Ryan Swanson: This is Ryan Swanson on the Satisfied program here on Thee Generation podcast. Thanks for joining us again. I am actually in the studio here with my wife. I think for the first time on a podcast. Is that right?

Stephanie Swanson: I think so. Yeah, 

Ryan: You were on Faith Talks, yes, one time, 

Stephanie: yep, one time,

Ryan: One time on Faith Talks, but this is the first time on Satisfied, which would make you the first lady to have on the Satisfied podcast. So this is definitely monumental. Now, Faith Talks had their first man on their episode not too long ago, so we’re having to answer that. You’ll find out why in just a moment, why my wife is joining us for this episode in particular and perhaps for some future episodes.

 But first, I just want to give you an update on the app, the Chord app. Today was pretty exciting. We crossed the 200 user mark. So that was a big deal for us. And that’s people that have actually not only downloaded but also created an account and hopefully are being helped by the app and seeing victory from daily accountability. So we’re thrilled and praise the Lord for that benchmark there of hitting 200 users. There were some that heard about the app just through this podcast, have no other connection with us at all, as far as I can tell. But there’s been at least a couple that have told us they heard about it this way. So, maybe there’s some more here that need to be helped by that. You could be helped by downloading and using that app. If daily accountability could help you out, this is a great way to do it. So download The Cord from the app store, or you can look it up online at thecord.app. And also, you could help us out by spreading the word on this. There’s probably people, you know, very, very likely people that you know who could be helped by this as well. And maybe you don’t know exactly who those people are, but if you just take that step and trust the Lord to open up and share your testimony with someone and then just ask him if they’d be willing to be a part of your purity by being in an accountability group with you over The Cord App, I think you’d be surprised at how many reciprocate and share how they are struggling themselves or what God’s doing in their heart or the journey they’re on. And we’ll talk about that a little bit more today as a result of the testimony that we’ll be reading in just a moment, but just wanted to share that encouragement. If you could use The Chord app, download that. Thechord.app is the website and there’s a link there to download straight from there. So go ahead and utilize that for yourself and spread the word to as many as we can. Let’s see the Lord use this to the fullest potential. 

It was a neat thing yesterday. I was actually in my hunting blind at 530 in the morning and all of a sudden my phone. Going off with notifications of new website visitors. I’ve got it set up that way so I can see where people are visiting from. And it just starts blowing up. And there’s people visiting from all over the US, Canada, and different places around the world. And finally, I was just so curious that I looked up where those visits were coming from, as in what links they were clicking or how they were finding our website. And it turns out there is a prominent pastor and theologian and author that wrote an article. He came across our app from a pastor friend evidently that’s using it and he..this individual, this author wrote an article with a pretty much mild endorsement of the app, all in favor of it pretty excited about what we’re doing and what’s going on here. He hasn’t utilized it himself personally so he couldn’t be totally experientially behind it, but it was pretty positive and had links to our website on there. And so we actually had quite a few downloads yesterday from that article. And it just made me think that there’s so much power in that networking. So if people, well, for sure in your churches, like if you’re excited about this and have not shared it with your pastor yet, I don’t know what you’re doing. Like that’s where this is going to be used. So go to your pastor and just say, this is a, I’m excited about a tool for purity that the Lord’s leading me to use in my own life. Is this something we can implement in our church to a degree or at least make him aware of it? I think that’s going to be huge in getting this in the hands of pastors to use as tools for discipleship within their church.

So the other thing though is colleges.We’ve already seen users join from, I think, four different Bible colleges now, and that just has huge potential to multiply in those student bodies. So if that’s you, if you’re in a college, I think that’s one of the prime use cases for this app. People in that stage of life could definitely use this. Doesn’t exclude anyone else, but that’s, that’s huge. That’s huge. So if you’re in a college somewhere, start spreading this among the student body and, and even talk to your college administrators and supervisors and see if this is something that we could maybe partner with them on. Just start talking about it. We’re excited to see how the Lord could use and grow this and you could help us out by being kind of ambassadors on the ground in these different places. 

All right, well enough about the app. Let’s go ahead and move to our subject matter today. That’s another testimony. We’ve been doing a series of testimonies, as you know, but this one’s special. This is the first testimony from a young lady, and that’s why I have my wife here. She’ll be reading this one to us today, and I hope this is just the first of many, or at least several. I know of one more, right? At least one more that’s on the way from a young lady, and so we look forward to that as well. But we will be reading this one and probably future ones anonymously, so we won’t give you the name. But I’ll go ahead and turn it over to my wife; we’ll read this here and then have a brief discussion afterward on ladies’ purity.

