The Sean McDowell Show - How To Ruin Your Life In 7 Steps (Don't Do These)

Episode Date: May 10, 2024

Joshua Broome spent five years in the porn industry and made over 1,000 adult films. He was the Male Performer of the Year (2012). And yet he left it all and began to follow Jesus. He has since become a pastor, speaker, and author. His new book is just out called "7 Lies That Will Ruin Your Life." We discuss each of these seven lies and the story behind this book. READ: 7 Lies That Will Ruin Your Life (https://amzn.to/43UgzD4) WATCH: Ex-Porn Star Becomes a Pastor (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqPglqhDXBQ *Get a MASTERS IN APOLOGETICS or SCIENCE AND RELIGION at BIOLA (https://bit.ly/3LdNqKf) *See our fully online UNDERGRAD DEGREE in Bible, Theology, and Apologetics: (https://bit.ly/448STKK) FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitter: https://twitter.com/Sean_McDowell TikTok: @sean_mcdowell Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmcdowell/ Website: https://seanmcdowell.org

What are the biggest lies that will ruin your life? Even in their scars, they're still there. Our guest today, Joshua Broom, was on the show before sharing his story about leaving the porn industry and then becoming a pastor. Now he's here to discuss the truths that can set us free in his new book that is called Seven Lies That Will Ruin Your Life. How can you possibly have a happy marriage and be a good dad after what you went through?

So that person is dead and gone. Joshua, I can't believe it's been about three years since I had you on. It's great to have you back. Yeah, so great to be back on and I just appreciate your friendship and the willingness to answer random texts for me over the last few years. But I honor you and appreciate you so much.

Well, I love your ministry. Excited that this book came out. And my first question is for you, which is kind of really my first question that I ask anybody is like, why write this book? Because of how much work and time it takes to write a book. What motivated you to say, I got to take the time and energy to get this out for people? Yeah. So interesting because if anyone that's written a book, it's like it never, well, I don't want to say never, but most often it never ends up being what you thought it would be. And I initially was going to write something that would fall under the lines of a manuscript of my story. And as my literary agent, I were shopping around with the manuscript.

I had a really great conversation with the publisher that we went with, so Hachette, and they said, we love your story, but what is the thing that you're most passionate about? And I was like, well, confronting cultural lies. I think that my testimony gives me a unique perspective to speak into many of the lives of culture. And, you know, Romans 12 too is kind of, you know, my battle cry where, you know, I spent most of my life being conformed by the world. And it was the word of God that was, you know, the access point where I started renewing my mind and knowing that, okay, there is, you know, a line in the sand, you know, so that I can understand and discern what is God's good, pleasing and perfect will. And if I could give anyone that, that would be the most advantageous thing that I could offer the body. And I just said, man, I would love to write that book. So that that's kind of where it started. And then kind of like where, you know, the writing

journey takes you. Like I finished this, like turned in the finalized manuscript December of 2022. And then we knew we wanted this to come out like in the neighborhood of Easter. So, you know, so in the neighborhood of Easter, but not close to election time. So ended up landing with March of 2024. So that's kind of how we got there. But just the whole process, I was like, okay, I want to tell my story. But really the lessons that I learned from my story is what the book is somewhat about. So that's kind of how we got to, from me writing a manuscript about my story to me providing the lessons that I learned throughout my story. That makes sense. Now folks can go to the

video below I've linked to, to hear your story, which is unbelievable. It's remarkable. When I speak, I share your story to encourage people many times. But I also want to know, before we get to the seven specific lies in these lessons, why these seven? And I ask because seven is kind of a biblical number. So maybe you're like, I need seven lies. Maybe you had 12 and like, well, I've got too much content. Maybe you just wrote it down like, oh, it turns out it's seven. Like why these seven lies? Yeah. So, you know, I am a big numbers guy so uh okay you know seven being the number of completion you know uh you know that that god wasn't tired he was done you know so but i did have 10 and i had 10 and then uh the publisher was like you know just just looking

at thematically and then like the seo on you know seven lies that'll ruin your life um we we ended up going with that and we wanted to land in the the the two the 250 to 300 page um okay and it's like most people are like oh like writing like 55 000 words like that's you know that's that's you know that's that seems so outlandish but like me it's like you know you know I just finished college not too long ago. So writing a 50,000-page paper, it's like second nature. So I had about 100,000 words that we needed to minimize and landed on the seven. Fair enough. That makes sense. Now, final question before we jump in is how would somebody who's maybe going to listen to this find the courage to confront these lies personally?

