My name is Austin. I’ve struggled with a pornography addiction for many years now.
I can’t remember how long it’s been. It’s been a while, and it’s been a struggle! I can speak into this, because I’ve found freedom in recent years. Using this software has really helped.
Table of Contents
- A Secret Porn Struggle In the Church
- What A Pastor Wishes Churches Knew About the Porn Struggle
- Pastors, Don’t Struggle Alone
- #1 Key to Breaking Free: One-on-One Accountability
- Real Change IS Possible
- Porn Accountability Software – A Key To Recovery
- Finding Purpose In My Struggle with Porn
- Conclusion: Resources to Find Accountability For Pastors
A Secret Porn Struggle In the Church
I wish that more people understood how common the issue really is. There’s a lot of people who struggle with pornography. I feel like the very nature within anybody with this struggle is to not want it to be known.
There’s shame and guilt that comes along with the struggle, let alone struggling as someone who’s supposed to be a spiritual leader. Or, like me, someone who was in training to be a spiritual leader.
Knowing that – and knowing how common porn use is – really helps with sharing it myself. It’s one of those things people say about sin a lot in general is that it likes to hide. Porn likes to be in the darkness.
How accountability empowered me to quit porn
When you shed light on it, this takes away its power. Almost like something that’s more scary feeling than it really is, when you don’t look it straight in the face, or when you don’t reach out for help. That’s what really helped me.
If there’s one word I use to talk about what helped me get out of this, it’s accountability.
We need accountability for a lot of things in our life, but especially for something like lust and the kinds of things that drives you to do.
How’s your thought life? (the million-dollar question…)
There’s just nothing that’s better than being accountable to somebody else for those thoughts.
My current accountability partner likes to come to me and say – and this is how they start the conversation – “How’s your thought life?”
That’s really a good way to put it, because temptation starts in your mind. Then it branches out to the things that we do to feed that lustful desire, lust really being the root sin of this problem.
When it comes to the particular part of my story being a pastor, I felt like the timeline of my struggle to success was right on the cusp of where it could’ve really caused me huge issues. I was about six months into my first ministry job when I started what I’m calling my current streak of being porn free.
What A Pastor Wishes Churches Knew About the Porn Struggle
There were 6 months where I was still in church leadership and still struggling with this. I feel like I’m probably not the norm.
When it comes to porn use and pastors, I feel like there’s probably plenty of pastors that still struggle with it, even though they might preach on a weekly basis. They’re trying to struggle with porn potentially and sadly, all by themselves. They’re struggling with this and not reaching out and getting help or using tools that are available like your software to get traction.
That’s something that I think congregations need to understand. Churchgoers need to understand that pastors are people too. Pastors have struggles. They have sins that they are going to struggle with as well.
Porn use is a particularly hard one, because a lot of times this kind of thing can end a pastor’s job, really. Sexual sin or that kind of thing can just be a breaking point, and it has been publicly in a lot of cases. On that side of things, I feel really blessed – really, really blessed by the time frame of when I broke out of it.
Pastors, Don’t Struggle Alone!
My thoughts that I want to share with anybody who is currently a pastor struggling with pornography – don’t struggle alone.
Stop struggling alone if you are!
I’m not even the lead pastor either. I’m sure there’s lead pastors out there that are still struggling and still wondering, How do I start getting help without my life just falling apart?
If you don’t already have accountability with somebody, you need it.
You need somebody who’s allowed to call you out on pretty much anything. Especially this.
That was a big thing for me – knowing that it wasn’t going to be on me to tell on myself! It was going to be known.
I wasn’t going to have the opportunity to hide in a (porn) struggle for any manner of time. It was going to be made known to my accountability partner pretty soon after messing up. So that was good.
Honestly, that was really good for me! I don’t know if that’s a symptom of another problem I have, which is being anti-confrontational.
The good side of that is that I didn’t want to have to have that conversation. So a lot of times, that was all it took was that positive peer pressure of: I don’t want to have to explain, Oh yeah, I messed up.
This has really brought porn into the light for me!
#1 Key to Breaking Free: One-on-One Accountability
I didn’t actually end up joining a group. It was more of a one-on-one accountability with a couple different people. When I got here, within eight months I had two people that were solid in my life – free to ask me anything.
Celebrate Recovery – A Christian AA
Then a little bit after that, I actually started going to Celebrate Recovery meetings.
It’s basically Christian AA. They start from a point of: we understand that the higher power they talk about in AA meetings is God. Then they go from there, and do a lot of the same steps. Really their whole mantra and thinking is that you can work these steps on anything that’s a hurt, a habit or a hang up in your life. It doesn’t have to be the classic alcohol or any other kind of substance abuse. It can be a sin habit or an addiction.
Feeling alone in the struggle with porn is a common pitfall.
What I had going on with pornography? It was definitely an addiction. So, I not only had that personal accountability one-on-one with a couple different people separately, but I also started going to those meetings. Come to find out that there were some other people in the group that struggled with the same thing, too.
