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 to the Every Man's Battle Podcast. We are so glad that you've joined us today. We are continuing our series introducing you, the audience, to the various facilitators that serve at our Every Man's Battle Intensive. Today we have a very special guest. We have Jim Phillis in the makeshift studio as we are recording live from one of our Every Man's Battle Intensives in DC. Jim, thanks for joining us today.

Jim Phillis: I'm glad to be with you. Thanks.

JJ West: You may already notice that Doug is not in the shot. It doesn't mean that Doug's not here. Doug is off-camera right now. He'll be making faces at us and feeding us all kinds of interesting information as we go. But in order to make the shot work, we've sat down with Jim and we want to get to know Jim's story. So let's start with, Jim, how did you first get connected with the Every Man's Battle Intensive?

Jim Phillis: I had the opportunity to start a coaching ministry with New Life. There were parts of the country that were not covered by the counselor network, and so they said, "We think coaching is a way to serve populations that wouldn't otherwise be served."

Then in talking about what was happening in the aftermath of the EMB workshop, there was a recognition that there could be an after-workshop group experience that would reinforce what guys were getting at the weekend. So I just came along at the right time. I had started with New Life in May of 2004. All these things were being discussed through the summer of 2005.

So I began the coaching ministry in September, and then in November of 2005, just a little more than 20 years ago, I appeared at an EMB workshop in Atlanta, Georgia, and made the pitch for Sustained Victory. Out of that workshop, we started our very first group. It's been one of the greatest privileges to watch what's happened in the lives of men who are continuing to interact with some guys they met at the workshop, some guys that came along much later, but they're interacting with one another, building one another up, and the groups just provide a dynamic that I don't know that I've seen any other place.

JJ West: I love the fact that you've been a part of Sustained Victory from the beginning, from its inception, and continue to serve as a facilitator not only at the Every Man's Battle Intensive, but continue to serve as a facilitator for the Sustained Victory program. I don't know how many groups you have going right now, but I know that it's usually in the high teens to 20s. It's somewhere in that range, and I would imagine that's still the case.

Jim Phillis: At 15 currently.

JJ West: 15 currently. And that's guys across the country and actually some guys that are overseas as well. But it's all guys who have been through the workshop. The Sustained Victory program is made up of all guys who have already been through the workshop. So I'm curious, have you seen any changes as you have facilitated both at the workshop as well as Sustained Victory? Have you seen any changes over the years and if so, what have been the most significant changes that you've seen?

Jim Phillis: I think part of it is there are many more guys who are coming to the workshop with some previous experience in a recovery-type group. It could be Sexaholics Anonymous, it could be Celebrate Recovery, another church-based group, but a lot more guys have experience in a recovery-type group.

For various reasons, the groups that they've been part of have not ultimately helped them. They end up at EMB and out of that experience, they realize what happens in our groups at the workshop they've not seen replicated anyplace else. That gives them hope that being part of a Sustained Victory group is also going to raise the bar in that group experience.

JJ West: Agreed, agreed. Okay, so as you know, as I think most of the audience knows, all of our facilitators at the intensive are guys who have their own story of sexual brokenness, of lacking sexual integrity in some way. We often will, not often, we always share our stories with our groups. So I would be interested to hear you share your story of kind of how did you, how did you know that EMB was the right fit for you? What was your backstory?

Jim Phillis: I grew up in a very traditional middle-class home in Peoria, Illinois, and knew very little about sexuality. I giggled about girls and that kind of stuff, but didn't know anything until fifth grade when there were two sixth-grade boys that rode the bus with me. One afternoon in the spring of my fifth-grade year, on the way to the bus stop at the end of school, they said, "Do you know how to masturbate?"

Now they didn't use that word, but that's ultimately what they were going for. I had a blank look on my face. It was obvious that I didn't know a thing and so they explained in confused language that I really didn't understand what it was like. I went home that day and I fumbled through my first experience at masturbation.

It was something that I had never experienced before, just the electroshock of orgasm, of release. It was something that became a part of my everyday experience when I got home from school. It was a way—I don't know that I would have used the language—but it was a way of taking care of myself. No excuse, just explanation. It was something that was so electric it lifted me at the end of the day.

Over the course of the rest of elementary school, it was something that became part of my day. Little by little there were a couple of portions of pornography that I came across that ultimately became part of a stash. I used that with regularity. This is silly almost, but I pulled off—we moved in the middle of my eighth-grade year—and I pulled off moving my stash without being caught. It was something that was real important to me at the time.

