37- Facing the Enemy

When you think of the enemy, or a villain - what comes to mind? He he/it "out there"? Yes, there is for sure an enemy who wants to destroy you. He's at work night and day to do that. But, more often than not, he's got a collaborator. Guess who it is? Look in the mirror. That's who we're focusing on with this episode. 

Email me at mike@menrestored.com if you'd like more information about my 90-day Exodus Freedom Journey pathway and cohort. It's built for men in ministry, just like you and also the Christ-follower still feeling enslaved by pornography. 

Together, let's reclaim your freedom! 

Transcript

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Hi everyone, I'm not sure if you're a man in ministry, but I want to invite you, if you are, and this is a problem for you, pornography. I want to invite you to this cohort that I have. It's safe and it's confidential, and you need that. You need a place to go to talk about this and to get some deep learning and brotherhood to fight together with other men. That's what I want to offer to you. Stay tuned at the end of the episode to find out how to be in touch with me so that you can learn more about this cohort. I don't want you to have to ever live in isolation like I was living for so many years as a young pastor. I want you to know that you don't have to be alone in this anymore. So I'll see you on the other side. Listen in and let's get into the episode. You are a man seeking freedom from pornography. You know what's at stake if you don't break free. Your marriage, your family, and your faith. Welcome to the Exodus Freedom Journey podcast. Here you'll discover insights and tools to help you find lasting freedom. Starting in as little as 40 days, you are worth the fight. Your marriage is worth the fight. Your family is worth the fight. Together with God's mighty hand, let's reclaim your freedom. All right, welcome to number 37 here in these episodes, these teachings, these lessons. Have you ever thought about the purpose of an enemy in a story or the villain? Have you ever thought about that? I um think I knew it before I recorded this section, or at least I learned it at some point. But it was also, though, uh from me just watching how a villain in a story functions. And so also there's more to it than just that in this uh session specifically. But there's more depth to this enemy that we're talking about. This enemy is not just something or someone outside of you. This whole thing that we're living, this this great controversy of good and evil between good and evil, the store of redemption, it's best lived out. More often lived out, I should say. In our heads. It's more often lived out right between your ears, behind your eyes. You know, you're making those choices. You're letting things into your life, you're letting you're get keeping things out of your life. Facing the enemy means talking about and being very clear and trying to find out from um just having doing some exercises and trying to find out why you think the thoughts you do, why these thoughts come into your head. And so I hope that this helps you. I hope that this uh can grow you, and I'll see you on the other side. Hopefully, you'll learn a lot. Hello and welcome to session seven. This session is going to be about facing the enemy. That's the title of this one. And I want to just go back real quick to the basics of storytelling, right? Storytelling. Storytelling is about a character who wants something and has to overcome obstacles to get there. When I say get there, I mean the end of the story. So we're gonna be talking about what gets in the way of the hero getting there, what gets in the way of that person getting to the end of that story and finding that resolution. And so, as you might have guessed, there's a main focus that we're gonna be looking at, and one of the main pieces to that character, that hero, in other words, you, hindering you getting to where you need to go, to that place of freedom. There are two pieces of freedom, two parts of freedom, if you will. I am free, I live in my own freedom, that's one. Then there's cosmic freedom. That's what we're going to be getting into in just a little bit here before we finish out these sessions, is the cosmic freedom that is awaiting, that is awaiting for us to gain our freedom. So the most important, and the one that's right there in front of us, is our freedom. And remember, God freed the Israelites on that Passover night. They were a free sovereign nation. They walked out of Egypt. But you know what? They had to walk. They had to go through that Passover ceremony. They had a part to play in gaining their freedom. God did what only God could do. Now it's up to them to join in that freedom movement. God's doing work to gain freedom. God brought you to this curriculum to help you gain your freedom. So we're going to focus in on, though, the enemy of our freedom. Now, there are two pieces to this, two um looks at what an enemy is. Any hero who goes through that journey has to face not just an enemy out there, but there's an enemy in here as well. Just like there's a cosmic freedom that will happen that really doesn't have much to do with us because only God can do it, except that we participate or that we're there, we can't do much about like that timing and God recreating the new earth and all of that. We're just going to be there to take it all in and see it all happen. But we're going to have the choice of whether to be there or not, right? And it's the same way with your own personal freedom. You must choose it. You must choose to face