That’s the other thing about bringing sin struggles to light is you realize just how not alone you are. You feel like you wish you had talked about it sooner, because then you would have realized you weren’t alone.
That’s another thing sin does. It likes to make you think you’re alone. That’s just another tool used psychologically to keep you there (thinking) –You’re crazy for struggling with this. No one else struggles with that. What’s wrong with you?
No, no, no, that’s a real struggle.
Real Change IS Possible
I guess the other thing to really focus on or to encourage people would be that when you’re in a zone like that, it really affects the way that you view a lot of things.
Porn is like a filter on everything you see and everything that you experience.
I started to notice a difference in myself, the further I was removed from porn.
There were times where I would stumble across something, and I knew that old me would have seen it as an opportunity to say, Oh, well, I can indulge in this for a while.
The new me – true mind transformation is real!
But that’s just not how it was anymore. My first gut reaction was to fast-forward what I was watching instead of rewinding it, for example, and telling my accountability partner about it the very next time I saw them. And it wasn’t even something that happened on a device that was tracked, or anything like that.
In the moment, my gut reaction was, Oh, get past that.
Then realizing later – that is not how I would have reacted to that even a few months ago when I was really in the heart of porn addiction!!
Another thing to know is that true mind transformation and neurological path rewiring can happen.
It’s a real recovery process that can happen. You don’t have to be stuck where you’re at and in the current ways of thinking you’re in.
You don’t have to stay there!!
Porn Accountability Software - A Key To Recovery
When people ask me about this, or I get the opportunity to talk about it, the first thing that comes to mind is accountability.
I talk about accountability, and it’s right there in your software’s name. Just having that extra layer of, It’s not up to me to hold myself accountable, at least when I’m accountable to the point that I’ve put that on all the devices I have access to.
I’m eight years in, and I still have it on my computer.
I don’t want to call it a safety net, but it’s just something in the back of my mind. It does truly fade away out of the front of my mind.
It’s not really something that I’m reminded of every time I turn on my computer or anything, but the temptation doesn’t ever truly go away.
Why I Still Use Porn Accountability Software 8 Years Later
If there is one more thing to include, it’s that specifically with this struggle, I have noticed that there’s good months and then bad weeks.
There are moments of almost weakness, but still having that accountability and still having those people who are allowed to ask me whatever, whenever, and still use that terminology, How’s your thought life? That’s where it starts.
I still have the software installed on my devices on pretty much everything that I have access to.
Just having it there still helps. It helps before things get too heavy in the thoughts of, Am I going to go there? Am I going to mess up with this?
Even after all this time, it helps with saying “No” knowing that it’s not going to be optional to be held accountable. I
t’s not going to be up to me to inform my accountability partner who is set up to get the emails. That has really helped.
I know that if I truly wanted to I could mess up after we’re done with this phone call, but I don’t want to!
That’s not what I want for my life.
That’s not what I want for my wife.
That’s not what I want for the people that are under me and my teaching at church.
That’s not what I want for my kids.
That’s not what I want for my life!!
So knowing that, and then just having that extra layer of protection and the extra layer of “push in the right direction” really helps.
That’s why I really like accountability versus other things that I’ve tried before. I tried filters. You can always get around a filter one way or another – soft core or hardcore. You can get there. I experienced that. I did that.
But you can’t get around the fact that your accountability partner is either going to know that you looked at something fishy, or you uninstalled Ever Accountable! That was worth the money right there. It was worth every cent.
Trying to quit watching pornography is like trying to quit smoking with a pack of cigarettes in your pocket all the time. With the way technology is now and cell phones, I feel like that’s pretty accurate.
Finding Purpose In My Struggle with Porn
I just preached recently on tragedies and covered Herod killing all the babies around Bethlehem, two years and younger, trying to get to Jesus. A big focus was that God doesn’t stop all tragedies. He also doesn’t let a single tear go to waste. That’s how I view my struggle with this.
Would I have rather not struggled with this at all?
Yes, but instead there’s so much use and so many reasons to speak out about it and to try and help other people.
Otherwise, it would be more of a waste and more of a “Why did I even have to go through that at all?”
On the flip side, sharing as much as I do, at every chance I get, even if it just helps one person, it’s going to be worth it. Hopefully it’ll help a lot more!
(We’re so inspired by Austin’s courage and grateful for his voice speaking out.)
Conclusion : Resources To Find Accountability For Pastors
The latest Barna study “Beyond the Porn Phenomenon” includes survey data from the church shows that many pastors in active ministry personally battle with a secret porn struggle in the church.
Finding one-on-one accountability may feel very challenging, if you wonder who you can trust.
Listen to Austin, have compassion on yourself, and stop struggling alone!
We highly recommend joining faith-based online porn recovery groups like Live Free’s small groups online.
Once inside these groups you have the opportunity to anonymously meet people who understand your struggle and can offer you support and needed one-on-one accountability.
Combined with our accountability software, you’ll gain the tools and support you need to gain traction and break free.
Like Austin, we believe there is hope and healing for you.
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Protection From Pornography
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