Ryan Swanson: Hello and welcome to the Satisfied program here on the Thee Generation podcast. This is Ryan Swanson and I’m excited to jump into another segment giving you tools to win the war on purity. In our last podcast, we looked at Ecclesiastes chapter four and began a very important discussion on accountability. And the step I gave you from that was to go and speak to someone in your life that deserves to know apparent, some kind of authority that you have, your most immediate authority in life that should know. About your struggles in the moral arena.

And I trust that you’ve been obedient to the Lord’s leading in that way and anyone who he’s led you to speak to that you have already done that. If not, that is a prerequisite to the steps I will give you in this coming podcast here today. But I did tell you as I gave you that exhortation that I know that you have probably… Quote unquote tried that before. You have probably gone and confessed things before.

Many people have, many young people especially, have at some point felt a guilt and shame of their own wrongdoing and have gone and confessed that thinking that it would give them the victory and it hadn’t. So I understand that you’ve probably tried this before and this does not equal victory and it is so important that you understand that really no step that I’m giving you in any of these podcasts equal victory. These are tools to use to point you towards the biblical battle plan for victory, but none of them you can just lay a hold of it and say, okay, this is it, I finally discovered victory, but let me say this about the accountability that we’re going to be discussing today. While I’m not going to say that this is the only thing needed for victory, I will say that from my own life and experience with others as well, this is the only thing missing. For many men and women’s victory.

The topic of today’s podcast, the threefold cord, is really the foundation of many principles and tools that we will discuss in the coming podcasts, but you have to get what we are discussing today. It is so, so crucial and it’s missing from most of our lives today. So let’s jump right into Ecclesiastes chapter four and we’ll begin where we left off last month. And that’s going to be verse nine. Are better than one because they have a good reward for their labor.

For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him that is alone when he falleth, for he hath not another to help him up. And we focused last time on that aspect of being alone in that podcast entitled Never Alone. I gave you the point that I’ve never met anyone who’s been able to conquer and find victory in the moral arena on their own. There has to be someone else involved.

And so like I said last time we focused on the authority side and being sure that the people in our lives that deserve to know that they know and they are a part of our victory as much as we can make them a part of our victory. But there is another aspect to this. This is kind of a difficult thing to discuss but I need you to understand something. Your parents it is very likely that they did not grow up in the same environment that you did. Now what do I mean by that?

Do remember in our discussion from Proverbs chapter five, I believe it’s verse eight, says Solomon talking to his sons and he says concerning the strange woman, remove thy way far from her and come not nigh the door of her house. Remember how we talked about in that day, if you were going to go out and find the strange woman, man, you had to go across town to find her. Okay, well, where are we at today? Well, the strange woman, as we talked about in that podcast, is in your pocket on your cell phone. She’s on billboards.

She’s all over the place. She’s floating around in the air on the wifi. I mean, there’s no, you don’t have to cross town. You don’t even have cross the room, hardly. So it’s a different temptation today than it was then.

But the reason I’m bringing that up now is because of this. Although I’m quite confident that your parents did not grow up in Solomon’s day, they did not grow up in 2021 either. The temptations are changing and we cannot blame our parents for the fact that they do not understand the availability of sexual temptations and how that affects us from a young age. I’ve noticed as many others have that the earlier someone is exposed to pornography and sexual material, then the deeper that that addiction goes and the harder it will be to root that out and conquer it. So a parent that did not grow up understanding that because pornography just was simply not as available.

We are really the first generation to know what it’s like to be infiltrated with sexual material. So what does that mean? That our parents have nothing to do with our victory? Absolutely not. Your parents need to be as much a part of your victory as they are willing to be and to come alongside of you.

And honestly, in many cases, they will be as much and help to your victory as you make them. So you need to involve them as much as possible. And I would encourage anyone to have a set time every week where you are with your parents and staying accountable to them. And I don’t just mean telling them what you did wrong. I mean giving them an update.

