with it. And I think with the Internet, they're becoming more attuned to how do I find those helps.

Yeah, yeah. That's good. Well, let's talk a little bit more on a personal level. How has leading pure desire and building this ministry shaped you guys as a couple? And maybe with that, what are some of the challenges you faced along the way as a couple?

Well, I think when we were called into ministry, we always had a heart for marriages. And one of the things the Lord did, he said, you need to work on your marriage if you're going to be mentors to others. And so, you know, we developed marriage ministry helps for others. And as we did, we saw more and more of the sexual issues coming up. And so I think that really spurred us on to helping other couples and realizing that even though we may not have all the same issues that they did, we've gone through healing classes to deal with generational curses, the family of origin issues. We realized we had our own issues that led to maybe different addictive behavior, but it was still addictive. So I think that has been one of the main things. If we're going to share with others, we have to make sure that we've applied those to our own life and our own marriage.

So.

Good. And so to be a mentor, you have to really be honest with your own issues. And I think that's been one of the main. Oh, and the other. The other thing we found just in counseling other couples is there is secondary trauma where you're hearing their trauma, because trauma drives addiction. So we get deep into trauma. And so that impacts you. You're carrying some of their pain, and sometimes you carry it home with you, which is hard.

And that's why we end up having food fights. These when you're gonna have that guy stop acting out. Well, you weren't gonna have that woman stop bugging him. She's sitting there throwing food.

So we're not talking about a fun food fight. We're talking about, like, real food fight.

Okay, yeah.

All right.

Animal House. Food fight. But I guess what we've learned most is a priority of healthy sexuality, because we're walking in a cesspool of a society, and for us to walk in purity and integrity, it's really crucial we work on our sexuality. Sexual addicts are about intimacy and attachment disorder. Those directly affect your sexuality, your ability to have intimacy. Intimacy is not being close and comfortable. It's being uncomfortably close.

And one of the things we've just done is put a workbook together called Connected. And we've taken all the information that we've learned about the brain and sexuality and what health looks like and intimacy and we put that together. So we're excited because couples are reading through it now and really getting helps.

We're using it in our clinical counseling practice. We found dealing in an addict. We can deal with an addiction within about five months, and then the marriage erupts to the surface. So we developed this book to help those clients go from zero to 600 miles an hour in their marriage in five months.

And we'll attach that a link to the book at the bottom of the show. Notes for this episode.

Yeah, Ted, you used a phrase that I think might be really helpful to some couples, but maybe it slipped past them or they didn't know what it meant. You said it's an attachment disorder. Tell us a bit more about what's an attachment disorder? And how would a man or a woman know if that's something they're battling with in their life? What should they look for?

Great question. Attachment disorder. In the first five years of your life, your limbic system is being fully programmed. And so what happens is when you're a little guy, a couple months old, your relationship with your mom or dad is life or death to you, literally. So you download in your brain the home that you grew up in, and it becomes a window through which you look out your world. And most addicts grew up in a disassociated home. Sexual addiction. 76% addicts come from a rigid, disengaged home. You can tell in the relationship because what will happen is you can have sex, you get the plumbing right, but you can't be vulnerable. Vulnerability and honesty are absolutely crucial for integrity to take place.

So if someone is really struggling with vulnerability, they may need to look back at, is there an attachment disorder here? So what about. Probably a lot of our listeners look back at 5 years old and younger and think, well, I can't even remember that, but I had a great family. I grew up in a Christian home, so I probably don't have attachment disorders. Right?

Yeah. Every client walked into my office. All came from good Christian homes. So if you came from a great Christian home, what are you doing here? Most of them can't even see what it is to see what went on in your early life, you're going to have to have some clinical counselors help you to see it because it's just built right in your software. You didn't have any choice when you grew up in your family. You couldn't say, I don't like this. Someone with that home and that home, and that's the way you're trained and.

We don't, we don't say that. You know, this is to find blame with parents because there are no perfect parents. But if you don't understand the patterns that you came from and realize how dysfunctional they are, then you can't change into new patterns for families.