that enemy. There are two enemies that we need to confront. I've categorized, as I've looked at and researched and wrote out all my notes as one category is our common enemy. That is Satan, the accuser. He is our common enemy. Then there's your enemy, your own personal enemy. Now, the problem here is Satan uses both. He is our enemy, yes. But your own personal enemy, if you will, is that enemy within. The enemy without and the enemy within. Now, the enemy without has a lot less power if you can conquer that enemy within. If you can conquer that voice within, if it's anything like the voice that I've had over the years and especially over the last number of months, is I've been working on building this curriculum. If you're anything like me in that sense, that voice has way too much power. That voice has way too much say over you. That's who we're going to be talking about mostly today. In a story, you've got the hero character, then you have the villain character. That villain is someone outside of the hero, but remember, a hero also goes through this process of learning who he is. That person goes through the process of figuring out do I have what it takes? You remember we talked about that. Can I get through this? Do I have the strength, the courage, the power, the wisdom, the faith, the perseverance to get through this journey? So there's a purpose to the villain in a story. There's a purpose here. So this is a little bit of a twist now that I hope that I can get you to understand. I need you to be able to step outside of yourself and to try to figure out a little bit about this enemy that is opposing you from within. Truthfully, that's part of the role of coaching. So I can only take you so far in this process. If we were to be sitting across from each other or talking on the phone or something, I would be asking you certain questions to help bring this out even more. So I'm gonna try to do what I can during this session to help you understand, try to look from without into your life, into your story, and try to find out those voices. Now, we did this in an exercise in the last module, sort of. We got the process started. If you go to session eight of module three, you filled out, or at least you attempted to fill out, I hope you did, this worksheet on the lies that I've been told. And then you're empowering truths to counteract those lies. That is a great place to start. Go back to that worksheet and let's use that to try to be able to step outside of yourself so that you can get an idea of those lies that you have been believing. Those lies come from that enemy within that want to have you knocked down, that don't want you to move forward. Our common enemy, Satan the accuser, cheats and uses that. He doesn't just have his own voice accusing you. Satan, if you remember that name, means the accuser. Somehow he brings his voice in with your voice to double the accusation, if you will. Does that make sense? So part of this growth journey is that you're learning to distinguish between God's voice that never accuses, never accuses, and the enemy's voice. God's voice that never puts you down, and that voice from within that constantly is trying to keep you from moving forward. So much of that voice wants to stop you from moving forward. That's the enemy that I need you to learn how to face. Now, that being said, I needed you to objectify that a little bit because we're going to talk about the villain asking the question. Have you ever asked this question? In fact, what's the purpose of a villain in the story? It's not just so you love hating that villain, by the way. It's not just so that you love hating, say, Thanos, or you love hating, say, Darth Vader, or you love hating all the orcs there in The Lord of the Rings, or as I just finished listening to The Hobbit, the main enemies or parts of the tools of the big enemy was the goblins or the wargs, if you will. So there are lots of little enemies out there, but what's the purpose of those enemies? The enemy also can be included, by the way, the environment, circumstances. What does that or what should that enemy do? There is a purpose to the villain in a story. The purpose of the villain in a story is to sharpen the focus of the hero. I think that could be summarized just like that. Sharpen the focus of the hero. Of course, among other things, the villain also helps the hero learn more about who he is. Can he take on the villain in all of his agencies within a storyline, right? Can the enemy overcome the hero? But can the hero learn more about himself through this process? To me, one of the best examples as I've listened to lately, this is only just front in my mind, is I recently finished listening to all of the Harry Potter books. It is a classic hero's journey where Harry has to learn how to be able to handle what Voldemort is throwing at him. He needs to learn how to handle all the environment around him there at Hogwarts and his home family that hates him just as much. You know, he has to learn about how to handle himself ultimately at the end to become the man to overcome the main villain, the main enemy of the whole story, the main antagonist, right? Protagonist, antagonist. The purpose of the antagonist is to move the protagonist along, the hero. Focus that person so that he becomes a better person. It serves the story. Now, look at your enemy. Look at the enemy that you are trying to become more objective about. Those voices, that one voice that constantly is telling you, keep you down. So the best quote I can think of for all of this is failure is an event, not a person. That is a