Because it's one thing at a distance to say, oh, yeah, that's a lie. It's another thing to say, wow, I believe that. And if I change it, it might cost me something relationally or personally or my reputation or financially. I have no idea. Where does that courage for you and for somebody else come from to be able to even confront these lies? Yeah. One of my favorite verses in the Bible is John 16, 33. Jesus telling his disciples, I'm telling you that I'm going to leave and it's going to be a good thing because the Holy Spirit is going to come. And, you know, he says, I've told you all these things so that in me, you can have peace. And in this

world, you will face tribulation, but you can take heart. You can be of good, you can be of good cheer, or you can take courage for I have overcome the world. And just I love that verse because you see both courage and peace is found in the person of Jesus. And we don't really have access to those things in our own humanity. So I would say if you want the promises of Jesus, you're going to have to surrender to Jesus. And that does take courage. But what's on the other side of that is peace, joy, fulfillment. And I've had and tasted all the things that the world promises, happiness, fulfillment. And my encouragement was, hey, everything the world promises that will make you feel

satisfied at the end of the day, it actually doesn't work. And it didn't work to the extent where it led me to a place where I believed because I did all the things that I thought would bring pot of gold, it left me worse than I was before. My anxiety was amplified. My depression was deepened. And I was so frustrated that I had ruined my life. And none of the things that I thought would fix my life didn't. But having the courage to trust that what I was searching for was actually pursuing me. And He loved me enough to lay down His life for me to prove that He does, in fact, love me. Look to Hebrews 12.

It was joy set before Him that he endured the cross. So that would be my encouragement that on the other side of courage, there's the thing that you're searching for that you can't obtain on your own. So people need to really hear that this is not just an academic book for you, that the things our world often promises, power, sex, and money, are going to bring happiness. And you had all of those, power, sex, and money are going to bring happiness. And you had all of those, power, influence, sex. You talk about it's on the cover of this book, performing hundreds, if not about a thousand porn films, money from it.

And none of this brought happiness. So these lies, you have not only studied it and seen it as a pastor in other people's lives, you have bought into these yourself and you're writing people to warn them from making some of the same mistakes that you made. Now, I believe I've never met your wife, but you dedicate this to your darling Hope. She's your wife, right? Yeah.

Okay. So given your past, and I'm sorry, I said there was only going to be one more question before we jumped in, but you have what, four kids now or five? Four boys. Four boys. Yeah. Unless you know something I don't. Okay. Fair enough. How can you possibly have a happy marriage and be a good dad after what you went through? And I'm asking this now because before we get into these lies, I want to give people a sense of hope that these lies can be overcome and you can experience the fruit on the other side. So how did that possibly happen for you?

Yeah, I love that you answered me this question. So I'm actually speaking at UT Arlington to a few thousand eighth to twelfth grade boys tomorrow. And that's the substance of the talk. It's talking about the way that you understand how to be a man of God, a godly husband, a godly father? How do I figure out any of those things? And if your identity is in your sonship in Christ, then it doesn't matter who you're not. It only matters whose you are. And just looking at the beauty of Galatians 4, 4-7 talks about you're no longer a slave to this world. And because you are now a son, you're now an heir. And there's things that you have access to and there's aspects of your identity that are both removed and redeemed and also are new. I love 2 Corinthians 5-17, it talks about, you know,

