FamilyLife Today®

Ann Wilson: Hey, we just wanted to give you a heads-up before you listen to this next program because today's conversation on FamilyLife covers some pretty sensitive but really important subjects that may not be suitable for younger ears. Just use some discretion when listening to this next broadcast.

Dave Wilson: Let me add this. If you do listen with your kids, talk about it afterward with them.

Ann Wilson: This is an important conversation to have with maybe older kids depending on what you're thinking, but we just wanted to give you a heads-up.

Jacob Valk: From a parent's point of view, you don't want to envision your children engaged in this. It's a sad, horrible reality. It's not the first thing your mind goes to when you're thinking of parenting.

I spend a lot of time helping parents get into that messy, dark, sad world of what could happen and then start locking those doors down, especially for younger kids, so that they never do.

Dave Wilson: Welcome to FamilyLife Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most.

Ann Wilson: I'm Ann Wilson.

Dave Wilson: And I'm Dave Wilson. You can find us at familylifetoday.com. This is FamilyLife Today.

We've got Jacob Valk on FamilyLife Today. Jacob, I don't know if you know this, but I don't think I've ever met anybody that we learned over lunch met, engaged, and married in six months.

Jacob Valk: We managed to do met, engaged, married, got a house, and then found out we were expecting all inside of a year, which is pretty crazy.

Ann Wilson: And all while you are in ministry, having a job, and you're getting your doctorate.

Jacob Valk: It's a busy life. God is good. If you're doing stuff that you love, stuff you're really passionate about, then that's great. I like having a packed schedule. I'm so grateful for all the stuff God's given me to do.

Dave Wilson: You move pretty quick on projects? You met that girl and you said, "I'm not messing around. You get things done."

Jacob Valk: Getting married was an easier choice than some of the projects we've had to choose to do from a ministry perspective because my wife, Katie, is so fantastic.

Ann Wilson: Tell our audience, what do you do?

Jacob Valk: I've got Into the Light Ministries. We are passionate about God's good design for sexuality. One of the great threats, one of the great dangers attacking God's good design is the issue of pornography.

What we do as a ministry is we make films, documentaries, and video series all centered around helping people find freedom from pornography and then love God's good design for sexuality.

Dave Wilson: How did you get into this?

Jacob Valk: I'm here chatting with you guys. The second half of the ministry, his name is John Michael Bout. We do everything together like partners in crime. We were friends who grew up together in Southern Ontario.

Ann Wilson: And you guys are younger. How old are you guys?

Jacob Valk: I'm 28, and he's 25.

Ann Wilson: You're Gen Z. Are you proud of that?

Jacob Valk: I have the sense of humor of someone from Gen Z. That very weird, nonsensical humor. I definitely fit in with that.

Ann Wilson: But there's something going on with Gen Z of a revival.

Jacob Valk: The ministry went to CROSS, and I got to talk to hundreds of young people younger than me, about 18 to 25. I talked to them about the issue of pornography.

It was amazing. I expected when I would bring up the issue of pornography that most of them, as quickly as they could, would be looking for the ceiling, trying to twiddle their thumbs in shame, embarrassment, and awkwardness. There was that, but on the whole, these young kids looked me straight in the eyes and just said, "I hate pornography. It wrecked my life and wrecked my friends' lives. What do I do about it? How can I help my church, my family, and my community, and how do I find freedom myself?" They were clear and honest about the issue, and that was really refreshing.

Ann Wilson: Is it different from what you've seen before?

Jacob Valk: I've seen a mix. I've traveled in lots of different communities, been to different churches, and you always have a different range of reactions. CROSS is very young, kind of restless and reformed, and they're just not afraid to call sin sin. They also just have a lot of energy. They say, "I need help."

Dave Wilson: Obviously, it's a different generation, even your generation compared to mine. If you were an adult man in my generation that struggled with pornography as a Christian man, which a lot of us did, I did, you usually had a story. I know this because I talked to a lot of guys at our church.

Your story went something like, "I was a kid, I was eight, nine, 12, whatever, and I stumbled upon a magazine." It was very rare, but it happened, and then there was this grip that got in you and maybe came out later. But your generation and the next generation, they've grown up almost every second of their lives with access. The access is so easily available.

