032 - Singleness & Addiction Pt. 1
13 Feb 2018 · 37 min
Podcast episode ("032 - Singleness & Addiction Pt. 1") hosted by Trevor Windsor and Nick Stumbo with guests Ben Bennett and Jake Kissick. The episode introduces a new ministry initiative partnered with Josh McDowell Ministries focused on speaking, equipping, and connecting churches and individuals around unwanted sexual behaviors (including pornography). Jake shares his personal story: exposed to pornography at age 13, a long (13-year) struggle, and significant recovery work beginning around 2015 (therapy, Pure Desire group). The conversation emphasizes that porn is widely accessible and harmful, that addiction drives isolation, and that true freedom involves community, emotional healing, counseling, and trajectory-based assessment before entering relationships. Practical guidance addresses how singles can find healing now rather than waiting and how ministries can equip the church to help.
Questions this episode answers
13 years old
2015 (summer 2015)
Welcome to the Pure Desire podcast where we partner with you to bring hope and freedom on your journey to purity. Today's episode is part one of the two part series entitled Singleness and Addiction. Enjoy the podcast. 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 with my co host, as always, Nick Stumbo.
It's raining, but at least it's not snow.
And today we're really excited to have two guys with us, Ben Bennett and Jake Kissick. Is that right, Jake Kissick? Is that the right way to say it?
Yep, that's it. You got it, Trevor.
All right, so Ben and Jake are launching a new ministry initiative with Josh McDowell Ministries. So they're hooked up with Josh. It's really cool. This initiative is focused on speaking, equipping, and connecting ministries and individuals to solutions to really overcoming any unwanted struggles. And that includes pornography.
So.
So, guys, we're excited to talk with you. Thanks for being here on the PD podcast.
Yeah, thanks. Good to be here.
Yeah.
So we have Ben and Jake with us today to talk about singleness and addiction. Today we see that younger and younger demographics grow up with porn at their fingertips. And oddly enough, we also see that the average age of marriage is getting higher and higher. So the age of addiction is well underway. And we as a ministry have a heart to reach these younger people, and so do Ben and Jake. And we really want to reach them with the message of hope and, and freedom, because that really is truly possible. So let's just jump right in. You know, we've had Ben on a previous episode and Jake, this is your first time, man. So we just want to give you a little bit of platform. Can you just give our listeners a little bit of your backstory and just how you kind of got hooked up with Ben in this ministry?
Yeah, sure. So it's been a really fun journey. I can take us all the way back. I grew up cowboy on a 3,000 acre cattle ranch, actually raising Angus cattle in Wyoming. All right, three. Three brothers. And I always tell people I'm from where the buffaloes still do Rome, and I was the middle of three boys. So we kind of grew up about 16 miles away from the nearest city. And anyway, we had a big spread of land out there and it was. It was really kind of the life of a country kid. And my brothers and the rest, we grew up in the church. We went to church. My parents raised us in the church. But kind of My story of pornography, how I got exposed. As I was 13 years old when I got exposed to pornography, I was actually picking up trash alongside of our road in front of our house, right behind our three string barbed wire fence. And, and I remember seeing it and getting that first hit. And after that I was almost instantly hooked. And that took me on a 13 year journey running down basically almost every piece of advice I could get my hands on and just trying to catch a hold of freedom and really, really, really figure out how to get free. And really I had all the software. I ended up actually going to Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, getting a master's degree and doing my master's thesis on, you know, how pornography is negatively affecting the church I was personally impacted by. I ended up sharing my, my story and my addiction of pornography with a pastor who actually ended up being addicted himself and got caught in prostitution and removed, got sent to jail and removed from his position. And so it's this kind of long string of events, disillusionment with the church and felt like I was totally betrayed by those people who I was supposed to trust, but really felt like I still wanted freedom so that I could help others find freedom. So did my master's degree to try to find out like, what is this whole thing on porn about? Why does this happen so often in the, in the church? And didn't. Didn't find freedom myself was continuing to grow deeper in knowledge of how pornography affected the soul, the body, the mind, the emotions, and yet grew deeper into my addiction as the knowledge that I had wasn't actually setting me free, but it felt like it was condemning me more as I knew what I was supposed to do and just couldn't do it. And so in short, after that I ended up actually interning as a missionary with the organization called Crew, used to be called Campus Crusade for Christmas and then was asked to actually get help as I was honest on an application before joining full time. I got disqualified. And they're like actually can't join with a level of porn addiction that you have. And so I was really disappointed once again for the second time with Christian, with the Christian ministry. And yet that was a great, like, I'm so glad. I'm so thankful God didn't let me get in. And because they said we think that God's heart for you. And I love Crew. I love the organization of Crew because they, it was the biggest offer of kindness to say we want you to get well before we put you on the front lines.