that the old is gone and now, you know, you are a new creation. But if you keep reading, you're not only saved from something, you're saved for something because now you are an ambassador for Christ. You're a carrier of this word of reconciliation. And I'll just say, you know, the Bible, so Jesus saved my life. The Bible transformed my life and walking with the people of God, that had a huge aspect in me changing my life and just my wife, you know, she gave me hope in a way where I'd love to dig into this in a moment, but you know, there's this moment in's this moment in second Samuel chapter nine, where Mephibosheth is confronted by David. He thought, you know, he was going to get death. And instead, you know, he restores his, his grandfather Samuel's, his grandfather Saul, he restores his

land. He invites him into his table. He makes him part of the kingdom. And second Samuel chapter nine, verse eight, he says, well, but who am I? You know, you're first himself is this dead dog. And I think many times even understanding the grace of God and many times still looking back at, well, those things are still tangibly found on the internet. The wounds that I'm mentally and emotionally that I have, even though they're scars, they're still there. So how do I accept the grace of God in spite of myself? And just having my wife there and people ask her, how do you not have some type of resentment towards him or at least hold a mirror to yourself regarding the thousands of partners he's had, especially when there are these adult film stars

and stuff like that. And she says, well, I believe the Bible is true, so that person is dead and gone. Why would I put the words of Satan, who is the father of lies, why would I look at him and put the way that Satan talks about him on him, and why would I allow his words to impact the way that I see? I don't. I choose to believe what God says is most. And just having that be her response, it healed me in a way. I think that's why it's so important regarding the people that you surround yourself with, because to my detriment, I had people

patting me on my back when I was at, you know, on the outside looking in, I was at the pinnacle of success, but inside there was turmoil, you know, chaos within me that I wouldn't wish upon anyone. And I needed people to love me enough to tell me the truth. I needed, you know, the Proverbs 27.3, I needed the wounds of a friend. I needed the words that might sting, but are so good for me is what I needed. So surrounding myself with those type of people and, you know, just small things like we were going through premarital counseling and figuring out that her love language was quality time and me not knowing what that meant. You know, I thought like quality dinner, quality experience.

But she's like, no, that the greatest gift that you can give me is your presence because I think the world of you. And that caused me a lot of conflict because I didn't believe I was worth much. But allowing, like, the way that she saw love through how God loved her allowed me to see a glimpse of that, and it changed the way that I saw myself. I love it. You said the greatest gift you can give someone is your presence. A friend of mine, this is a separate story, who actually died of cancer at 15. He said the greatest present you can give someone is your presence. It's not a powerful way to remember that. Your story rings so true because my father,

although there's differences, his father, my grandfather was the town drunk. His older sister took her own life. My dad was severely sexually abused for seven years on their farm where he grew up in Michigan. He was told by his dad that he was not wanted. And yet has become an amazing father, an amazing husband. And he said, I just saturated myself in the scriptures, believed it was true, was mentored by a pastor, experienced it relationally, and started to hang out with other Christians, the body of Christ, who modeled this for me. And that's what it took. Very similar in your life. So thanks for sharing that. Let's jump into these, see how many we can get through in the time that we have. First one is false approval. Tell us about that. Yeah, I think, you know, in a world driven by filters and fake things, it's so easy to believe that we can externally earn the approval of people through doing enough, becoming enough, having enough. And at the end of the day, our heart desires intimacy and the intimacy that it desires is with God,

the father. And I think, um, you know, each and every person, we have a wounded heart. So the, the original title of the book was actually everything your heart desires. And it was pointing at, and it was pointing at, you know, the dichotomy between, okay, you know, Jeremiah 17 talks about your heart's deceitful and wicked among all things, who can trust it and then you have the conflict of ezekiel talking about okay you can you're going to get this new heart of flesh but then still roman 7 you know why do i do the things that i don't want to do and struggle to do the things that i want to do it's because ephesians 6 like there's there's

an enemy that wants to destroy you and you have have an inclination towards things you ought not do. So there's this complicated thing. So can you trust your heart? No. Should you trust your gut? No, but if you inform your heart and write on your heart the things of God, you can get to a place where I love like the point to like Titus two, like by the byproduct of saying no to ungodliness is to desire righteousness, to desire the things of God. So I would just say, yeah. So like the false approval, you can't earn it. You can't,