Stephanie: All right, so she writes, “I was raised in a Christian home and went to church from the time I was conceived. Although my parents did their best to protect me from the influences of the world, the friends I had did the complete opposite. I was first introduced to the idea of pornography as a sixth grader, so around 11 or 12 years old. Toward the end of that school year, I ended up getting involved in a relationship with the elementary school maintenance man who was about 13 years older than me.

It started out as a friendship, but very quickly the relationship progressed. Since my mom was caring for my sister with her severe health needs and my dad was working a lot, I was searching for someone who could show me the love I was craving. This maintenance man gave me his undivided attention and made me feel like I was the only person in the world that mattered. Through a series of events over the next three years, our relationship changed from being just emotionally gratified to physical satisfaction. 

During that time, we were texting. It became obvious that he was using me to satisfy his own personal desires. At the end of my freshman year of high school, I had the privilege to go on a missions trip to Ireland. The Lord really used the missions trip team meetings leading up to that trip to convince me of my inappropriate relationship with this maintenance man. I went to my pastor’s wife and disclosed all that he and I had been talking about and doing and that began my long journey of finding true victory over immorality. 

While I was a sophomore in high school, I began to get involved in pornography. By the time I was a senior, I could not go more than a few hours without viewing. When I was finishing my last semester of high school, the world shut down due to the COVID pandemic. As you can imagine, the extra time at home alone posed to be a huge problem. I began to believe that there was no way I was ever going to be free of this. I couldn’t see how victory was possible. I was absolutely hopeless. I began to believe that because I was a girl that had a guy’s problem, that no one would understand or be able to help me. I have never felt so alone in my entire life. I became very burdened down with suicidal thoughts and at one point attempted to take my own life. 

But God, through his goodness, intervened. In 2021, I was given the chance to go with our church teens to a camp, even though I had already graduated the year prior. Through the powerful and direct preaching of brother Caleb Reed, it was there at camp that God began to get a hold of my heart. He showed me my need to fully surrender my life and showed me my need for him and his satisfying love. 

From that point, I have been far from perfect. I was constantly relapsing, finding victory, then relapsing again. I found myself in a very vicious cycle. Distraught, I went back to my pastor and his wife for help. They gave me counsel, but deep down I didn’t really want the help. I mainly went to them knowing that I should, as a Christian, seek help. I began to get to a place where I was okay with my pornography addiction and craved the next opportunity to be alone on my phone. It is only by my pastor and his wife’s consistent, intercessory prayer and God’s mercy that God touched my life. Through thinking about possible future marriage, I realized that I could not be a porn addict and a good wife at the same time. I started meeting with my pastor’s wife every week for counseling, hoping that would be the fix-all, but I was still in a losing battle.

At this point, I got in touch with Ryan and Stephanie Swanson, who introduced me to the idea of the three-fold cord and encouraged me to start daily accountability. After several months of praying, I was finally in a group with two other girls struggling with the same addiction as me. I started to see longer spans of victory in my life, but something was still missing.

It wasn’t until I went to a Victory Conference at Falls Baptist Church in 2022 that I started to find sustained victory. The conference that year was geared toward the extreme, unconditional, unbelievable, and unstoppable love of God. During that week, I was confronted time and time again with the fact that God still loves me. Even though I was an addict to something a Christian has no business watching, I began to become overwhelmed at the thought that God loves me—the very God I had forsaken, the very God I had rejected, the very God that I was slandering, loves me.

Once I began to really grasp this concept, the Lord was able to start doing a great work in my heart. I wanted to change my habits to please the God that loves me. Through complete surrender, I started giving areas of my life up for Christ to purge. The process has not been easy, but God has been refining my life to be an image of His perfection. By God’s grace, I now experienced almost two years of sustained victory and freedom.

God has been so good to show me areas of my life that need to change to promise a life of complete victory. Don’t lose hope. God is victorious and good. Trust the process He has for you.

Ryan: I appreciate her candidness in going through several stages of her journey. It wasn’t all at once. I think one thing that can be emphasized from this is to stop looking for a quick fix. In fact, even the belief that it’s just going to be a sudden, quick miracle that God does, that you never have a desire for this again, is probably not the right thing to be looking for. There is the desire that is fueling your sexual desires is actually a God-given desire. This is different from an alcohol addiction. It’s different from a drug addiction where those things are completely out of line, amoral desires. But the sexual addiction is actually built on a God-given burn in your heart to be used in a certain way. And so I think looking for that to just disappear is probably not the right best thing for you to be looking for. What do you think? 

Stephanie: Yes, I think you’re exactly right. There is a righteous fulfillment of the sexual desires that God has given us, but there isn’t something like that for some substance addiction. 