Jacob Valk: I talked to one guy who put it the best I've ever heard it. He said it's easier for a young person today to find pornography than it is to get a glass of water because at least you have to get off the couch to get a glass of water.

That sounds hyperbolic, but it's not. Every device, every screen in your home is a highway to pornography unless you do something about that. Which, among the different things we do as a ministry, is one of the messages I want to send to parents. You have to think about the devices in your home because the average age of exposure is eight, even seven years old, to hardcore explicit pornography.

Ann Wilson: And it's found innocently usually. Is that true?

Jacob Valk: Often, especially for a young person if they don't know what they're looking for. They're not really looking for anything. Here's an example. I was at home, homeschooled. My younger brother was searching for a website that he knew was perfectly fine. It was a website about films, and he misspelled a single word in that URL, and it popped onto a porn website.

Now, my mom had had conversations with all of us, and so he had a roadmap for what to do. He knew first of all that Covenant Eyes would flag it, our accountability software, so mom would find out about it. But he also knew he should shut it down, walk over to mom, and say, "Mom, this is what's happened. I typed this and it popped up." He knew my mom wouldn't blow up at him or get angry because she said, "If you see something, come talk to me. I'm not going to get angry with you." He had the pathway forward, and he was 14 or something like that. It turned out to be a largely non-issue. But for someone who's not thought through these things, that could just start the process.

Ann Wilson: For every parent listening, that was a great discussion on the conversation that should take place. If you haven't had that conversation, it should happen yesterday.

Jacob Valk: There will be a lot of different parents listening to this. I'm always cognizant of the parent with older kids who feel like they've blown it. My answer is always here's how you talk to your younger kids, but it's never too late to start.

If you have a 17-year-old, they might be struggling. If you're thinking to yourself, "They might be struggling and I'm not sure how to start this," one really disarming and honest way is an apology. Say, "There's a lot of things I wish I'd talked to you about God's good design for sexuality and the dangers of pornography earlier. I didn't, and I wish I had. I'm sorry about that. I'd like to talk about these kinds of things more with you." It's easy to say but hard to do. But I think it's disarming to just say these are conversations I wish I'd had earlier. They are going to be a little awkward and difficult for sure.

Ann Wilson: What would you say after that? Do you ask the question or do you just say, "How can I help?"

Jacob Valk: I would ask the question because if we're talking about a 17 or 18-year-old, they know what's up. They know what pornography is. They've known about it for a long time. Whether they're actively struggling or they're not, their friends talk about this.

If you ask, "Are you struggling?" you may get varying degrees of honesty with that. But letting them know, "If you're struggling, I want to be on your team and fighting this. I'm not afraid to call sin sin, but I understand maybe you got hooked on this not really intending to. We're not going to excuse sin, but also know that pornography is addictive. If you don't feel like you have anyone to talk to, you can get caught in a pattern of this that's really hard to get out of."

Saying to your young person, "I'm on your side. I'm not going to blow up at you, but I want to get you help," it might take a few weeks before that's met with an answer that's actually, "I'm struggling." I know stories from people whose kids have said, "No, I'm fine, totally good, zero problems," and then about a day later come back crying saying, "I'm sorry. I lied. I need help." Then you can follow through with what you said and say, "I'm not going to blow up at you. I'm not unaware that people can sin, so let's tackle this."

Ann Wilson: Or "I have struggled with this before" or "I've been exposed to this and I understand the grip." With kids that age, that's the time to share your own story.

Dave Wilson: When we found it on our computer decades ago, it was interesting. The first question my wife said is, "Is this you?" It wasn't me, which meant we had three sons in this house, someone was struggling. When we found out who it was, he said, "Yeah, that's me."

I always wondered what my response would be when this happened. I assumed it would happen. It wasn't if, it was when. Now it's even a different world. There wasn't a phone yet at that time. But I remember looking at him and I cried. I said, "Let me tell you, dude, I've been down this road. Let me tell you where this leads." It was a brother-to-brother talk. "I'm going to walk with you now, but you just opened Pandora's box and I'll help you." We started a journey and almost a brotherhood. We're going to do this as men together and we're going to win this thing.