I began to date. Things became much more explicit. Makeout parties when I was in eighth grade. I was not real smooth with the ladies. I was not. But over time I did become more insistent and I took advantage of some of the girls that I dated. I lost my virginity between my junior and senior years of high school.

I became unglued in a lot of ways from the ways that I'd been raised. Raised in the church, and I did stuff that I never would have ever conceived of doing. I began drinking to excess, used marijuana, and just generally wasn't a really good guy to be around and I didn't know what else to do.

I went to college for one semester. I quit because I was not doing that well. Went back home, went to work, and I had three things that I spent time doing. I worked, I partied, and I slept. That was all. That was the whole of my life, those three activities. I was not happy. I didn't know that I was not happy, but I wasn't happy.

The night after my 19th birthday, which was a big deal in those days in the state of Illinois—you became of legal drinking age at the age of 19—so on my 19th birthday I got blitzed completely. The next night all of my friends were working and so I was by myself. I went to an event at the high school that I'd graduated from and met several people that I knew.

One of them is the girl that I knew from band, who is now my wife of 45 years. After the event we talked about going someplace to get something to eat and we did. Sitting there in the restaurant, this woman walked in and she was strikingly beautiful. Susan noticed that I had noticed that she caught my attention and she said, "Would you like to meet her?"

Never in a million years would I have said yes, and I did. It was so strange. What I didn't know is this gal was the local campus life campus leader for the high school. She and Susan had been praying together that I would get saved. How about that?

We sat down, introduced ourselves to each other, and very, very quickly she asked a question that just was stunning. She said, "Jim, I understand that you drink and you smoke dope. Why do you do that?" I had never considered that question before. Out of the blue, I said, "I recognize that those things are crutches and right now I can't walk on my own and so I'm using the crutches, but I'm hoping that someday I won't need them anymore."

JJ West: You had that at 19?

Jim Phillis: I had not consciously thought of that before until that moment. In that moment, that became something that I was aware of. After we finished getting something to eat, Susan shared a gospel booklet with me. This was March 19th of '76. April 16th, four weeks later, I'd been reading that gospel booklet a little bit at a time, and I prayed to receive Christ at 2:10 in the morning. It was Good Friday morning of 1976 and I say it was the Good Friday for me.

My life changed immediately and dramatically. I was unrecognizable to a lot of folks that knew me. They wondered what happened and it was a genuine profound transformation as a result of coming to Christ.

JJ West: It's always interesting to me how often God uses women who we have interest in or crushes on as the gateway to the gospel. Certainly, that was my—you know, I went to the youth party not because I wanted to meet Jesus, it was because I was chasing after a girl, but that's where I met Jesus.

Jim Phillis: Exactly. As a result of that, my career plan changed. I went back to college, ultimately prepared for ministry. Along the way, the use of pornography—I got rid of my stash, wasn't masturbating, wasn't drinking, haven't had any contact or interaction with marijuana in all of those years since, now almost 50 years. It was immediate and compelling.

That transformation, that change of mind, change of what was important, ultimately ended up in ministry. As I went through the course of preparing for ministry, going to seminary, life was very, very difficult. I'm capable academically, but I don't like academics. And so it was really, really difficult. It was more difficult than it really should have been. But I began to think about using pornography again.

JJ West: Bring the crutches back.

Jim Phillis: That's exactly right.

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JJ West: Can I ask real quick, so it was known among your peer group that you drank and that you smoked marijuana. I don't know if it was known among your peer group that you were looking at porn or masturbation. Did your family know any of that?

Jim Phillis: I think my family suspected. But here's the thing in regard to sexual things. I tell guys in my groups every month, Susan and I, we've known each other since she was 13 and I was 14 when we met for the first time. Actually 12 and 13. But anyway, all through high school she knew the girls that I dated and she knew the reason that I dated those girls.

I stopped dating those girls and I started dating her. That in and of itself was mind-blowing to a lot of people. And the fact that she was dating me was equally stunning for a different population. But anyway, it was wonderful.

The unfortunate thing was in that seminary preparation, I was married. We had a wonderful time together, but I checked out again using porn and not consistently, not all the time, but occasionally, and masturbation. I would repent and want to be done with it and then it would come back a month, two months, three months, whatever.

It was something that followed me in the early years of ministry. We were living in the Chicago suburbs and in those days, you could walk into and out of a convenience store anywhere in Chicago and not know anyone. You could walk out with a magazine and nobody gave it a second thought. It was so pervasive.