Yeah.
And so that was the greatest invitation to actually begin engaging my wounds. And those things are actually driving my unwanted sexual behaviors, my pornography addiction. And I spent that year and this is kind of where you guys ministry comes in. Believe it or not. I was in San Luis Obispo, California and it's a little, little chunk of heaven out there on the west coast and found a group, found a pure desire group, got plugged in and within a year these guys really showed me what it meant to really walk in the light. That first John 1:7 like, but if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we are cleansed. And I'd walk my whole life really in isolation, kind of being seen by all, but known by none. So that's a little bit of my story is that that recovery really started in that year and that's back in those. That was actually back in 2015, in the summer that I finally started diving in with a sex addiction therapist as well with a pure desire and saw that my wounds started to get healed and I actually started to come in contact with the God that I didn't necessarily know growing up or experiencing. And I came to know God to be kind, to be curious, to be compassionate and grace filled. And that was far, far, that was so far from what I grew up with, with a God that just felt like man. He was super distant, wrath filled and rule giving. And so after really engaging those wounds and coming to know God for who he is, and I got the awesome opportunity to work with a good friend now and a genius level guy named Ben Bennett got hooked up with him and now we work with Josh McDowell Ministry in Dallas, Texas. So he actually invited me to work with him in the work that he had previously been doing. And it was the second probably greatest invitation I've ever gotten and received in life is to actually bring, bring restoration into the ways that evil had caused, caused so much pain in my life.
Yeah, I love your story, Jake. You know, a guy from Wyoming goes to school in Chicago, finds healing in California and ends up working in a ministry in Texas.
Geographical story of healing.
What a great adventure you're on. And I'm also a native from Wyoming, so it's few and far between to find other people from Wyoming.
Longmire. That's all I think about is Longmire. Well, there's like what's going through my head there.
So if guys from Wyoming can end up helping others, then anyone can. I think that's the truth here.
That's good.
Hey Ben, tell us a little bit more then about Josh McDowell Ministries what you guys are working on this new initiative. We've heard about it here at Pure Desire, but we're excited for our listeners to know more about what you guys have been building towards and have now just recently started to launch into.
Yeah, yeah. So what we're working on launching is a ministry initiative as part of the larger ministry of Josh McDowell. This will be a smaller part of what is going on in the ministry, but our focus will be speaking, equipping and connecting. And so as part of that, our real heart is to serve and to empower ministries and churches and individuals to understand the what and the how. So the what of unwanted behaviors, of woundedness, of porn addiction, what's really going on there. Because it's not just a moral problem or a behavior problem, but there's deeper things going on. So understanding the what and then the how, how we can help people overcome these things through Christ and the body of Christ. So we really want to serve to help change the conversation and use the ministry or the platform that Josh has to serve the local church, to serve campus ministries and all kinds of ministries in those two ways. And with the connection piece, our heart is to help serve by changing the conversation in some ways coming in for to great ministries like Pure Desire because we know that life change doesn't happen overnight. You know, an event can happen overnight, but life change and the real heroes of life change are the people, the lay people, the people and the pastors on the ground level doing life on life discipleship. And you guys are so great at empowering people to do that. And so this year, what we'll be working on as we launch this new ministry initiative is testing and creating engaging messages using multimedia where we go and speak in front of a large amount of people or churches get together and we speak to people. We'll also be creating and testing videos, whether that's on their phone or stories or docudramas to help people understand what's going on with these unwanted struggles. We're going to start working on some books and articles that will equip people to understand, begin processing their own stories, some curriculum there and then developing systems to connect to help people get connected to ministries like Pure Desire. After they go through that initial sermon series, or maybe it will be a five or six week series on this topic, then we'll help connect them, the people who will be there for the long term solutions.