The purpose is not to blame the parents, but to reclaim what hell stole from you.

Yeah, yeah. I find as I work with men in groups, I often have to remind them that you might look back now as an adult and say, oh, that wasn't a big deal, but remember you were a three year old or a two year old. So even if you had a mom that worked part time, there can be all kinds of factors that as an adult we say, oh, that wasn't that big of a deal. But like you said about that limbic brain that's depending on mom and dad for life or death, what did the two year old learn? And when they start to see it through that lens, say your brain may have decided those things were a big deal, even if you as an adult don't think they are. And that can open some doors to healing and change for those guys.

It's all implicit memory. There's no explicit memories until you're at least four years of age. So that early programming is downloading. Your brain becomes the operating system that you operate off of. Really critical to understand that.

So let me just ask you another question, because I'm a new dad. My baby boy is six months old. And as you're saying that, I'm thinking, gosh, how do I avoid that? How do I avoid as a dad, as a father, how do I set my kid up for success? How would you answer that question?

Well, first of all, you have to be a perfect parent.

Oh, okay.

Got it, got it.

Can you help me become the perfect parent?

There are no perfect parents. Parents. Okay, there's four, four types of children. There's a secure child, avoidant child, ambivalent child, and disorganized child. I won't go on and explain those. But a secure child is raised by parents that only get it right 30% of the time. But what they do is they catch the child's bid for reconnection. And that's what's really important.

Gotcha.

To say I'm sorry is crucial to your son, your daughter. To reach out to them and try to reconnect with them is not optional.

Yeah.

You got to work hard at it. Yeah. Most important thing you'll ever do. It's only two things you take out this life One's character. And then once a relationship, they're all determined in your marriage. So.

So good catch the child's bid for reconnection. That's a good phrase.

That is so good.

And instinctively reach out to you in their own way.

Yeah, yeah. Right now, physically, it's scratching and pulling my hair face and slamming all over me. So I love you, Brady. Thanks, buddy. Okay, so, Ted, if a guy is listening to this podcast and he knows that he's not free and maybe his wife only knows half of it, what steps does he need to take in order to start facing this issue head on?

It's really important to understand that trying harder will not help. Trying harder would have helped. It would have solved the problem a long time ago. And promising yourself you'll never ever do it again is a waste of time, because what's happening is lead into addictive thinking. So you've got to get help. First of all, I recommend you find a pure desire group and get on board. And 20 to 30% of guys in a pure desire group need clinical counseling as well. Well, that's expensive. Well, it's cheaper than a divorce. A lot cheaper than a divorce.

You know, a lot of our listeners, Ted, may be from backgrounds where going to a counselor was really viewed as like an extreme or a very even shameful thing to admit you needed that level of help. What would you say to that listener? Like to maybe help them reframe counseling?

Well, I understand that because I spent years in the church. All of our counselors are pastors as well as someone who understands sexual addiction as a pastor, that's the best combination. And most of our counseling we do online. So 80% of our counseling is online. We can do Saudi Arabia, South Korea, all over the place. So it's not limited geographically, but it's worth it to find someone that can really help you, someone understands your commitment to your faith and understand sexual addiction. And they're pretty rare, but we got quite a few of them here. Yeah.

And I think the other thing that we're seeing in counseling is that really it's a mentorship. So many families have not had good mentoring within their family. They, you know, you ask them, how did your parents resolve conflicts? They can't tell you. They either yelled, they never saw resolution. They don't have any tools. And so to see that counseling can be a place where you gain tools to actually have health, but you don't know what health looks like since this is the only family you were raised.

In, they carry that right in their Marriage and they carry right into their kids. A generational curse goes from generation to generation. Generational curse is not some spooky spiritual. It's the way your brain's trained and you'll communicate it to your kids without any consciously doing it. So you gotta get help.

Yeah, I think it's good to point out, as you guys are bringing up, that if you have struggle in this area of sexual addiction, it's really good to look for someone trained in sexual addiction. Because the nature and the power, the chemical issues in the brain, if you think, well, I'll just, I'll go to a friend that gives good advice or kind of a general counselor, they may be a very well intentioned person, but this particular area takes a particular skill set. Do you want to speak to that at all to just encourage going specifically to someone trained in sexual addiction?