This is the victory I had. This is the compromises I had. I just need you to be a part of my victory every step along the way. That is a key for every young person’s victory. But it’s not the only part of it either.

As we look at this verse back in Ecclesiastes chapter four, verse nine, or sorry, verse 10, for if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow, but woe to him that is alone when he falleth. If you’re only accountable once a week, you’re alone for six days. And we all know from experience, a lot can go down in six days. So there is definitely an aspect and requirement here for daily. Accountability.

Now, it sounds crazy. Making time to do anything daily takes a sacrifice. But what in the world would daily accountability look like? Well, I just want to make a point while we’re here and I thought about making this a separate podcast, but it so fits in that I really couldn’t. It’s just a part of this.

So let me I’ve got a question for you. What things do you do every day? Matthew six verse 30 forces take therefore no thought for the moral. For the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. Ephesians 5 verses 15 and 16.

See then that you walk circumspectly not as fools but as wise redeeming the time because the days are evil. There is so much temptation in one day that if we do not combat this day to day, if we only combat it week to week, month to month, We will lose the daily battle and if you lose the daily battle, the war is lost. The most important 24 hours of your life are the next 24 hours of your life because what you do in the next 24 hours will decide and dictate the direction for the rest of your life. You could do things in the next 24 hours that completely ruin the rest of your life. You could do things in the next 24 hours that would end your life.

It is crucial to fight. The battle on a daily basis. It is not wrong to keep track of streaks and to have goals. I’ve known guys that are very goal oriented and they’re just looking forward to when they’d have 30 days of victory and then two months of victory in three months. And that is a great thing.

It is an awesome thing to to celebrate those times and give God glory for extended periods. But understand that if our victory comes because we’re counting the days behind us since our last failure, and our victory comes from counting the days until some anniversary that we’re looking forward to, the easy thing to do is to lose track of the next 24 hours. And ultimately, none of those anniversary dates in the future matter, and those streaks don’t matter if you can’t find the victory in 24 hours, so it’s right in front of you. So that’s why I say the next 24 hours of your life are the most important 24 hours of your life. So what things are you going to do in those 24 hours and in the next 24 hours?

I mean every day. Have you ever noticed that the things generally the things you respect most about people are the things they do every day? I know for my parents I respected them so much because I can remember my dad was a Businessman for years before he went into the ministry. I remember he would get home from work Whenever he was not working I could I like clockwork I could walk into his room and always find him laying on his bed with his Bible open studying the scriptures My dad went to a Bible college, but not for a Bible degree. He had a social studies education major a coaching minor He did not go there Studying to be in ministry, but when God called him to ministry, he was ready.

Why because every day He was meeting with Jesus and studying the word and I respect him so much for that my mom as well I can always find her in the morning spending time with Jesus. She does it every day. What you do every day will change you. If you eat junk food every day, it’ll change you. But if you run every day, it will change you.

If you play video games or watch TV every day, it will change you. But if you spend time with Jesus every day, it will change you. You see, the things we do every day are the things that make us who we are. So when we talk about something like when the verse says, woe to him that is alone when he falleth, we need to be accountable. We need to be answering to somebody every day.

And you say, I don’t know if I have time to, I don’t know if I can make that happen. Well, ask yourself, what things are you making time to do every day? And when you get a list of those things, decide what things need to go and scoot over and be removed completely in order to make room. For the things that this passage dictate need to happen every day. Because if you make small unchecked compromises in your purity every day, mark it down, it will change you.

But if you stay accountable every day, guarding against those compromises, it will change you. So what do we know at this point then? We need to have an authority figure involved in our victory, but there also needs to be somebody who can be a part of our daily victory. Now this is going to be discussed more as we look on in the following verses. So let’s read in verse 11 of Ecclesiastes chapter four.