you can't earn approval. So rather than striving for approval as you know, everything comes back to Romans 12 too. So instead of the world's promises that if you have enough followers, if you have enough money, if you have the right title, if you look the right way, then you will find approval. The only way that you can find approval is because of what Jesus did on the cross and that he rose on the third day. So like, that's kind of the short like snapshot of what we're looking at. There's a writer that had a deep influence on me, especially in college and even since. It's a Catholic priest by the name of Henry Nowen. He also was a professor at Ivy League Universities,

and he wrote a book called In the Name of Jesus. And he talked about how we try to find our approval in what we do, what we have, and what other people say about us. And he relates those to the three temptations of Jesus to find our approval in false things of the world. Now, I've heard you say this twice, and correct me if I'm wrong, but there's this sense where you kind of refuse to see yourself as a victim, if I'm reading this correctly. Now, you are lied to profoundly. When I have shared your story, one of the things that really stood out to me is not so much how you got out of it, but the subtle conniving lies people told to get you into the porn industry. Yeah. You could really see yourself as a victim.

And in many ways, you are and were a victim of these lives, almost cost you your life. And yet twice you've said either you or your wife recognize your heart is leading you astray. You recognize these lies, but then instead of succumbing to it, you speak truth to it. So kind of at the heart of this book is that we have agency and we can actually choose. Is that, am I reading this correctly? A thousand percent. Yeah. I would say, you know, the one of the, you know, memorial stones in my life, I think, you know, there's many there's many times in our lives where we'll have the, you know, the quote unquote memorial stones where something will happen, where we face conflict or there's like, you know, a moment of or a breakthrough or something like that. But for me, there was this moment of consecration where I woke up in the middle of the night and felt convicted to pray. And I was lazy, and I was praying just on my back.

And then I just remember the scripture where it's talking about where, you know, the, where the fear of the Lord is, um, there's, there's peace and there's cleanliness. And I'm just really this idea, like, do you fear me? Like, do you revere me? Um, and I was like, okay, I get it. So I, out of the bed I went and, um, I spent some time in prayer on the floor. And as I was praying, I almost introspectively started wondering. My mind started wandering to anger. And it's like, for me, I didn't struggle with lust that much post giving my life to Jesus, but I certainly struggled with anger. But the anger was a byproduct of me, like thinking lustful thoughts, me, you know, thinking like, OK, Second Corinthians 10, you know, 10, 5.

I'm going to take this law captive and make it obedient to Christ. But then like that happening over and over again, I'm like, gosh, like why? Why can't I be delivered from these thought processes? And I had to like go pretty radical to remove these triggers from my life. saying, if my dad would have been there, these things wouldn't have happened to me. If my dad would have been there, I wouldn't have to have the conversations with my wife that I have. If my dad would have been there, I wouldn't have the foreknowledge of knowing that I'm going to have to have really difficult conversations with my four sons. And that was a point of frustration for me. And then it led me to desiring to give my dad forgiveness. And then the conflict, it was almost like a subconscious conflict because I think sometimes we'll repent of our sin,

but we won't take ownership of it was upon our own volition that this thing happened. Because there's, you know, like it certainly my dad not being there and him making me feel as if I was rejected. It made me feel as if there was something wrong with me and I had to prove myself and so on and so on. But at the end of the day, that pain and trauma, while it was real and it caused me to see myself in some way and see the world in one way, it never forced my hand. And sometimes we will be slow to forgive because reconciliation, you have a fear that reconciliation is not going to meet your expectations. So I withhold the forgiveness because if I forgive him, the relationship's not going to change, or I'm afraid that it's not going to meet the hopes that I have, and I'm just going to be hurt and let down again. And then I had to realize I'm not God. So I had to forgive my dad, and that was a deeper level of repentance, which led to a deeper level of freedom. So I would say in a very real way, we need to take ownership of our mistakes and trust that God is not only good, but he's just.