Yeah, guys, that's super cool. And what I really appreciate about what you guys are doing is you're not Just trying to do it on your own. You're trying to come alongside the church and empower them to do it. Because if the world's gonna change and this tide of sexual brokenness is gonna change, it's gotta be through the church. And so, yeah, you guys, you guys are right on it. And you know, here's something, you know, diving into today's topic really is reaching the younger demographic and specifically single people who are that younger demographic, man, that's something that the church needs to work on and needs to really push. And you guys are both single and in that young demographic. And so really today, I mean, if you look anywhere, anywhere you turn your head, man, the narrative is, is that sex is good, porn is fine, and just do whatever makes you happy and don't worry about the consequences, don't even think about the consequences because you just get to do what makes you happy. So guys, how, how do we change that narrative? How do we communicate with the young single demographic when it comes to this and change that narrative?
Now that's a great question. And I think that both the statements are drastically stated. One, that, that, that sex is, is. Is good and that porn is fine. I think sex is awesome. I think it's phenomenal. Haven't had it yet. But I know, I know that God, from everything I've studied from scripture, that is just that God made sex. He designed sex. It is the beautiful culmination of intimacy that God has designed us for. To experience the beauty of what it means to be male and female and to come together and to become one. It is so incredible. I could go on forever. But the beauty of it and the beauty of it inside of God's design as the Bible Talks in Genesis 1 is just far more than fine or good rather. And porn is well understated that it's fine. I mean, it is, it is the cancer of today's society and it is taking out young kids one person at a time. I mean, just a short story, I think about the young kids and like, how do we change the narrative? Well, what is the narrative? And I think of a kid named Peter and he actually told me that I could share his story. And he said, man, I grew up going to church. My parents were actually full time missionaries and age 13 I got exposed on the swim team and two years later I had porn induced erectile dysfunction. And he just, he says it was in two years. And I remember being worried and coming to my parents and ask him for help and they didn't know what to do. They didn't know what to do. And he said, how? Like, he said, they still don't know what to do. But I remember going back to my swim team and just asking the guys that were introducing me to this stuff, like, the question, can you. Can you get it up without porn? And I was like, you didn't ask a guy, a guy I questioned on the swim team? He says, yeah, I did. I just asked him. Guy leans back on his heels, he's like, well, no, I can't either. And there's going to be this massive wave of young people who are coming in, asking the question, like, who am I sexually? And that's the question like that. We have to answer the question, like, who are we as people who bear the image of God? What does it mean? Like, starting off with who we are as people who are made in the image of God and people who are made sexually, and to say, what does it mean to live that out in this world that is hyper sexualized? I mean, it's hyper connected. These students and these young kids are hyper connected, but they're lonelier than ever. And just what does it mean to really, how do we teach them how to. Is going to be one thing that I remember looking back at my childhood and being like, man, my parents did the best they could, but this is the first time in history where there's sex, as you said, Trevor, at everybody's fingertips. And so how do we change the narrative as the church, I think, starts with teaching the students where they're at, teaching the students where they're at, engaging them with the honest questions of, like, you are experiencing technology, and not at 16, not at 17, not even. Not even in that, like, that 15 level. Like, we need to start talking to them. I was exposed at 13. That was before smartphones in high school. And we're gonna have to start talking to them younger and younger as parents, as youth workers, and begin having that honest conversation with them in order to educate them on what does it look like to live a life as God has made us as people who are to be holy and to be set apart from the culture that we live in.
Yeah, and I would add, too, I think we have a huge opportunity to teach on the why. Why is sex outside of marriage? Why is porn, Ron? Not just because the Bible says so, but why does the Bible, you know, say so? And it's because it cuts against the very design and fabric of how God designed life to function. It goes against truth. It goes against true love and intimacy and what he Desires for us, something that he desires, something much more satisfying. And so if we can cast the vision for, there's actually something better than pornography. There's something better than sex outside of marriage. There's something where you can be fully known flaws and all mistakes and all and fully loved and accepted. And it's not about performance, it's not about getting, but it's rather about giving and not escaping intimacy, but an expression of intimacy. If we can paint a beautiful picture that God does truly in the scriptures of what sex is truly supposed to be about and help people understand that, I think that gives us something to actually fight for and to desire for our own lives as young people.
I love something, Ben, that you said on a previous podcast we did, that pornography is trying to meet a legitimate need in an illegitimate way and to help people that are single and fighting through this to recognize you've got legitimate needs and the root issues are true, they're real. But the way you've thought you could meet them, you don't have to. And to cast some of that vision and so to ask a follow up question about that, because maybe there's someone out there, single, that's tuning into this podcast and they just feel like there's no way to find freedom as a single person. Like it's just, it's not even possible. And our world kind of gives that message like, hey, you're gonna struggle, so just, you know, do your best. So what would you guys say? What does it look like? Because I know this is your experience, what does it look like to find freedom as a single guy or single gal in today's world?