I did that. After we left there, we went to communities where it wasn't possible to do that. So I began to focus on fantasy. I used fantasy instead of actual pornography. But it was unhealthy.

So fast forward. This is now January of 2001. I'm at a church conference for pastors and church leaders. I'd been to the conference the year before and was introduced to an elder from that church who was appointed to me as a prayer partner. Through the course of that year, every week he would send me an email on Monday. "What can I pray for this week?" along with asking about what he had prayed for the previous week. Our interaction for a whole year consisted only of that, emails back and forth.

But I recognized he'd been a lifeline for me. So I asked the organizers of the event, of the conference, could I be assigned to my friend John again as a prayer partner? They said, "Well, why?" and I said this is what John has been, this is how he's made a difference in my life. I described it, and they were ecstatic and they without hesitation set us up as prayer partners again.

We had an open evening in the calendar. So John and I decided we'd get coffee. We'd spent half an hour face-to-face in conversation, and that was the only direct interaction we'd had for a year. And so we thought, let's get to know each other a little bit better.

Went to get coffee. This is in Birmingham, Alabama, January of 2001. We're just going to get to know each other better. I sat down for coffee with John and within 15 minutes, not a literal voice, but it was a clear message. "You need to tell John what you're struggling with."

I thought that is the stupidest idea you have ever had in your life. As soon as I thought that, everything unfolded. If I told him, he'd go back and tell the conference organizers who would tell the other leaders from the church in Hendersonville who would go back and tell the elders who would fire me. I would lose my job, I would lose my home, I would lose my family, I would lose everything. It was too risky.

And I thought we're just having coffee and, you know, so we'll go back to the hotel and I'll go to sleep and it'll be over with. About two and a half hours later, we're still talking, we're still getting to know each other. There are all kinds of incredible coincidences, shared experiences. After two and a half hours, I said, "John, there's something I gotta tell you."

I told him of my struggle with pornography and masturbation. I was terrified. The whole time I'm telling him I'm thinking, "Why are you doing this? You are so stupid. You are so stupid. You are so stupid." I finally ran out of words, which you know that's really a hard thing for me and me. I was afraid to stop because then he was going to have to react in some way.

When I finally ran out of words, I looked at him and he said, "I'm struggling too." So for the first time in my life—I'd been a believer since 1976—so 25 years I'd never had an effective accountability partner and John became that partner. My life changed.

The way that my life changed and the way my ministry changed, I was not attractive as a pastor to that church any longer. I always thought I was going to lose my job because somebody would catch me doing something I ought not to do. It wasn't that at all.

So in 2004, my pastoral relationship with the church ended and I began looking around for something to do, tide me over until another church came along. And I landed with New Life. The first day, May 27, 2004, I started and began talking with guys who were looking at the possibility of attending EMB, talking with their wives who were wanting them to go. A week and a half later, I was on a plane to Dallas to go through EMB as part of my staff training.

It was so staggering. The experiences that guys were talking about, the information, the sessions addressed the things that had been part of my life all these years that I really didn't understand at all. I realized Every Man's Battle is my story. It wasn't too much longer after that. That was June of 2004. By November of 2005, I'm leading Sustained Victory groups and from there began facilitating groups in 2006 and the rest, as they say, is history.

It's so interesting. I'm always fascinated to see the sovereignty of God in the story and how he directs our steps, even when we have no idea that's what's happening. He directs our steps right to the place where here's the path to freedom. Doug and I talk about this on the podcast all the time, how the very thing that we feared the most, the truth getting out—I have to do everything I can to keep this a secret because that'll mean the end of everything—and it was that that led us to freedom.

JJ West: The thing that is most challenging to me is I didn't go to seminary, I didn't spend 20 years in pastoral ministry to do this. But God sent me down those roads so that ultimately I could be engaged in ministry at EMB in Sustained Victory.

It's—I tell people it's not work. I have a front-row seat to watch God change people's lives. It's so amazing. Every month I have an opportunity to see that happen every week in the voices and the faces of the guys in Sustained Victory as we do Zoom calls together.

JJ West: In your recovery, and maybe specifically in the work that you've done at EMB through EMB, can you share one thing that's made an impact on your recovery?

Jim Phillis: It's actually transparency. I talk more candidly and more plainly about things that I never ever would have addressed if I were still in a local church. And that guys can be trusted. In fact, somebody has to go first. Somebody has to take that step, that initiative, to have the courage to do that. Once they do, the other dominoes fall, the other guys feel freedom then to do the same.