Again, if two lie together, then they have heat, but how can one be warm alone? If one prevail against him, two shall withstand him. And here it is. And a threefold cord is not quickly broken. Now look at that imagery that’s used here for a second.

A threefold cord. When you picture a rope and the different strands involved in contributing to the strength of that cord, there’s something very unique. There’s not one of those strands of the cord that is contributing any more than it’s depending on the other strands of the group for its strength and stability. You see, our view of accountability and really discipleship in general is that there’s someone who has arrived and then everyone else is clinging to them for dear life. But the picture here is not everyone depending on one.

The picture is every strand of the cord as they’re wound around each other, equally contributing and depending infinitely to the strength of the cord. And what that requires of everyone in that group, in that cord, is outflow. That’s something that we miss so much. Our accountability does not require outflow. In other words, my victory, the reason I’m getting victory is only for me.

The reason that I’m seeking purity is for me when I don’t have outflow. It doesn’t matter to me who else is in the same battle, who else is fighting this. All I know is that I want to be clean. I want to be pure. And so I’m going to try and find someone who can help me and contribute to my victory and I will depend on them.

And this is generally best case scenario for people in our churches and ourselves. But let me say not only will you never find victory alone, you will never find victory without outflow. And I can’t explain this except that it is clearly the picture given in this verse. That your responsibility is not just depend on others for your victory. It is to also at the same time simultaneously daily contribute to the strength of others’ victory.

Now what in the world does that look like? Remember how we talked about apparent or authority in our life is likely not fighting the same battle in the same way or to the same degree that we are. But many of your peers are. Many people around you that you know, your friends are. You know the saddest thing about this battle is that so many of us are fighting the same battle from different trenches.

Completely oblivious to the others who being destroyed in their own trenches. We’re all fighting it alone. You know people who need this. You have friends guys, you have friends ladies who are fighting the same battle, but they’re fighting it alone. And you understand that better than anyone else because you’re fighting the same battle.

Other people that want to help them that are more immediately in their lives like an authority figure in their life, they also want to help them, but they Generally cannot quite totally understand the severity of the combat, but you do and You. And I have an obligation to those around us in their trenches because we understand we need them and they need us and You don’t sit there and spend your time trying to find peace in your own trench all by yourself When others are being obliterated in their own trenches the battle is not done until we win this together. And the reason that Satan has been so successful in infiltrating our churches and destroying us in the moral arena is that he has replaced the transparency and honesty and discipleship that makes a church with deception and pride and facades so that no one can go there to get help because they won’t admit they need it. No one wants to admit the battles they’re facing every day. But what you need to understand is that 60 to 70%, the last statistic I heard was 68 % of evangelical men in our churches are struggling with a pornographic addiction, and 30 % of women or more.

You’re not alone. And I don’t tell you that so that you lower the bar. Sadly, I hear this happening where we hear, oh man, I’m not the only one doing this, so. I guess maybe I’ll lower the standard on what I hoped for for victory, since it’s a more common addiction than I thought. No, that’s not the point.

That is not the point. The reason we share these statistics is that you see the urgency of the battle—that your brethren, I mean the friends, the family, the people that you know and love, are being slaughtered. And you know it’s destroying them because it’s destroying you. These are the people who need to be a part of your cord. These are the people who understand.

These are the people who you can understand to help. This is what a threefold cord looks like. When you have men and women who are combining trenches, they’re saying, hey look, I’m not going to fight this alone anymore. You’re not going to fight this alone anymore. We’re getting together on this.

And daily, we are going to fight the battle together. Why are we fighting the same battle in different trenches? When we’re taking on an enemy in the front line of his attacks on the church, we need to jump in the same trench and fight this together every day. So first of all, who is that going to be in your life? Well, I don’t know, I can’t tell you.

I don’t know who’s in your life that needs this. But if you don’t know someone already who is struggling in this way, who you can reach out to and be that person to them and they can be that for you, then you need to find someone because they are around you. And it is God’s will for your life to be a part of their victory and for them to be a part of yours. So you need to find who that is. Now, can that be apparent?