Yeah, great question. I think it starts with asking, what is sex truly about? You know, what is it about? Is it just about the feeling? Is it just about me? Or is it about something deeper? And if we understand God's design for sex, his good design, we understand that it's truly about intimacy. It's about getting our intimacy needs met. And ultimately the reason, of course, it's for pleasure and procreation. And I don't want to downplay that because those things are awesome. But it's ultimately meant to point to Christ and the bride when one day Jesus comes back and restores. When Jesus comes back and restores the whole world and all people, followers of him to himself. And we have this, this new heaven and a new earth and we're, we're at peace. There's no more suffering, no more pain. We're fully known, we're fully loved, all of our needs are met. That's what the world is going to be like. And we're going to be the new heavens and new earth, and we'll be in this intimate relationship with God and his people. And sex is meant to point to that. And so as single people, if we look at why sex and what am I looking for, what needs am I looking for in sex? As I mentioned on a previous podcast, Dr. Ted says that sexual addiction is ultimately not about sex, but it's an intimacy disorder. And what we're looking for in unwanted sexual behavior is that intimacy to feel love, to be approved of, to feel acceptance. And in getting free from porn and unwanted behaviors, those very needs actually get get met. Because we can't do this alone. We have to reach out, we have to ask for help from people. We have to process our woundedness, our stress in life. And as we reach out, before we act out, we actually get the very need that we're trying to meet in an illegitimate way. Met. And that it's so amazing how God has designed that. And so I think true freedom, finding that freedom is really walking in this true satisfaction and intimacy that God designed for us. Not just freedom from a behavior, but freedom to experience this abundant, satisfying life. And there's so many ways that God meets those intimacy needs. Now. One thing I did as a single guy recently was just list out what are all of the needs that I used to try and get met through acting out sexually. So being in control, feeling loved, approved of, affirmed, being pursued. And then I looked at my life and the people and the mentors and the spiritual fathers and mothers and friends God has in my life and made a list of all of all those needs. And who's good at that? Who's good at asking me those questions and pursuing me and caring for me. It was just such a powerful way to see as a single unmarried person, how those very needs I used to seek out in porn God had actually fulfilled in a much better way now through himself and his people. And that's an exercise I'd highly recommend anybody do, anybody to do, to look at the faithfulness of God in your life and how he's meeting those needs. Yeah.
And I would say that along with that just in as we look back at history, like porn, and porn as it's been online and as accessible as it is in the video form, has not been around for all that long in the way of accessibility. And just to look into, say, where are we at in history? Like, we're at this place where porn is now Accessible to all. And there's going to be a second wave coming. And so with the new virtual reality pornography, and that's going to be instantly addictive and going to be insane. And so we have to recognize what porn point in history are we at? Like, well, there are ministries like Pure Desire and there are others like Faithful and True and the ministry that we're doing in so many others like Brave Hearts and there's great resources and things like that. But those things, I, I didn't necessarily know about them. So we want to get the word out about them. But what does it look like now? It looks like actually it's a pretty, it's a pretty good uphill battle. I remember my own struggle and being like, where do I go? Where do I go? I got this software, come on, I got Covenant Eyes, what's next? Like, and it was good. Like Covenant Eyes was a great, was a good first step, but I needed more steps beyond that. And I didn't want behavior management as Ben was talking about. I wanted heart transformation. And I remember it being a really uphill journey. And I've talked to so many other girls who are like, man, we need help too. Like, so if you're a girl and you're listening, like, realize there is help and we're going to share a little bit about that at the end, so stick around for that. But there are now more female resources than ever before. Pure Desire has some great ones. We have some other people that we want to connect you with. But it is an uphill battle and it's going to take some fight as hard. I heard it said once, as hard as you fought to get pornography is as hard as you're probably going to have to fight to get out. And I think that was actually Dr. Ted who said that. And that was, that was a lot of my story is really having to fight. And it was a day to day battle to get freedom and to get that intimacy met in legitimate ways and not fall in love with counterfeit loves. That took me farther than I wanted to go, that kept me longer and I wanted to stay and cost me more than I wanted to pay.