Ryan: Yes, exactly. Inside of the marriage, there is a proper avenue for fulfillment there, but not for drugs, not for alcohol, not for any of these other things that could be addicting. So I think it’s different from that and when you hear a testimony about somebody who, well, let’s just take Steve’s testimony from a couple of months ago. He had mentioned that with alcohol, when he got saved, that was completely gone, that he gave that up and never had a drop since. But he said it was a completely different thing with pornography, where that has been more of a journey and I don’t know, I think this might be why, because there is a God-given desire there that has to be retaught, relearned. It’s a habit that has to be retrained, and that can take a period of time. And that’s not an excuse for it to take an indefinite amount of time; there always should be progress. We need to be moving in the right direction, but very likely, this is going to be something that is going to be in stages, like we heard from this testimony, further understand different ways that this is affecting us, different maybe ways that we’re giving place to the devil and can make changes in our lifestyle so that we’re not as susceptible to that.

Which, by the way, that’s something she mentioned in, I think it was when she said after that, the Victory Conference that she went to, and the Lord really did a deep work in her heart, and that’s when she was willing to surrender other areas of her life and allow the Lord to change her, by just being completely willing to do whatever it takes. I think that’s a better attitude than “let me find the one thing that it’s gonna take.” And instead,” let me be willing to do whatever it takes.”

Because many times it will be several different things the Lord leads you to change, to adjust a paradigm shift in your mind for some. Many times that’s about trusting the Lord fully, and that’s something we have to understand. Zero one hundred truths (0/100), as Dr. Jim preaches. But there’s very likely going to be several light bulb moments in someone’s purity journey. 

Stephanie: And taking one step leads you to another.SSometimes you just want to skip ahead and take the other step, but God leads you along one step at a time. 

Ryan: Yeah. And the other aspect to bring out real quickly is that when you have the idea that this is just going to be a quick fix, God’s just going to “boom”, do something, it can give you a feeling of, or just the lack of responsibility to actually take the steps that he’s leading you to because there is something to be said about just the integrity to choose to do right.

We need to do a podcast on this at some point, but this is something I’ve been talking through with a friend of mine recently and just realizing the power of just the choice because God has given us a choice, and that is something that we need to be willing to do in the moment. You can set yourself up so well and other ways for victory. But it comes down to a choice as well. So that’s another part of the journey, just learning to choose to do right in the moment.

But really quick shift here, and let’s just actually take a step back. This is a testimony from a young lady. First one, as we said, the first one we’ve had on the podcast, the first testimony from a young lady. But Stephanie, do you have any idea how many ladies struggle with this as we’re working more and more with individuals, men and women? Has it surprised you how many ladies have struggled with this issue?

Stephanie: It has, definitely, especially since they’re not talking about it. And there’s been quite a few girls, and um, girls my own age, girls younger than me, girls older than me, all across the board that have recently just told me about their struggles, and I had known them for a while and they never, I never knew that. So it’s, it’s very, it’s more common than you think, and people aren’t talking about it at all.

Ryan: Yeah. You know, it’s interesting because it seems like it’s just been in the last few years that men have been willing to talk about this. Maybe that’s just in our circles, I’m not sure, but, um, I know growing up and from high school into college, I, for a long time, I felt like I was unique in my addiction to pornography and like it was a problem I had that no one else would be able to relate to. So as others started talking about it, it was helpful then to be able to understand this is not just a me problem. This is a men’s problem. And that was helpful for me to be willing to get help from others and be open and talk about it. However, what we’re finding now is if you take another step for the young ladies, if you think it was hard for me to admit I had a man’s problem, well, from a lady’s perspective, and she mentioned this in the testimony, now everybody thinks this is a man’s problem. So now it’s almost even harder for a young lady to come forward and say, yes, I’m struggling with a man’s problem. But the fact is, it’s not a man’s problem.

 It’s been said, and I think there’s some truth in it, that when it comes to purity for the ladies, it is an emotional battle, whereas for the men, it’s physical. And I mean, overall, I think it’s true that women are more emotional beings, at least the majority. But that is not where the addiction stops, but it may be where it starts. Do you have thoughts on that? 

Stephanie: Definitely, yeah. It’s very strong in ladies and it does usually lead on to other things. 

Ryan: You’re saying starting with the emotions.

Stephanie: It starts in the emotions, yeah, usually as I’ve heard. And then the emotions still continue to be a very big part. So that’s often the trigger that leads to other ways of impurity. 

Ryan: So that’s interesting because I think for the man many times it’ll start in the physical and then when they meet a face to put that to then that can become emotional and they can tie in together, but for the ladies, it may start the opposite and start in the emotions as it did in this testimony. She mentioned about the maintenance man that they began in an emotional relationship that led towards not just being physically inappropriate in that relationship but also towards the desire in viewing the physical as well. And that’s where the pornography addiction stemmed from. So beginning in the emotional and moving towards the physical, that’s just an interesting note for, for the ladies.