That's the thing. As you said, the thing that we're most afraid of becoming known actually becomes the thing that transforms us so that we actually live as dependent men resting in a savior but in the company of saved men. Oh, that's so good.

JJ West: Let me ask this. What one thing would you change, if any? Maybe not, but if you could go back and redo your story, your recovery, would you change anything?

Jim Phillis: Yes. I didn't realize how much what we call "acting in" behaviors had been a part of my dysfunction. I had the idea if I just didn't look at porn, if I didn't masturbate, my life would be perfect and God would be proud of me and he could use me. I messed up.

The person that I said I was most committed to being truthful with, I hid from the most. It was a foolish kind of hiding because she already knew me. She has always said, "Don't try and play poker because it's so easy to read your face." So I wasn't hiding—I was trying to hide, but I wasn't very effective.

To be more thoughtful about what it means to be transparent and the importance of being transparent. You see it in places like Psalm 51 where David confesses his sin and there's a freedom and a healing that happens. You see it, but it's too terrifying.

What I saw in the lives of leaders as I went to EMB the first time was so important. There was another pastor that was on staff in those early days and he was very transparent about his story. The fact that he was so transparent gave me permission to be transparent.

I love how Psalm 51, after he confesses, then he says, "Then I will teach transgressors your ways." But we try to flip it around. "I'll teach, I'll lead, and that'll somehow make me holy." No, I have to be vulnerable, I have to be honest and open, and as I do that, then I'm known. I encounter love and grace, and that's what allows me then the message to teach others to teach sinners repentance.

We need to be thoughtful. Our intellects need to be engaged in the faith. But I can't intellectually think my way out of sin. I need a savior. I think that's what we have the greatest privilege of doing. Guys who know Jesus is the savior but haven't been letting him save them.

When they come to the workshop, they are recognizing, "No, he is the savior and he's prepared to save me even from this, which I think he wouldn't want to touch me." I'm too broken.

What happens in Sustained Victory is the press of day-to-day living. We go back to the acting-in behaviors and we are tempted by the acting-out behaviors in such a way that we are compromised. We don't walk by faith and we don't walk in the power of Christ. So the groups are helpful to keep reminding us, "No, I need to acknowledge my weakness, I need to acknowledge my dependence, and I need to walk through these things with these guys in order to experience the real freedom that is mine in Christ." I need to be challenged to have authentic relationship, which helps me then to say no to those temptations.

JJ West: Jim, thank you so much for your time, not just here today on the podcast. Thank you for that for sure. I know the audience has been blessed by your story. But also thank you for the way that you have served Every Man's Battle for so many years. I mean, we're talking decades now, faithful service and letting your story be a tool that God uses to bring other men to that saving faith, to that knowledge of a savior who sees us in our brokenness, in our mess and says, "You are my child and I love you." So thank you. Thank you so much.

Jim Phillis: It's a sweet thing to be part of a team, guys like you and Doug and the other guys who have gone before us and to be building into the next generation of guys who are going to be walking with Christ and walking in freedom. So it's great to be here and be part of it.

JJ West: Well, thank you guys for listening today. I know that you got a lot out of it. I hope that you will take what Jim talked about, especially this whole idea of what it means to be vulnerable, what it means to be transparent.

If you're living secretly right now and you're just trying to be a better person and put away the pornography or put away the masturbation or put away the sexual acting out and you're still hiding, can you hear the call to come into transparency, come into being known? Because that's where the power lies to change. It's not going to come through your self-will, your effort, and it's not going to come through as Jim talked about, you're not going to intellectualize yourself into right behaving. It really does happen through these authentic, transparent, open relationships.

I want to challenge you to consider that. Then I also want you to look forward to our next episode where we're going to be talking about how to safely use technology in recovery. I think it's going to be a great episode. I'm sure that you'll enjoy that.

In the meantime, those of you who have already been through the workshop, if you're not part of Sustained Victory, it's never too late. I want to encourage you because as Jim talked about, you can't do this by yourself. You can't do it alone and you've probably already figured that out if it's been several months or years since you've been to the intensive and you're trying to do this on your own and you're finding how difficult it is because the tendency is to act in.

I want to encourage you to call 1-800-NEW-LIFE. Let them know you're an alumni of Every Man's Battle and that you want to get signed up for Sustained Victory. Never ever too late, always welcome, and it's always filled with guys who have shared language because they've been through the intensive themselves. Until next time guys, let's continue to walk in integrity.

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