Yeah, and I think too, you know, as I'm listening to you guys talk, that community is at the core of that, that finding real, true healing. You know, it's interesting because today we're taught just culturally that you can do whatever you want, you can be whatever you want, you can accomplish whatever you want to accomplish. You just have to work hard and you just got to dedicate yourself and, you know, that's a lie in so many ways that if you find yourself in addiction, trying to do it on your own, just by trying as hard as you can, and working as hard as you can isn't going to work. And so I think that really at the core of it, you know, and this has been said on this podcast a lot, the idea of being wounded in community, but then you really, truly find healing and freedom in community. And so really understanding the nature of addiction pushes you into isolation. And, you know, for me, especially, because, you know, for me, most of my addiction was in my single life. I mean, that was the peak of it. And for me, I just remember thinking, well, I got myself into this. I. Okay, I must be able to get myself out. Like, I'm just going to tighten up my belt, pull up my boots and. And I'm just gonna put my hat on and rock it. And that never worked. I mean, that never. I never found any freedom through that. And it's because I was trying to do it alone. I mean, I need someone to help me, come alongside me, show me really where my woundedness is, why I'm actually trying to medicate all this stuff and what I'm trying to escape. And so I think really at the core of really what you guys are saying, too, is just that community. You have to be in a. In a community of people that know you and that love you and that are for you. Because until you really find that type of community, freedom, I mean, I'm willing to say freedom is impossible. You can't do it on your own. You have to do it in biblical community.
I would agree.
Okay, so, guys, we've talked about the culture thus far and really what it teaches everybody, not just single people, but everybody, about sex and about porn. And really, we've talked about now just how to find freedom or how to start those steps of finding freedom. But, guys, why is it important for a single guy or gal to actually find freedom? Why do they need to get sexually healthy as a single person?
Yeah, I would say because it was what. It's. It's what we're made for. God designed us to live healthy lives of true satisfaction. Sin gratifies, but health, spiritual health with God and others, truly satisfies. I think so often we can view our emotional health as spiritual health, when in reality they go hand in hand. If we look at the Great commandment, Matthew 22, love the Lord God with all your heart, mind and soul, and love your neighbor as yourself. We can only love others. Well, if we love ourselves, and so often in life, as we're wounded, we other people, we struggle to love and trust other people. And as people wound us, shame enters in. We believe something's wrong with us and it changes our view of God. So there's this whole progression. And I know you guys are familiar with Dr. James Reeves and his emotional spiritual principle, which states you can never be more spiritually mature than you are emotionally mature. Stated otherwise, emotional wounds form a ceiling for our spiritual growth because of this whole, this whole, this whole principle, our ability to love others relates directly to our spiritual maturity. How can we say that we love God if we don't love others? And as people, and I think we have a huge opportunity, one, I mean, we're commanded with a great commandment to love God and to love others. And part of that is walking in health. And we have this opportunity as single people to deal with this now. And also realizing, although I'm unmarried, I've heard so many guys say that marriage is not the solution to sexual struggles. And countless guys I've worked with and led groups of, they say that marriage just makes it worse because of the stress in marriage.
Much more painful.
Yeah, it makes it because you've got two sinful people together and it's more stressful and because our acting out sexually is often about escaping intimacy rather than an expression of it. So marriage is not the solution. So what if we could walk into marriage things having gotten healthy, having learned how to be emotionally literate, and in knowing what we're thinking, feeling and believing so that we can be great husbands, great fathers one day. But even if God doesn't call us to marriage, I mean, he calls so many people to marriage. So as single people, even if we're not called to marriage like many, many people are, we're selling ourselves short if we settle for less than health. Because Jesus desires to meet these legitimate ways or these legitimate needs in legitimate ways through himself and his people and to meet the deepest desires of our heart.
