Every Man’s Battle Podcast

Guest (Male): 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. That's right. Today, we're 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 two, 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. So, we're going to be pulling on some of those themes from those earlier episodes as well as, hopefully, introducing some new information and some new material for us to chew on today as we continue to try to walk out this transformed life, not just behavioral change.

Before we dive into our discussion, though, 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, they like what they're hearing, they have questions, but they fail to actually send an email to let us know what that feedback is or ask those questions.

So, 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, because step one's going to be I want you to pause the podcast. When I ask you to sign up to be part of the email mailing list, the Every Man's Battle Podcast mailing list, I know that a lot of you have very good intentions. "Oh, yeah, yeah, I want to do that. I'll do that when I get home tonight. I'll do that once dinner's done. I'll do that down the road." Then we're well-intentioned, we're well-meaning, but we forget.

This happens to me all the time. Parachurch organizations that I love and I want to support, and they send me the letters and I go, "Oh, yeah, yeah, I want to get online and support that," and then I forget and I forget and I forget. Then they finally call me and go, "Hey, I thought you said you were going to support." Oh, yeah, right.

So, I know that you're well-intended, but sometimes we need a little bit of a push. Sometimes we need a little bit of a shove. So, 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, again, we say this all the time, but we really do want to craft what we do on the show to what it is that you want and need to hear. So, 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. So, again, pause the podcast, fill out the email, and then come back and press play and listen to the rest of the episode because we do have some stuff that we want to share with you today.

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, because 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. So, 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 and going to different places and how I move. But my heart is more at the control and more at 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 way—this is a long road—is done with my heart change, and this is what we're characterizing today as transformation.

JJ West: Absolutely. If you're in the audience and you, like us, have ever tried to muscle your way through recovery or through sobriety, this episode is for you. That's all of us. So many times, it's, "Okay, I'll just do better. I'll just try harder." Then you just stop. And that hasn't worked.

So, 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. So, we're going to be pulling from each of those authors as well as a few more, as well as our own experiences in our recovery and 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, well, there's grace for us. God isn't as concerned with our behavior modification as He is with our hearts, as with the transformation of our hearts, so that it's 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.

Larry Crabb had a book called Connecting, and he talks about how we were designed to connect. That's how we were put together. So, that's the underscore for a lot of what we talk about today and future conversations about this topic—that 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. So, I need that interaction.

Doug Barnes: So, JJ, 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?

So, we do want to ask what does my community look like? And that raises the whole issue of Sustained Victory and the fact that when we tell people at Every Man's Battle to go to Sustained Victory, that you're not going to be able to do this alone. You need a band of brothers that are going to come along alongside you and help walk this out. That's who part of your community is. Sustained Victory is 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 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, "You know, back home in my church, I've got a group of guys that some of them I've known for 30 plus years. But you guys," and he's talking to the group as a whole, "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." And they all signed up for Sustained Victory.

That's pretty powerful because of what they put into each other. He did the very thing I said, which is he started to ask the question: what kind of community do I have? I've got a community, they've known me for 30 plus years, except they don't really know me. I haven't really been able to share at this depth. Everything but this. I'll talk about my new car, my job, my 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. And 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 are synonymous.

JJ West: I would say one of the key components of transformation is surrender. It is 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. I can do it. I know I can. It's really about surrender. Eventually, we'll probably do some episodes on the different 12 steps, but it's really unpacking step three—that I surrendered my will and my life over to the care of God as I understood Him.

Real spiritual growth, real transformation, happens 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.

Doug Barnes: It sounds so simple. The message is so simple. 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. Like, I have to give up? I've been taught to fight all my life. Now you're telling me to just sit down and give up? Wait a second.

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. But most men, until they get to a certain point—I can't say all because I don't know all—but at least in my experience, there are so many who don't like the word surrender because of the military connotation of, "Okay, so now I'm a prisoner." No, now you're free. There'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: Well, 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. You mean that's all? I don't get like I was the best surrenderer? We don't think of it that way.

So, 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 gotta earn it." So, real transformation, grace-centered transformation, starts with humility. It works only in the readiness of humility.

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. So, that's true. But 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. That 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 into 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 because He's the lover of our souls.

That humility to get there really has the connotation of a tender place inside my heart. The humility to surrender, so that means my heart needs to find that tender place. Sometimes when I've been wounded over and 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's that wounding, and understandably so. If you're being wounded repeatedly, of course you harden as a way to protect. 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 here's another person who's disappointed with me and hates me, and I want to keep my distance from him.

Another father figure who is disappointed. At the workshop, at the intensive, we talk about our acting in and how we're now 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. That it's a roadmap 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 instead of just in my shame going, "Oh, it's all bad, it's all awful, let's just not talk about it," which has helped zero people ever. If instead, I look at my story, my acting out behaviors, and go, "Okay, what does this tell me about my story?"