And whatever happens is not always up to you. And if you take your presuppositions and put them into, well, I'm going to do this if we can't play that game. And if we withhold forgiveness, it only hurts us at the end of the day. So that was part of it. That's really the way the book ends. The last chapter is talking about this hijacked healing, and I found a deeper level of healing, which allowed me to operate in a greater level of authority and find more freedom than I've ever had through that experience.

But I had to own the fact that I do have a sinful nature. There is brokenness in my life. That brokenness led me to do things I ought not do. And while like, yes, a broken relationship in my life contributed to the way that I saw myself, it was my choice to do those things in opposition of God's perfect will. I love that theme. It comes through clearly in your book, but also the idea that you hit on that this false approval is something all of us are tempted to buy into. But it's more appealing when we have deeper wounds, such as a father wound, and we don't have the kind of approval God wants us to have. Those lies become so much more seductive and so powerful in our lives. So we can only

counter those lies when we really get to the root. I heard a Christian psychiatrist say this, I'll never forget it, it was probably 20, 25 years ago. He said, an addiction is something that's used to fill the void that a relationship is meant to fill. An addiction is something used to fill the void that a relationship is meant to fill. That could be something good like school, or it could be something bad like pornography or something like social media. So much of this craving for false approval stems from our own relational brokenness with God and with others. Well, let's keep going. This next one is, oh, sorry, did you want to weigh in? No, no, I was going to say, the next one is the one that you and I could talk about for 10 hours. All right.

Well, let's do it. You title it The Synthetic God of the Self. Yeah. Yeah. So that chapter was really born out of, so John Bevere is a great friend, mentor of mine, and he wrote a book, Killing Kryptonite. And that book, I think the chapter that I kind of give a nod to, I think it's called like Phony Jesus or something like that.

It's chapter 17 of that book. But it's really taking a peek into Exodus 32, where Moses is up on the mountain getting the Ten Commandments, and Aaron and his group of misfits, they decide to melt down some gold and make this animal, and they call this animal Elohim. They call this animal Yahweh. They're saying that this animal is God, and they're offering their worship. But any animal or any idol that we've created in our image, and we put our presuppositions about, okay, this is my worship, but, or this is my worship if, or this is my worship and,

when we put things that are not of God in the box that we call God, it becomes not God at all. And I think it's such a dangerous place to think that we can create our own autonomy, that we know what's best for us. And that's really what it's about. It's saying that, you know, that for me, I would have said I was a Christian in the porn industry doing over a thousand films because I grew up in a home where my grandmother and grandfather loved the Lord. Until I was almost eight, I went to church on Wednesdays, Sunday mornings, Sunday nights. I was removed from that after that, but I had that foundation of that. And my grandmother never stopped loving the Lord.

If I was at her home, you know, she was listening to, you know, these gospel videos of these guys in mullets singing Christian songs, and I was exposed to it. So I thought that almost this traditionalism mindset where because I was in proximity of someone who followed Jesus and I knew about Jesus, I thought that acknowledgement equated to relationship. And I love, love, love Kobe Bryant, but I didn't know him. And I can know things about someone and be fans about someone and even tell you if he would have made X amount of free throws, he would have scored more than 82 points.

But that doesn't mean that I have a relationship with him. And I think like that is almost that, that, that counterfeit, because, you know, we have that inclination to think that, you know, did God really say, you know, the, the, the voice of the father lies, Satan saying, you know, did God really say, and,? And if I can put my, you know, well, even though this contradicts scripture, I love Jesus. So I'm going to love Jesus, but I'm going to put inside of that box my proclivity to sin because I think that it's not a big deal, or I think it's not harmful, or I think this, and I think, well, what is true is when we do that, we don't have the relationship with God that we think we do, and we're actually distancing ourselves from the grace and the beauty

that's found in the truth of his word. You know, I'm an apologist and I like to make cases for the existence of God. And I think scripture does have some embedded within it, but the Bible doesn't start with a case for God. It starts with in the beginning, God, we know God exists and we're going to worship something. If we don't worship God, something else is going to fill that void. And so the title of that, the synthetic God of the self is perhaps one of the most alluring lies today

when everything in our culture is about the self. You be you, live your truth. You can buy a Coke with your name on it. You can take a music feed to the exact music that you like. And so it makes sense that people would buy into this lie. So I love that you tackle it head on in that chapter. It's great stuff. Let's go to,

let's go to a lie. Number three, you call it counterfeit cleanup. Yeah. I feel like they go all hand in hand, but just the lie that you can clean up your own life because the mirror in which you're looking in is distorted. That's why we need truth, because I love this analogy. So