Ann Wilson: It was interesting, too, because we both talked to him and said, "How can we help you? What do you think needs to happen?" He said, "I think I need to be off the computer for a month." We were thinking a week. His was worse than ours.

Dave Wilson: This was even before Covenant Eyes. There wasn't software yet. Bad on us that we had a computer in the basement. Now they're in their hands.

Jacob Valk: You can understand from a parent's point of view you don't want to envision your children engaged in this. It's a sad, horrible reality. It's not the first thing your mind goes to when you're thinking of parenting.

I think a lot of parents just honestly weren't thinking in these categories. They got a phone or a laptop and put it in the basement. It's more my generation who actively struggled for most of their teen years that are very keyed in. They say, "Computer in the basement? I know what I would do with that, so that's not happening." One thing that's really fun with my job is I spend a lot of time helping parents get into that messy, dark, sad world of what could happen and then start locking those doors down, especially for younger kids, so that they never do.

Ann Wilson: Should you scare us with the idea of what could happen? Should we know those things as parents? Like your ministry, that's a place to direct our kids or ourselves or anybody.

Dave Wilson: We haven't even talked about his ministry yet.

Ann Wilson: He did a little bit at the beginning.

Jacob Valk: I could give you a little background about how we started the ministry and what we've got going on. John Michael and I grew up together. His story is that he was hooked on pornography from about eight years old. He did have really faithful parents who talked to him about these things, but he still discovered it and kept it a secret. That was almost a decade of his life hooked on it. By the grace of God, he had really good friends who were fighting for integrity, and he put this to death with the power of the Holy Spirit.

My story is that I had a really great mom who talked to me about the issues of pornography very early. I remember her telling me I was about eight years old. She said, "Jacob, we've told you about this thing called sex." I said, "Yeah, you did. It was weird, but you told me." She said, "There are some videos online of people having sex. It's very sad that people film those videos. Christians shouldn't watch them. But if you ever see it, I want you to know you should shut that down and then come to me and talk to me about it and I won't be angry with you."

Ann Wilson: What age do you say now?

Jacob Valk: At least. I have a modified version of this for different age categories. There are certain things you can tell a five-year-old that are pretty close to what I just said that aren't innocence-shattering. "You know God made boys and girls different. Sometimes there are videos of naked men and women on the internet. If you see those, you know..." A five-year-old can handle that category.

My mom told me about that, and I knew that Covenant Eyes was on my devices, so I knew that whatever I saw, my mom would see. That wasn't a terrifying thing for me because it was the condition on getting a device in my home. If you want a phone or a laptop, it's got Covenant Eyes.

Ann Wilson: Tell our listeners what Covenant Eyes does.

Jacob Valk: They are an amazing software provider. Accountability software that monitors, filters, and blocks all the content on your devices and sends that information in proper, appropriate ways to your parent, friend, husband, or wife. You can set that up to monitor what you watch online.

They have a lot of AI software that will scan a whole computer. If it sees something sketchy or even questionable, they can send blurry screenshots back to your accountability person. I'm John Michael's accountability partner. He hasn't struggled with pornography for years and years, but we keep each other accountable.

Sometimes I'll have something pop up on my phone that's blurred. I'll look at it, and it's totally innocuous, like a shirtless dude from a surfing commercial. It's totally fine, but it questioned it and just gave it to me to double-check. I can slightly unblur it and see that's totally fine. It's sensitive but on the good side.

For me, I never got hooked on pornography. I'm one of the rare friends of my peers who never had that as part of his story. I'm so grateful for that. That's why I'm on fire to help parents talk to their kids about it because I want the five-year-olds in our congregations today to be able to get to 25 and be able to walk down the aisle not perfect, but be able to say, "My parents took this so seriously. I never got hooked on porn and not drag that into marriage."

Ann Wilson: That is a very good vision. Fall is when small groups start back up.

Dave Wilson: No, fall is when football starts.

Ann Wilson: Small groups start back up, too. If you're a group leader, you've been thinking about pulling some couples together for a marriage or family study. I hope you're thinking that. This really is the best time of year to grab material.

Dave Wilson: You can get them right now through the end of August. At FamilyLife, all the workbooks for our small groups are 25% off. No discount code is needed. You just go there and you can pick from Art of Marriage, Art of Parenting, or Vertical Marriage. They're all video studies and the workbooks are all included. It's phenomenal to watch God work in your family room, and it's so easy.