Well, this is what I would say. It needs to be someone that you have an outflow in their victory. In other words, it’s someone who is vulnerable enough with you, who is honest enough with you, that you have the ability to encourage and to strengthen and to pray for and to give direction and help to them in their victory. For most young people, that’s not going to be apparent. Understandably so now there might be a parent that says look I just want to be honest with you son and I’m gonna help you through this and I understand because I have my struggles and you have yours and let’s be accountable together daily.

And and we’ll share how we’re doing you know there might be a parent that does that but Generally, it’s not going to be a parent who is in that position again that parent should definitely be a part of your your victory every week discussing. And communicating to them Everything telling them everything but this day this person who’s in the in the trench with you daily is Someone who you also have outflow into their victory now I’ve been leading and facilitating groups like this for a little over a year now and I’ve seen guys helped and strengthened so much myself included by having Groups like this. We just call it the trench. This is the trench This is where we jump in together on a daily basis, and we’re honest with each other and we’re helping each other conquer the daily compromises that come into our life. And we will talk more about what is actually communicated in each of those times, those brief times on a daily basis.

That’s going to be in the next podcast. There’s too much to fit into one of these. So that’s going to be in the next podcast. But until then, your goal is to find someone who will be in this trench with you. For these groups, by the way, really three is the ideal number.

There’s a reason it says a threefold cord. Once you get to four, it’s really hard to do that every day. And two is not quite the same dynamics of having a threefold cord. When you have two people, it’s easy to have one person that is doing more of the reaching than they are actually being held by the other person. And so it becomes kind of the wrong idea, the wrong model there.

There’s a reason it says a threefold cord, because there’s a cross discipleship to it that is absolutely incredible. I’m in one group right now with a guy from Florida, a guy from here in Wisconsin, and another guy in London, England. And what we’re seeing God do is incredible because as one guy has a rough day, he has a compromise in some way. Then we have guys from around the world really who are able to help and contribute and check in. Often what you’ll find is when one guy has a compromise and he has a rougher day and needs help, another guy just had an incredible day of victory who was able to reach out and encourage and help and point the other guy to victory.

Then the following, it might be different. The other guy may be more under attack and then the one who before was under the attack is now strengthened and encouraged in the Lord and he’s helping the other guy. And it is just a beautiful idea of this threefold chord being infinitely woven with no one depending more than their contributing to the group. So how in the world practically then are you going to facilitate, what platform are we going to use to be able to have that communication on a daily basis? For the first several months of doing this, there were two young men who I called every single day and would be accountable with them.

Now it was very brief phone calls and we made it a point. From the very beginning that we are not going to discuss anything else in these phone calls. This is only going to be the trench. This is only going to be accountability because even if we have, let’s say we call on a Saturday and we all have all the time in the world so we get to chat and everything and then we do our accountability great, well come Monday, we may not have all that time. And I don’t want someone to not answer a phone call because they don’t have 20 minutes to chat about fantasy football when the point of this is the trench.

So we only discuss things pertinent to the trench. And if it’s on a phone call, it shouldn’t be any longer than a minute, a couple minutes. A couple minutes is all it needs to take. And so when I get that call from my accountability partner, I know, okay, this is gonna be a brief phone call. And so I have time, I have a couple minutes I can do this.

I’m not worried about it taking 20 minutes. That needs to be a set regimen between you and held to that. Is because it can become… Very laborious and it doesn’t need to. The things that we’ll be communicating, again we’ll talk about that next time on what exactly we’re communicating every time, but they do not need to take long.

They’re very direct and to the point. And so you’re finding someone not willing, not just willing to commit an hour or two to you a day, that’s not what it’s going to take. It’s going to be five minutes, let’s say a day, who’s willing to give that amount of time, but it’s every day. Every day, and some days it’ll be hard, but you’ll do it because it’s right and you’ve committed to it. So someone who will hold you to it and who will themselves be willing to commit that time.