Well, I can just practically speak to it. I've lost count of the number of guys who sit in my office and sit. Kicking cocaine, kicking alcohol is a piece of cake. If you can deal with sexual addiction, you can deal with any addiction. It's the toughest one of all because there's so many spiritual factors involved. That's why you need a counselor who's well trained in spiritual issues as well. And you need some people that can deal with trauma as well.

So, Diane, if a wife is listening and she knows something's up with her husband, maybe she's caught him, even confronted him some, but he's not really seeming willing or ready to face it. But she's hurting. She knows she needs something. What can she do?

I tell women that it's sad when a husband doesn't want help. And many times the woman is the initiator of the help. But I also say it's like a kaleidoscope, you know, to see a different picture. You'd like to shake the kaleidoscope and turn both sides to get a new picture.

So she should shake her husband, is that.

Well, some do, but when he's not willing, you know, you just turn one side of that kaleidoscope and the picture can begin to change. And so as she begins to educate herself and, you know, I can't tell you how many women said, I found your website, I ordered your material. I realized there are groups. I got into a group. I don't know what I would be doing today, or even if our marriage would still be, whether we'd be together in marriage had I not found your material. So, minimum, she can educate herself, she can understand what sexual Addiction is she can begin to set healthy boundaries, understand what a safety plan is for herself, for her kids, and get with a group. Other women have had experiences that they can relate to. They are not alone. And that's the other thing that women realize when they get into a group. Oh, my gosh. Everybody in this group is struggling with the same thing. There's nothing wrong with me. I realize it is his problem. I need to make some changes. But it's not about me. It's about his addiction. So to me, that just educating themselves is really important. And we have the materials online, and we can connect you with either groups online if you don't have local groups. But many local churches do have the groups going.

So you're saying a man or a woman could start to pursue their own healing even if their spouse wasn't ready? They don't have to wait to do it as a couple.

Exactly.

It takes one person to change a couple's relationship.

Yeah.

And many times when we were leading these groups, just the woman taking the first step and realizing that she could put a safety plan together, and she could say, this is what I need in order to trust again. The husband would then begin to come. And so, you know, they can be a catalyst. Even if they can't lead. They can create circumstances where, you know, just that one change on the kaleidoscope can change everything.

Yeah. As a pastor, we found it happening both ways at our church that sometimes the guy was willing to face it and the wife wanted nothing to do with it because it was his issue. But over time, as he would change, she'd reach out for a group or vice versa. Just what you explained. Sometimes the wife would come first, find her voice, find healthy ways to express her needs and expectations, and a few months later, we'd find him in group. So it can work both directions.

They both need to be in group if you want the marriage to be restored.

That's right.

Okay, so we talked about husbands, talked about wives. Now let's talk about pastors. So what would you say to a pastor or a leader in a church who's listening to the podcast and is considering starting Pure Desire as a ministry in their church?

Well, praise God. You're in a position that you are now, because when I started this 20 years ago, there was nothing you can do. You can get all kinds of information from Pure Desire. Call, contact, send us small signals. Whatever you have to do, we'll be there to help you. And then the beauty of what we develop actually works. I mean, it's just, you know, our counseling process, we now have about a 95% cure rate with couples that we work with. What we do actually works. So there's help. Yeah, there's help.

And I would, I'm willing to say, Nick, if you agree, that it has worked in both of our lives. We've seen freedom and we've experienced that this stuff actually works. And it's not just because we're hosting this podcast. We believe in this because it works.

Yeah. Best ministry we ever started.

They're not paying you to do this.

No, I love doing this. We're just going to move on to the next question.

So as we've gotten here, some of the past and the history. Let's look ahead a little bit, and if you guys get to listen in on a conversation 50 years from now, what do you hope pure desire is known for? What do you hope people are saying about pure desire?

