Every Man’s Battle Podcast

Announcer: Welcome to the Every Man’s Battle Podcast, brought to you by New Life Ministries. In this podcast, you’ll hear honest conversations and encouragement for living a life of sexual integrity. In every episode, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist JJ West and Licensed Professional Counselor Doug Barnes break the silence around sexual integrity struggles that millions of men face but rarely discuss openly. Each episode offers practical strategies and genuine hope to dissolve the shame and isolation that keeps men trapped in destructive cycles. Let's get to today's episode.

JJ West: Hey everybody, welcome back to the Every Man’s Battle Podcast. So glad that you’ve chosen to join us today. I am JJ West and, as always, joined by Doug Barnes. Hey, Doug.

Doug Barnes: Hey, JJ. Happy podcast day. I’m looking forward to another great talk on transformation.

JJ West: Happy podcast day. Today, we are going to be talking about the key elements of transformation. When I think about how this ties into previous episodes that we’ve done, I think back to Season 2 where we did measuring recovery success, parts one and two. I think about "Kindness Leads to Repentance." I even think about an episode we did earlier this season on mentorship and how important mentoring is because that’s a huge part of our transformation as well. We’re going to be pulling on some of those themes from those earlier episodes as well as, hopefully, introducing some new information for us to chew on today as we continue to try to walk this out, this transformed life, not just behavioral change.

Before we dive into our discussion, I have a favor to ask of the audience. We sent out a survey asking for feedback on the podcast. I’ve heard from a lot of members of the audience who listen to the show, like what they’re hearing and have questions, but they fail to actually send an email to let us know what that feedback is or ask those questions. I want all of you to do me a favor. In just a minute, I’m going to give you some very clear instructions, but listen to all the instructions before you start step one. Step one is going to be I want you to pause the podcast.

When I ask you to sign up to be part of the Every Man’s Battle Podcast email mailing list, I know that a lot of you have very good intentions. You say, "I’ll do that when I get home tonight" or "I’ll do that once dinner’s done," and then we forget. This happens to me all the time with organizations that I love and want to support. They send me letters and I go, "Yeah, I want to get online and support that," and then I forget. I know that you’re well-intended, but sometimes we need a little bit of a push.

I’m going to ask if I can push and shove you here today. I’m going to ask you to pause the podcast and send an email to embpodcast@newlife.com saying that you want to be on the email list and that you want to complete the survey. Once you do that, you’ll get that in your email, and we’re going to ask that you fill that out because we really do want to craft what we do on the show to what it is that you want and need to hear. If you’ll take the time to do that, that’ll help us out immensely. It’ll help us understand more of who our audience is. Pause the podcast, fill out the email, and then come back and press play and listen to the rest of the episode.

Welcome back. After having paused, welcome back. We’re so glad that you have joined us and we’re going to continue our conversation on the key elements of transformation. Let's jump right in there, Doug. As we talk about transformation, it’s not just about behavior modification. It’s about a deep, grace-centered change. Can you name the difference there between behavior modification versus a grace-centered change?

Doug Barnes: I can characterize it this way. Behavior modification really is the way that I stop or start something. In recovery terms, stopping those unhealthy behaviors is a must; it’s a key. We have to stop some things, but if that’s all we do, we’re missing the other side of this, which is that sanctification of character. What is driving me there?

My behavior has to do with using my body in different ways, going to different places, and how I move. But my heart is more at the control and more being the culprit of why I want to go and use my body in those different ways. Once I stop the behavior, I’m halfway there. The rest of the way, which is the longest road, is done with my heart change. This is what we’re characterizing today as transformation.

JJ West: If you’re in the audience and you have ever tried to muscle your way through recovery or through sobriety, this episode is for you. So many times we think, "I’ll just do better. I’ll just try harder. I’ll just stop." And that hasn’t worked. We’re going to jump into this topic.

I’ve been greatly helped by some key authors in this area. I think about Gerald May with *Addiction and Grace*. I think about Gabor Maté and his prolific writing on addiction and his experience with addiction. I think about Jay Stringer with *Unwanted*. I think about Larry Crabb and his work on the importance of connecting to others in terms of our recovery. We’re going to pull from each of those authors as well as a few more, as well as our own experiences in our recovery as well as the work that we’ve done with hundreds, if not thousands, of other men and couples walking through this process.

If you find some similarities in your own story that you’ve tried to muscle your way through, there’s grace for us. God isn’t as concerned with our behavior modification as He is with our hearts and the transformation of our hearts. It is not just that we behave differently, but that we are different, that God is shaping our hearts more and more to look like His. That's what we want to talk about.

I said that I'd pull from a lot of authors, and Larry Crabb being one of them. He had a book called *Connecting*, and he talks about how we were designed to connect. That’s how we were put together. That’s the underscore for a lot of what we talk about today and future conversations about this topic: you can’t do it alone. Behavior modification you could do by yourself, but real heart transformation cannot be done in isolation. It has to be done in community because I actually need that interaction with others to give me that input on what it is to be in relationship with me and what my heart actually looks like, because I can deceive myself. I need that interaction.

Doug Barnes: Who is my community? I can only do this in context of my community. Okay, so that begs the question: who is my community, and how do I access this entity we’re calling community?

JJ West: At a fundamental level, my community is just the people that I’m around, the people I do life with. Now, then it begs the question: do I have a healthy community that’s leading me toward transformation, or do I have an unhealthy community that’s leading me toward continually walking in brokenness, isolation, and self-harm to others? We do want to ask what my community looks like.