But just when it comes to purity for you ladies, because I would assume there’s quite a few listening to this podcast. We’ve had several that have reached out over the past couple of years. I know there’s young ladies that are benefiting from this. And I don’t think it’s just for the emotional side. I think there’s quite a few struggling with pornography as well. So when it comes to that, in some ways I can relate to how difficult it is to be the first one, you feel like, to start talking about this. Because I definitely felt like I was the first in my group that was, or in our circles, in my church that started talking about this. And I can understand how that is very intimidating. And even if you’re not met with the encouragement that you would love or the affirmation or those saying that, “oh, I completely understand where you’re at”, that’d be great. But even if not, you need to have courage. Talking is the right thing to do. You have to start talking about this. And it’s not that the answer is to share it with anyone or everyone. But you need to be willing to talk about it first with someone and then as the Lord leads, get open with more and more people that could be helped by this. 

Stephanie: Yeah, I’ve encouraged girls sometimes they feel so alone. So I’m like, you have to share with other people so they’re not feeling alone. There’s all these girls, like I’ve talked to a bunch of them individually, and they were scared to share their testimony with anybody else. But they’re all just, as we talked about before on the podcast, you talked about just fighting in your own trench alone, you know, and just joining up and talking. There’s been at least two girls that have come to me and shared that they were just sharing their heart to a random friend about their purity journey and then come to find out the friend they were talking to has their own purity journey. So it’s more common than you think, and yeah, just sharing with other girls is helpful.

Ryan: I can think of three different churches that I’ve given my testimony in that I’ve had a young lady come to me after the service and say, it’s so good to hear someone talking about this because I’ve been struggling with this. And that’s a young lady coming to me like that, you know, I think it’d be more ideal if she came to my wife and shared that. But whatever. I mean, I’m thrilled that it’s hitting something there and it’s a help. But it just shows you if there’re three and three different churches that have been willing to come and approach the preacher, the… myself giving the testimony at that point, then how many more are there? Statistically, they say 33% of the women in our evangelical churches struggle with a pornography addiction. So that’s statistically, it would not surprise me if it’s more than that, actually. For men, I think they say 60 some percent. And that one seems low as well. But just based on experience. But obviously that’s taken from a broad sampling. Who knows what it is in your church or my church. 

But if we could just get across the encouragement to be willing to start talking, be willing to be the first to open up about this. And maybe you feel like you’re the first, but maybe you’re not the first. Maybe you go to your pastor’s wife. And maybe she tells you, “yeah, there’s actually a couple of other ladies in the church that are struggling with this and that we’d love to start an accountability group together” or something like that. That could be really powerful. There’s more and more ladies joining the cord. We just had another one actually, I didn’t tell you stuff. We just had another one yesterday, uh, join from that, uh, group that joined from reading the article. So yeah, there’s, there’s more and more young ladies joining, looking for help here. And what it could do with another one being willing to step up and get help and be a help and start talking about it is just, it’s huge. 

So that being said, I’m hoping we’ll have another testimony by next month from a young lady. And what I would love to do is just have a series of these testimonies from young ladies that we go through. So if you’re a young lady listening and maybe you just want to share your aspect and where you are in the journey that you feel like could be a help. I’m not saying you have to be like this young lady and have two years of sustained victory. But if there’s something that God has done that has shown you that you feel like could be a help to other young ladies in particular, then please reach out and share that. We’re doing most of these anonymously and we’d be happy to do yours anonymously as well. So if you would just email us a few paragraphs or whatever it is and we’d be happy to share that on the podcast if it’s something we feel like would be helpful. So young ladies especially, I would encourage you to do that.

 But if you’re a young man listening and you have a testimony you haven’t shared yet, we’ll get those in as well so be sure to send those. You can send them right to ryan@thecord.app. Ryan@thecord.app. We’re funneling all of our emails into that account right now for anything purity wise. So, ryan@thecord.app, and go ahead and send us your testimony or if you have questions or any way that we could be a help, appreciate this young lady sharing, being willing to share and being a first, a first on the podcast to share her testimony, the first young lady. And we look forward to the second and third and fourth and many more young ladies who are willing to open up to solidify what God’s doing in their own hearts, but also to be a part of the victory of other young ladies struggling as well.

Well, this has been an encouraging podcast. Thank you, Stephanie, for joining us for this one, and I think you’ll be back with us next time as well for another testimony from a young lady. And thank you to all the listeners joining us for this episode, and we’ll talk to you next time as we continue this journey to be less gratified and more satisfied with Jesus.