I would hope that they would say exactly what you just said, that it's changed your life. I would also hope that it would be in every city in the United States, around the world, that there would be groups that would open their hearts to this and see that it's really. It really will change a life and it will change a marriage. And I think it forces this ministry. And I didn't see it when we first started, but I see it now. It forces churches to really understand grace at a whole different level than they've ever experienced it before. Because you have to. You. You don't have to. It's okay not to be okay. And so for churches to accept that and begin to help people right where they're at, that is my heart's desire, just on an evangelistic level, not even considering pure desire. But if churches could really understand that, they have the open door. They have the answers. The church is the only one that has the answers. We couldn't do this ministry without Jesus. We're depending on the Holy Spirit. So, you know, to me, that would be powerful.

Yeah, for me, boils down to one thing. The reason I started Pure Desire ministry was not just to help people. It's to see your revival in the church. I mean, as you look across our nation today, with the murders and the killings and all the craziness is going on, dear God, have mercy on us. We don't have a change. We're doomed. My grandkids will grow up in hell. And real revival is not about the church getting happy, jumping up and down. It's about the culture. So touched by a church is honest and healing and powerful to you, the love of God. It changes the culture. That's what I want to see.

Amen.

We just appreciate your vulnerability. I mean, that's. That's huge. And it's easy to follow people who are vulnerable and who understand that they're broken and that they need Jesus just as much as anybody else. So we appreciate your vulnerability in that. So we end every episode with asking this question of our guest. And this is a good one. I'm excited to hear what you guys have to say. So what sort of encouragement? Our listeners are just. They're honed in. They're ready for that. One thing that you could tell them to encourage them, whatever it may be in this area. What would that one encouragement be?

I think for me, what I've seen is that those that are proactive, those that say, you know, whatever it's going to take, if this means joining a group, if this means getting connected, getting counseling, whatever it means, those that are proactive move forward in powerful ways. And they may turn out different than what people are expecting as far as relationship. But God always shows up and it's powerful. Those that stand still are overtaken by the enemy. So really, if you're proactive, if you realize, okay, I'm going to get whatever I need to and move forward, God will bless that. We've seen miracle after miracle, and there is hope. Women after women say, my marriage has changed, I've changed. So that's what I would say. There is hope, but you have to be proactive. You have to press into it. You can't just stand still and hope something happens.

I refer to the early church. I taught church history for years at the college level. Early church grew up in the midst of the most pagan and sexualized culture in the history of the ancient Aries. That was Rome. The church grew up with such passion and purity. It turned that culture right side up. We gotta have that again. Pure desire is not just about sexual addiction. Sexual addiction is a symptom. It's how we medicate our pain. We've got to help people understand Jesus Christ is the only hope we have. Without him, it's over. We need the church to wake up. Pastors, if you don't deal with this issue, you're not caring for your people. You're not dealing with this issue. There's no hope of revival. You're not dealing with this issue. There's no hope for real maturity to take place in your congregation. The marriages recently did a survey of divorce lawyers. 67% of marriages now, they say, have porn involved in one factor or another, as they're divorce lawyers. The world's pointing out to us a cry, heart, please bring us healing. The church rises up, becomes a healing place. We can turn this culture right side up.

Yeah. That's awesome. And if 60 to 70% of the men and 30% of the women, if this is their method of dealing with pain, what an exciting window. What an exciting opportunity to minister to people that percentage and see them turn around to become ambassadors for the kingdom and for freedom. We could see revival. That's awesome.

Yeah.

Ted and Diane, thank you so much for doing this. This was amazing. It really was.

This was.

This was fantastic. Thank you so much. And we're so thankful for you guys and honestly for the faithfulness that you guys have shown in this area. It's been incredible. Thank you. And thank you for listening to the Pure Desire podcast. If you like what you're hearing and want to keep up with the podcast, please subscribe and check out our website, PureDesire.org. also, you can follow us on social media. Your DesirePDMI. Once again, that's earedesirepdmi. We'll see you next time. Thanks for listening to the Pure Desire podcast. For more information, check out our website, www.puredesire.org. check in each week for new content on the podcast and we pray that it will help you find hope and freedom on your journey to purity.

Sa.