voice to me that's been in my head for many, many years. I have felt like a failure. Turn that on its head, change that around. I am not a failure. I have done things that I've failed at, and there is an event that has come and gone in my life that was a failure. Yes, of course, we need to live with those consequences of a failure, for instance. And yes, part of where you are now is learning that you have to live into some of these consequences of listening to that voice. What I want you to learn now, though, is to discern how to listen, not to the voice that's trying to keep you back, hold you down, but listen to God's voice, who wants to move you forward. Again, the purpose of the villain is to help pull you towards the end of that story. If someone's building a story, that's what's happening. So you've got Revelation 12, and you know my favorite verse in there, verse 11. Before that, though, it says that Satan knows that his time is short. And so we can take that little bit of information to know the enemy is defeated. Our common enemy, he is a defeated foe. The cross we overcome by what? The blood of the land. The blood of the land ensured his defeat. So the enemy of our souls is going to be defeated very, very soon. There in Revelation 12, he knows that his time is short. So the enemy of our souls should not have that much power. It's when we listen to our own voice that it's trying to keep us down that gives him more power. Does that make sense? It gives him more power when we listen to that voice that is the enemy within. So we want to learn how to neutralize that enemy within. Another big enemy within that has kept you down up to this point is that shame, right? The whole point of why I'm doing some of this is so that you can own your story, that shame doesn't own you, that your story doesn't own you, that you own your story, and that shame has no power in your life anymore. Your story can now become a powerful vessel, a powerful conduit for another man's story to gain his own power in it, so that he is not shamed by his own story either. I want to also get clear on what our common enemy, Satan, is opposed to. He is opposed to your own personal freedom. He is opposed to your marriage. I know he's opposed to my marriage, believe me. He is opposed to you having connection within any of those relationships. He is opposed to you finding intimacy with another male, with non-sexual male intimacy, sexual intimacy with your bride, and then the relationship intimacy with your children. He is opposed to all of that. He's opposed to you thriving. Let's be clear on all of that. He is mostly opposed, though, to you discerning between his voice and the enemy within, that voice that is your own voice. He is opposed to that. Because once you know that it's not his voice, it's your own voice trying to accuse you, then you can distinguish. And you have full control over that voice. You have full control over whether that voice has control in that moment, in that day, or not, whether that voice carries that trigger into medicating the pain, into that session of going back to pornography, going back to masturbation, and all of that feel good dopamine. That voice will not carry you. That freedom from that voice, the enemy is opposed to that. Big time. He is opposed to your focus. He is opposed to your peace. He is opposed to your story finding root in someone else's story. So you're not opposed to it. Your voice inside you wants to keep you from getting there. You don't feel like your story has any worth. You don't feel like you can make the difference in anybody else's life. That's not the voice of the enemy. That is the voice of your enemy. That's the voice of you inside of you. But the our enemy is gonna just kind of carry you along. He will always say, Yes, you can't ever do that. Your shame's always gonna keep you down. You have to face that enemy within, and you need to know that that enemy can be defeated and controlled perfectly through the help of the Holy Spirit. Here's a great question to think about. When the Israelites left Egypt, what enemy was more powerful? The enemy that they met along the way, or the enemy that they brought with them? I would propose it is the enemy that they brought with them. Over and over again, as you read through that whole narrative, they wanted to go back. In their heads, they never left Egypt. So many times it was evident that they wanted to go back to that so-called comfortable life of being slaves, to the point where they said, we might as well just die here in the desert, and God says, Well, that's what's gonna happen. So they had to stay in the desert, and they all died over a period of 40 years. Very sad. And there was one moment, a very fascinating story of Balaam. King Balak was so scared that he hired this guy, this mercenary prophet, if you will, Balaam, to try to curse Israel. He couldn't curse them, he could only bless them. And so the whole process happened where he just continued to bless, but then he said, I've got an idea. Take some of your women and have them marry the men. And then the results were they committed adultery physically and spiritually, because these women were idolaters. They were part of that heathen nation around there, the Moabites. And it worked. That became the enemy from without, that became the enemy from within, and it got them destroyed, and death and destruction was the result. So think about that. The enemy from within is tends to be more powerful than the enemy from without. The enemy from without, our common enemy, he is defeated. The enemy from within needs to be