But we’ve found there is an easier way and a much more helpful way to do this than a phone call. If you have the ability to download an app on a smartphone, whether that’s yours or your parents or someone you have access to, the app Marco Polo, is a very helpful app for this. Now it’s kind of hard for me to just advertise and advocate for a third party secular app like this. Eventually we would love to have our own application that we would be able to make available and as part of the generation for the accountability purpose. But there is so much into that and we’ve talked it through, but that is many months and.

Honestly many thousands of dollars down the road. So if the Lord ever has that come to pass, it would be awesome But until then we are looking at what we have available and Marco Polo does a decent job with this you create a group and what we do is we check in the group is called the trench we check in once a day so in the evenings we come on and The rule is 60 seconds or less. What you do is you record a video of yourself and it posts that video to the group. They can watch it live or they can watch it later. It’s not as laborious as a phone call and time consuming because you don’t have to align all your schedules to make this happen.

I can check in before I go to bed and someone else can check in before they go to bed and on our own schedules we can do that. We can watch it on our own time, watch the others’ on their own time. We can contribute and give advice to others on our own time and all this happens and in different time zones or on other sides of the world, and this is happening because of the helpfulness of this platform, Marco Polo. So it’s a free app, there is a paid version, but that’s not necessary. Just get a free account on there and whoever the Lord leads you to reach out to, if they are willing to use that platform, it has been a very, very helpful tool to many of us now who are doing these groups.

So look, I know this has been a lot, a lot to fit in here, but remember the question that we asked at the beginning, what are you doing every day? Because what I’ve just presented to you from Ecclesiastes chapter four is God’s will for you every day. Especially if you are a man or a woman who is bound to a sexual addiction, it is still a stronghold in your life, you need to fight this daily and you need to be a part of someone else’s victory as well. You’ll never get victory alone, and you’ll never get victory just doing it for yourself. So step from this week, if you’ve not already become transparent with an authority member, someone in your life, you need to do that and make them a part of your victory as much as they are willing to be.

Make them a part of your weekly victory, but also find someone who you can have outflow with on a daily basis, someone who is willing to be a part of your victory and someone who you are willing to be a part of theirs. How do you find that person go start being honest with people go to people who think they know you friends who think that They understand who you are and go to them say look. I need to be honest with you. I need help I’m going through a lot and this is some some of the things I’m going to obviously men going to men women going to women keep it appropriate But going to your friends and just being honest and transparent somebody’s got to be honest first Why don’t you take that step? Ask the Lord for courage to be transparent and honest and just say, look, I need help with this.

Will you be a part of my victory? And what will often happen is that they’ll open up to you about where they can relate. That’s happened to me so many times as I’ve given my story and other men will say, look, I’m right there, man. Sometimes they break down weeping like you have no idea where I’m and I need this. And those are the guys you’re looking for that desperation.

But it starts with you being honest. So go find someone to jump in the trench with. God’s got someone for you. So find them. Before our next podcast, find who that is.

Look, I’d love to hear stories of what this looks like as you find others who are desperate. Feel free to shoot me an email, satisfied@theegeneration.org and just share with me how this has been a help and who you’ve been able to find to be a part of your victory. Also, if you have any questions about this, I know we’re. Kind of discussing some things that are a little bit new to how transparent we’re willing to be. And so if you have questions on this, feel free to reach out to me again, satisfied@theegeneration.org.

Thank you guys so much for listening. I know there’s been a lot packed into this podcast, but I look forward to next time to our podcast next month, entitled No Tolerance, as we take an exciting look into what exactly we need to be communicating every day, what this is going to look like to see the battle won on a daily basis. Take the steps that the Lord is leading you to right now so that you and other people you know can learn what it means to be less gratified and more satisfied with Jesus Christ.