When I read Jay's book and I came across that concept of actually looking at and naming not just that I'm a sex addict and I have acted out, but how have I acted out? Specifically in my story, the history with voyeurism, which was so shameful to me and I didn't want to name it, I didn't want to ever talk about that. It's just so awful. But helping me to see that that voyeurism that I act out in as an adult was pointing to how unseen I felt as a kid. How hidden and in the margins and unnoticed I felt as a kid. Oh, so I'm actually reenacting that same pain from six years old and eight years old and ten years old. I'm reenacting that same pain in my adult life. So, it's not just I'm this really awful, pervert human being who just needs to be locked up.

Doug Barnes: Right. Like our friend Lara always says, we have a need to be seen, to be heard, and to be understood. And so that just segues right to that. You and I both have heard, "Well, I stopped my behavior. I'm just moving on." That's why it's not just about stopping a behavior, because we don't really move on. We keep reenacting our story and our wounds over and over in some capacity.

So, when we take the time to stop and let's do some business, let's look at this with curiosity, not contempt. Because you and I both know in our practices, we both have those folks that come in and they're talking about how awful they are and, you know, I'm a loser and a pervert and an idiot and a monster and I'm ugly and look at all these bad things I've done. I should never have done that.

Wait, stop. Let's look back with different eyes. Put these grace-filled goggles on and let's look at what are the wounds that we're carrying that we keep reenacting over and over in our acting out. But it's just for curiosity. I want to see. I don't want to place a value on it. I just want to be able to see it for what it is. Then I can work with it.

JJ West: Oh, man. That is so helpful. The keywords there: curiosity, grace-filled, kindness. Those should be the framework when I'm thinking about my story, when I'm thinking about my wounds, and thinking about my present acting out. My adult acting out. Can I look at it with curiosity and kindness and grace as opposed to shame, self-contempt, and hatred? That's what keeps me locked. I might have some limited success in changing behavior, but I will replace it with another behavior. I haven't gone to the root wound because only curiosity and kindness and grace can lead me to that root wound. Self-contempt and shame will always stay at the surface level of behavior.

Most of us would not look at a little boy and shame him on purpose. Then why do we do that to ourselves? When we're looking back, why do we do that to ourselves? Because we're looking at that little kid who was innocent, who a lot of these things were perpetrated on as opposed to some of us found out by magazines and seeing a video or whatever. We found out. I got that. But we didn't know what all that meant for us.

Now that we're grown up, we can walk back with that little kid inside of us and say, "This is what was going on with you. It wasn't your fault in the beginning." And this is where that grace comes in. There's no way my six or eight-year-old self could know the impact of not just finding but then pouring over those magazines. No way he could have known what that would mean later on in life, how that would impact his life, how it would impact the way he feels about himself. There's no way.

So, yes, with kindness to go back and to be able to offer reparenting, reframing for that wounded little boy who then—and so because what I think when we start talking about this, some of the audience goes, "But I'm not a little boy anymore. I'm an adult who's going to the strip club or having the affair or looking at porn or whatever." Yes, you are, but it's that wounded little boy inside of you that's never been healed that keeps acting out in your adult body. Yes, we are responsible for our choices. I'm not giving anybody a pass here. But the reason why I keep going back to it even though I hate it, the reason why I keep going back to it even though there's been horrific consequences, is because I've never let my present story of my acting out, my unwanted sexual behavior, respond in kindness and curiosity to take me back to that wound. Instead, I've just said, "This is bad. This is awful. I need to just change. I need to just stop." And that's ineffective because, again, it has helped zero people. zero times for zero people in all of eternity.

So, it's understanding the fullness of my story. This is why we do significant event timelines so that we can look at what are some of the events in my life that affected me—not good or bad is not the issue—but they affected me. Significant life events that affected me and then plug that into how does my acting out life fit into these significant life events? Now we're starting to get a broader, clearer picture of the wounds that I have a tendency to recreate as I get older, even when I don't want to, even when I'm going, "I don't want to ever act out again." Darn, I acted out again. Okay, that's the last time. Darn, acted out again. And it's just that cycle repeating down the line.

Okay, so we're almost halfway through our discussion. Doug and I had a discussion before the recording began today of my overzealousness for what I thought we could get through in an episode. So, we're going to take a break from the conversation here. We're going to end this part of the conversation. We're going to pick it up in next week's episode with the second half of key elements of transformation.

Between now and then, I want you to do a couple of things. I want you to challenge yourself in the way that you have been perceiving your story. Challenge yourself. Do I approach my story of unwanted sexual behavior from a place of curiosity and kindness and grace, or do I approach it from a place of shame and self-contempt? And if it's the latter, would you be willing to let God instruct you in a different way? Would you be willing, and this goes back to our first point, would you be willing to surrender? Yes, to one who is greater and more powerful than you, but would you also be willing to surrender to the lover of your soul who sees your wounds, who sees your brokenness, past and present, and says, "You are my son. You are my child. I love you. I want you to be free"?

I hope that you'll be willing to do that this week. I hope that you'll join us again next time as we continue our discussion on key elements of transformation. And I hope that you'll take seriously my charge at the beginning to send the email so that we can continue to create content on this podcast that meets the needs of the audience. Thanks so much for listening and, listen, until we get back together, let's continue to walk in integrity.

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