Ann Wilson: I feel like we've done almost all of these studies. They're so good. It's hard thinking what can we do this year. We have the answer for you, and it's on sale. 25% off at familylife.com/shop.

You said you worked on a documentary. What did that look like?

Jacob Valk: John Michael and I were 18, 19 trying to help our friends who were struggling themselves. John Michael tells this story often. He would buy copies of books we loved, drop them off at friends' houses, and they wouldn't get read because it's a book that says "pornography" on it.

That's going in the background of my head. A few years go by, I go to school at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. I met a guy named Tim Challies. I asked Tim about his book, Sexual Detox. Tim's hilarious. He said, "Books are fine, there are better books out there." But he stopped and he said, "You know what's interesting to me? We have this video problem of pornography and in answer, we write books. There could be space for video solutions to a video problem." That was fascinating to me.

John Michael and I had worked on film projects before. I called him and I said, "What would it look like for us to reach out to all of the names we respect the most who are writing on the issues of pornography and ask them if they would come together as this dream team for a documentary?" We started wrestling with what this would look like. We had a couple of convictions. First, can we make this free? What we did over the summer is we crowd-funded $85,000 in order to produce it.

We also said we want to talk to men and women. We're so done with it being good to extend the gospel of freedom to guys, but if you do that to guys only, what you're implicitly saying is the gospel that sets guys free is not for you, women. Women are being trapped today and struggling. The addiction is escalating among women. We get these messages on Instagram. As we started building this documentary, we were sharing promos. Into the Light documentary is free on our website and it walks through the process of change from bondage in sin to freedom in Christ.

We filmed with Garrett Keel, Deepak Reju, and Jonathan Holmes. We got messages from these girls on Instagram who would write us these beautiful essays about how they got exposed to pornography and how they struggled and how they didn't think they could talk to anyone in their church. Some of them would end saying, "I found freedom and God is good," and some of them said, "I'm still in the middle of it." That was just something we were really keyed in on early on as an awareness. We're just uniquely at a place where people have paved the road to have those conversations more.

Dave Wilson: So how does it work for a person struggling? How do they find you? What do they do? Do they watch the videos, go on a course, do it with a group, or do it alone?

Jacob Valk: All of them. For the person who's struggling, that was our first resource, the Into the Light documentary. What we did is we made the documentary so it's a "start the conversation, get everyone on the same page." You could watch it, an hour and 20-minute film. You can watch it at a youth group or a church showing.

What we also did is we split the documentary up into seven chapters and we made an accompanying workbook that goes with it so that you can slow it down video by video and really dive into the discussion questions in the workbook. If someone wanted to do discipleship, one-on-one accountability, they could do that for seven weeks. That's how we built that first resource for that. A great way if you're convicted of your sin and you're struggling is to go watch the documentary first.

Ann Wilson: What's that one called?

Jacob Valk: Into the Light. What the devil loves to do is trap you in immediacy. He doesn't want you to see far, have a vision for your life, or understand God. He just wants you trapped in the moment. What the documentary does, I think, pretty well is give you that whole process that ends. Garrett Keel ends it and then David Platt does some even more. It gives you a vision of life like, "You're free and you're plugged into a church and you're helping other people, and even your freedom could lend you to serve missions and spread the gospel further." That's a really cool vision to orient your life around. If you're just stuck in the "my phone needs a delete app," which is really important, but if you're stuck there, you don't see the whole picture.

Dave Wilson: We got into some stuff today. This is so helpful and so needed. You need to get Jacob's video, Parenting and Pornography. You can get it at our website familylifetoday.com. We've got him back for tomorrow, so you don't want to miss that.

Ann Wilson: Life is full of challenges, and families today need biblical truth more than ever. As a FamilyLife partner, your monthly gift helps bring the truth into homes every single day through podcasts, events, and resources. Let's make a lasting difference together. Become a partner today. Just go to familylifetoday.com and click the donate button.

Dave Wilson: FamilyLife Today is a donor-supported production of FamilyLife, a Cru Ministry, celebrating 50 years of helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.