defeated. The enemy from within needs to be faced and taken control of. I've heard it said that our minds are like the air traffic control. The only thing that gets to land in our minds is something that we allow in there. Now, up to this point, perhaps, you've just given that no thought. It's happened so fast, you've just given it no thought. That path is completely worn out and it looks like it's been there all along. Once you slow that process down and you realize I don't have to let that trigger into my life. I don't have to go down that spiral path of doom scrolling and looking at this fantasy that I have in my head somewhere on a screen. You don't have to do that. It feels good and there's pleasure in it. Obviously, God made it that way, remember. But that's not the case. You don't have to go down that path. So think about the modules that we've been through already. You looked at your identity and we wanted to get clear on who you are as a beloved son of the king. Plus, we wanted to have you understand that you can build better habits. These habits that have been in your life and in your brain have worn out that path, as we talked about. And it's been a habit that's just gone on and on and on, and you just never questioned it up till now. And then we looked at obstacles. Obstacles are coming along that you didn't even know existed. Obstacles are coming along, but guess what? These obstacles mostly come from within. These obstacles that are they they look big. Remember, I asked you to consider asking God to show you the obstacle from his perspective. I have to do that all the time. I wrote into my daily declaration, in fact, that I live from a place of divine abundance, not human scarcity. I need to be reminded of that on a regular basis. I need to know that God's gonna take care of me and my family, not out of my own wisdom, not out of my own ability to go to work and make a few bucks. God will show up through the work that I do, especially through something like this. This is really important to me, this curriculum, and he's gonna help take care of and provide for my family. Now, what lies do you think about? What obstacles? So for me, that obstacle was a very limited view on how my family can be taken care of when it comes to our finances and our debts and other things, you know, my kids from a distance now. I started this process and my son was some living in our house. He came home from college, went back to the town where he went to school, applied for a bunch of jobs, did a shift completely, and now he's down in Florida where he wants to be. And he's going into a completely different field than he was even thinking about six, eight months ago now. He's in a completely different field. So I have to let him go and experiment with his life. I need to be able to say, I let you go and I bless you, my son. I wish I had more to offer him than just my my blessing and my time and any wisdom that I might be able to give him. I want to give him a lot more. So I've got to trust that God will provide for him because he trusts in God and I entrust him to God. Here's also something else I want to make sure you're clear on. The enemy has benefits. There are benefits to this voice. It's so important that you try to get objective and look at these lies and try to look outside in. Again, I can only do so much as I'm recording a session here. We would spend more time with this if I was coaching you. I want you to try to understand what that voice has been trying to get to you in your mind up till now. There are benefits to this because the the benefits are that you have lessons to learn out of this. But acknowledge, first of all, that the enemy, that voice within, has had some power up till now. Just acknowledge that. It's okay to acknowledge, yeah, that voice has had some power in my life. And I have to just point it out. Yes. Okay, let's draw the line in the sand. Now that voice is gonna have either less power or no power. I don't want that enemy within to have that power anymore. I don't want that voice to have that power anymore. So, what are the lessons that you can take out of this? Again, look back on those lies. Some of those lessons come out of those lies. So turn something around from not just again that I am a failure to what did I fail at before? And how can I learn not to fail again? How can I learn that failure moves me forward? Ultimately, if I'm tripping and I'm falling, I am still falling forward. I'm failing forward. As John Maxwell's book, Failing Forward says, I've listened to this and I've read through some of this already. The idea is that failure still moves you forward. It still must move you forward, only if you look at it that way, though, right? If you look at failure as an event, not you as a person, and you realize that it can move you forward. It's not an enemy to be opposed. It's an enemy to say, what can I learn from you? What can I take out of this whole experience? So you have failed. You have spiraled in the past. You have given into those triggers and all those fantasies. You have consumed pornography in the past. So what are the lessons you can learn? You are capable, for instance, of intimacy. That's one lesson right there. You are capable of interacting with the opposite sex. And I hope if you're married, you can definitely say, yes, I can interact with my wife. Yes, she's a human. No, she's not a screen. And yes, she will say no. She will have uh problems with her health or whatever. She's not going to be on-demand sex all the time. But yes, there are more benefits to being with your bride than being on a