That again raises the whole issue of Sustained Victory and the fact that when we tell people at Every Man’s Battle to go to Every Man’s Battle, you’re not going to be able to do this alone. You need a band of brothers that are going to come alongside you and help walk this out. That’s who part of your community is. It is Sustained Victory, the guys who understand because they’ve been in the battle with you. They know the language, they know what it’s like to fall down again and again. I need people like that in my life who understand. Part of my community is going to be people at church that I worship with who know me. Not just people who sit in the pew but barely know my name; I'm talking about people I do life with who understand because I’ve been able to share with them my brokenness.

Doug Barnes: Let me share a story about community here, especially Sustained Victory. We just finished an EMB a couple of weeks ago. There was an attendee in my group who said, "Back home in my church, I’ve got a group of guys that I’ve known for thirty-plus years." He said, "But you guys have loved me better in these three days than any of those guys. Those guys don't know me like you do. I want to spend community with you guys." They all signed up for Sustained Victory.

That’s pretty powerful because of what they put into each other. He started to ask the question: "What kind of community do I have? I’ve got a community, they’ve known me for thirty-plus years, except they don't really know me." Everything but this. We'll talk about new cars, jobs, and kids, but am I actually going to talk about my brokenness? Is it safe for me to talk about my brokenness? That’s what groups like Sustained Victory do for us: it gives me a place to be real, to be myself. To his point, they’ve loved him well because they knew him. You can’t experience love if you’re not known. To be known is to be loved; to be loved is to be known. They’re synonymous.

JJ West: I would say one of the key components of transformation is surrender. It’s letting go. It’s not a self-determination. It’s not, "I’m going to pick myself up by my bootstraps and I’m just going to get it right this time." It is really about surrender. Eventually, we’ll probably do some episodes on the different twelve steps, but it’s really unpacking step three: that I surrendered my will and my life over to the care of God as I know Him.

Real spiritual growth and real transformation happen not through effort but through surrender. That’s the paradox of the kingdom. I think I have to work harder, I have to do more, and that’s how I’ll change. It’s really I have to let go of more. I have to surrender more. I have to trust God more and receive more of His grace. It sounds so easy and so simple.

Doug Barnes: When I first got into recovery, especially in Sustained Victory, there were so many guys that had such a difficult time with this word surrender because it was taken as a knock on my masculinity. I’ve been taught to fight all my life; now you’re telling me to just sit down and give up? Not quite in that context. In fact, this has the exact opposite effect. We’re using our masculinity as a way of changing and that character sanctification.

Most men, until they get to a certain point, don't like the word surrender because of the military connotation. Now I’m a prisoner? No, now you’re free. It’s a completely different view of it. But it’s getting far enough into recovery where they feel that freedom, not as a way of a crutch, but as a way of learning to fly.

JJ West: We bristle at the idea of surrender because it takes humility to surrender. It doesn't leave me with anything to take pride in if I humbly surrender. We don't think of it that way. It requires this humility to surrender. I love Gerald May’s quote: "Grace works only in the readiness of humility." Man, do we need that. We need humility in order to experience the grace of God because self-righteousness is the antithesis of grace.

Grace says, "I am going to give to you what you don't deserve," and self-righteousness says, "I got to earn it." Real transformation, grace-centered transformation, starts with humility. We have to start there. Here’s the other thing I think that’s interesting about the whole idea of surrender. We often think of surrender as waving the white flag, surrendering to a power that is greater than me. In terms of our relationship with God, that’s accurate. He is greater than us. His ways are not our ways; His thoughts are not our thoughts. He is transcendent.

There’s another definition of surrender that we don't think of as often, which is to surrender into the arms of a lover. That’s another aspect of what this looks like. It’s also true that when I’m surrendering to God, yes, I’m acknowledging that He’s more powerful than me, but I’m also surrendering to the arms of a lover. I’m surrendering into the goodness of a God who loves me and wants me to walk in freedom even more than I do. He wants me to be transformed even more than I do. We’re so desperate for transformation, to live differently than we have been. We’re so desperate for freedom, and God actually wants it more for us than we do because He’s the lover of our souls.

Doug Barnes: Humility to get there really has the connotation of a tender place inside my heart. Humility to surrender means my heart needs to find that tender place. Sometimes when I’ve been wounded over and over and over, those tender places become calloused and they become really hard and difficult to break through. Sometimes that’s hard when we left-brain our way to talk about grace, but where am I in my heart of being able to accept and give grace from a tender place inside of me that’s been cracked open or broken open through this process?

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JJ West: It is that wounding and, understandably so, if you’re being wounded repeatedly, of course you harden as a way to self-protect. But in that self-protective hardening, I lose touch with that tender part of me, that vulnerable, humble part of me. That keeps me locked in the destructive behaviors because I’m not sensing that God is coming to me as the lover of my soul, inviting me into a grace-centered transformation. I see it as another father figure who is disappointed with me and hates me, and I want to keep my distance from Him.

At the workshop at the intensive, we talk about our acting in, and that’s a way of now we’re acting in toward the one who loves me the most and who can love me better than anyone else. That’s actually a great segue into the next key theme for me, which is I have to understand my story. I have to understand my story behind my unwanted behavior. Jay Stringer of course does a great job in his book *Unwanted* in helping us understand that my sexual acting out behavior isn't random.

It is a road map to helping me understand all of that pain, all of the wounds that were created in childhood that caused me to harden and to self-protect. The way I act out now is like signs pointing me back to the story, if I’ll pay attention, if I’ll look at it instead of just in my shame saying, "Oh, it’s all bad, it’s all awful, let’s just not talk about it," which has helped zero people ever. Instead, if I look at my acting out behaviors and go, "Okay, what does this tell me about my story?"