Yeah, and I would agree with Ben and say that, yeah, there, there's no better time than right now. I almost lost my job because of my porn addiction. And maybe you think that's extreme. Maybe you're listening, being like, oh my gosh, like, how addicted were you? Was pretty addicted, but I was in full time ministry as well. But there are so many men who I've sat in my Pure desire groups with and even Sexaholics Anonymous when I've been on the road and visited them. And every time almost as Far back as I can remember, every time I went to a group, one guy, one of the older guys is almost always an older guy would come up to me at the end and he would grab me and I'm like, am I just like this guy who needs to be told this all the time? But he would grab my shoulders and he would say, man, I'm so proud of you for being here. I'm so proud of you for being here. If I would have been here at your age, I wouldn't be here at mine. And he just left me with like these guys. Everywhere I'd go, whether it was back at Chicago, whether it's out in California, these guys would continually say that. And it doesn't. You're not like, to be healthy is always a win, but to be healthy before it costs you your relationship with your work, with your wife, with your kids, with extended families, oh my gosh, like God is inviting this generation to face those wounds that he is desperately like, he is so wanting to heal. He is so wanting to heal those. And there's no better time than now in singleness when it, when it, when it cost the least. And I don't want to put a consumeristic kind of mindset on it, but the amount of relationship that you can gain as a single person and bring with you into marriage will only bolster the beauty that you have in marriage to be able to share your secrets with and the hardships of marriage and the beauties of marriage with. You get to bring those guys with you who have traversed the hard path and the holy Spirit filled path, community needed, path of freedom, this side of marriage.
Yeah, I remember when my wife and I were trying to decide about me going back to seminary and we had a couple little kids at the time and we made this statement that we repeated a lot. We said, it'll never get easier. It'll only get more complicated. So I went for it and got seminary done. And I tell that story because I think it's the same when we're battling through any addiction, but in particular sexual addiction is, it will never get easier to face it or to battle against it. It'll only get more complicated. And so I think that's what you're saying, Jake, not that it is easy, but don't think, oh, I'll wait until I'm this age or in this part of life or in this relationship, because then it'll be easy. Because every person we've talked to that made it to that part of life or to that season or to that relationship would turn around like the old guy in your group did and say it doesn't get easier, it gets harder. And so the younger you are, go for it.
Yeah.
So guys, a follow up question to that is, you know, people who are single, like, the reality is a lot of us want relationships. We want to have a romantic relationship, an intimate relationship with somebody. So, you know, a simple question is this, how healthy does someone need to be sexually, emotionally, to be in a relationship and it to be a healthy one?
That's a great question as well. You guys are full of those. I love it. There is, I mean the, there's no hard and fast rule. You can skim through all of scripture and be like, you can find principles, but there's not, I mean, there's not gonna be any hard and fast rule. Like you need to be three months free of the behavior. You need to be six months free of behavior. But I think that what is most important is to have a healthy support system. If a guy or a gal is living in isolation and, and they're the, and, and maybe you're sitting down and I mean you don't come to. It'd be pretty odd if you had the first conversation and with somebody on a first date over coffee and we're like, hey, can you tell me about your sexual history and everything like that? Like that's gonna be about as awkward as showing up in a wedding dress. You know, like that's, that's awkward. But as well, to be very forthright and to be able to engage the process with the, with looking for, like, what are you actually looking for? You're looking for somebody who is humble enough to say I have a problem and is ambitious enough to find a community of guys, has enough courage, would be another way to say it has enough courage to find community and to walk in the light. Because if a guy or a gal is not walking in the light, it's going to be a very, very hard relationship. And I've seen a very limited amount survive. Very, very limited. But I've seen an overwhelming amount who have said like, ah, we're going to be different. Like, yeah, he's still struggling with pornography, but who isn't? And that's a response I always get back like, well, if I waited six months or waited for a year for somebody who was free from the behavior for a year, like there'd be nobody left. I wouldn't have anybody to date. And as true as that is, what it can be more true. And what we're hoping for and want to give out to you guys today is find someone who is walking in the light in community. If they're a guy with a community of guys who he's meeting up with, who he's having somebody meet up with him to talk to him weekly about his wounds, where he's actively pursuing health, he, he's actively pursuing the journey towards freedom. And if you're a gal, the same is true that she has gals that are asking her those hard questions and as well pressing in to walk with her through that journey through those wounds. What is driving her behavior? Someone who is walking in community and not in isolation is the biggest thing in that would be a bottom line need to start a relationship is to find someone who is doing that.
And one of the keys, I'd say is to look at the trajectory they're on. Has there been growth? Are they, you know, in the past six months, are they further along? Maybe six months ago they had never shared this with anyone and six months later they're actively, they're actively working through their wounds. They, they're maybe in a living free group group or some other kind of group, they're seeing a counselor look at the trajectory and based on the trajectory and what they've done and what God's done in their life as you enter into a relationship with them, or maybe you're that one entering into the relationship, is there evidence that points to this person is going to continue to get healthier and healthier? And has. Has it been a lifestyle change or was it just, you know, has it only been a couple weeks?
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.
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