screen. The IP mistress offers no long-term benefits. Here are a couple other lessons that I thought about that the voice that the enemy within, I know has spoken to me that I'm trying to turn around. Um, self-doubt. A lot of self-doubt that I've been dealing with the last number of months. Instead of looking at myself doubt, I want to look at Jesus instead. I want to look at him as the solution. I want to look at him as the reason why I can move forward. Because he's reaching out to you. He's reaching out through the Holy Spirit to you now. You he goes ahead of me into that wilderness where you were and brought us together along the same Exodus freedom journey. So instead of self-doubt, I realize Jesus has a plan. I realize Jesus has men out there that he needs to introduce you to me, me to you. So instead of that self-doubt, look to Jesus. Another one is shame. Instead of living in the shame, I embrace the gospel good news of Revelation 12, 11. They overcame by the blood of the Lamb. The blood of the Lamb has so much power to overcome the shame, to overcome failures, to overcome not moving forward to the stagnation, to overcoming all of these thoughts that want to overrun us all the time. So maybe up till now, hopefully you're moving along this Exodus freedom journey and you are finding that you're getting some freedom. You're moving away from a life of just shame and guilt. And you're embracing that the gospel says, I am a beloved son of the king. You're embracing that for the first time in your life, and you're seeing that you have infinite value. You have so much value. Finally, as we finish up here, I want to leave you with a quote. It's not exactly inspirational, but it's insightful. So, and it's a great place for us to end because with this session, because I need you to see the differentiation here, okay? People swear they're fighting demons when the whole time they're fighting the consequences of their choices. See the distinction there? I don't want you to use the excuse. Well, I'm fighting the devil. I don't want you to use the excuse. The devil's trying to put me down. He is, yes. More often than not, my brother, it is something that is within, and you're fighting the consequences of the choices that you've made. Let's move forward to look at some positive consequences. Let's move forward building positive habits into our lives that have positive consequences, that have a positive outcome and result. I am so looking forward to the end of this curriculum. When I finish it, the result is going to be I'll have a full curriculum waiting for any man out there who needs freedom from pornography. That to me is how I'm moving forward. I want to have positive consequences in my life, positive outcomes and results in my life, not listening to that voice of my own enemy, the enemy within that voice, or the enemy, our enemy out there. That voice will not have control over me. God's voice has control. I want that voice to overcome and have positive outcomes and consequences in my life. God bless. All right, hopefully by now you realize that there's there's a lot more complexity to facing your enemy, right? There's more complexity to just seeing that there is this antagonist out there. It's not that simple. It's not that black and white. If you've lived life, you know, and you have a history, the longer you live, the more you realize that voice has power inside of you. And I just, I'm going to repeat it, but this image of the air traffic controller, and I do say this every day in my daily decoration and prayer, right? Nothing can come into my mind and land there without my permission. Now, I'd love to tell you that I'm always on uh task with that. I'm always thinking and realizing, hey, that doesn't belong there. That's that's not the no, I don't always do that. I I have changed my mindset quite a bit though in the last number of years. I'll give you just one example. I don't think I covered it in the lesson. Is um when I would say the phrase, well, that doesn't happen to me. When I would say the phrase something like, well, that's be that happens to other people and it it's not going to be happening to me. I have learned to immediately turn my eyes in my imagination to Jesus. He is the one I want to be looking at, not the mindset happening in my head. Um, and that's just a small example. It's it's an example of uh kind of a victimhood, if you will. And that you know, that one mindset, that victimhood mindset has crippled so many people. So I that's just one. There's so many I could be talking about. So you're not a victim, okay? You've got so much volition, so much choice and power in those choices, and access to infinite power, I might add. So please, please take this for what it is. It's your ability to choose, your ability to face the enemy that is within. Obviously, yes, we have that enemy without. Can't control what he does, but we can control how we respond to him and things around us. Again, I hope you choose, though, to face this with other brothers. And this is the offer. Reach out. If you want some support, you want that safety of a group, of another group of brothers to help you through. That's what I'm offering to you. Just reach out to me, Mike at memory store.com, and we will have a conversation. We'll see what's the best fit for you. Maybe it's individual coaching, maybe it's group coaching. We'll see. Anyway, hope to hear from you soon, and take care. I'll see you in the next episode. We're almost there. Thank you for listening to the Exodus Freedom Journey podcast. Together with God's mighty hand, let's reclaim your freedom.