Andrew Yates, he leads discipleship at DTS. He's the person that mentored me in Raleigh. And it's so funny. So he went to DTS, went to Raleigh for several years, served as a pastor on staff there, poured into me for several years, and now he moved back to Dallas and now I live in Dallas but um he he has this um just I think just like really brilliant simple analogy but like if you had on a white t-shirt that was you know you had had holes in it had you know barbecue stains had hot had all this stuff but if you were in dark, you wouldn't be able to tell how damaged, destroyed, and dirty that shirt is. But if there was a lamp in the room and the closer you got to the light, you could see the shirt as it truly is. And I think that's the beauty of the gospel, where because of the truth that we find in the in the bible that the closer we get to god the closer

we can see our inadequacies our less than our our um our proclivities to sin and i think it's so important for us to know that um there's a god that loves us so much that he'll meet us right where we are but the byproduct of believing his truth is best for our lives leads us to remove things from our lives. There's things that need to be cut and pruned from our lives so that we can be healthy, so that we can bear fruit. I just love that example. The closer we get to the light, the more clearly we can see how desperate we are to be clean. The fact that you chose barbecue sauce to describe the stain tells me you are from or lived in Raleigh, where you've got some of the best barbecue in the world. So that makes perfect sense. Before we move to chapter four, was there a moment in your own life where you were trying to clean up the mess and you

just hit a wall and then felt like you understood God's grace? And how did that affect you? Yeah. I mean, I would say, I mean, so I left the porn industry on my own accord running for my life and I quite literally tried to, the way I explain it is I tried to put enough good dirt on my own accord running for my life. And I quite literally tried to, the way I explain it is I tried to put enough good dirt on my bad dirt so I didn't feel dirty. I was trying to manage. I didn't think that I could fix myself, but I thought what I could do was manage the perception other people had of me. And if I seemed good and I, I would look like I was a good enough person and, and hopefully that would suppress the bad things that I had done. And I, you know, I leave the porn industry and I joined the health and fitness industry and I become a trainer and I'm helping

people and I'm working at a gym and I'm, you know, I'm helping, um, people better'm you know helping um people better you know be a better mom be a better grandmother like all these things um even in helping people like with rehab and things like that um and i thought if i removed myself from a toxic environment and removed myself from the toxic friends that I had in my life, the toxins would leave my heart, but it didn't work. And after a short period of time, I realized that there was nothing that I could do to clean up my life. And then I heard the gospel and it wasn't a clean yourself up, then come to me. You're completely, you know, you're incapable of cleaning up your life. And I love thinking about like, okay, the person that reads the scripture, you know, if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off. And they're thinking about that literally. And it's like, man, if you cut your

hand off, you would still have your eyes to see lustful thoughts. And then if you didn't have eyes, you would still have your brain to think lustful thoughts. And what you actually need is heart surgery in a way that's spiritual, and you don't have the capability to do that. Only Jesus can. And so I had to get to the point where I had tried it all and nothing worked, and I found the thing that did. Wow. That is what separates Christianity from every other faith on the planet. It's not a matter of works-based righteousness, however that's practiced. It's a matter of God's grace infusing us and then empowering us to live differently. So that's powerful. I'm so glad you talk about that. It's not only counterfeit cleanup, as you title the chapter.

It's a counterfeit gospel that's everywhere in our culture. And many ways it's even within the church, but that's another conversation. Chapter four, you call faux freedom. Talk about it. Yeah. I think it's easy to believe you're free when you're not, but what is true is you're only as free as you're honest. And I think that it's easy to confess that 99% of sin that seems normative in culture or your surroundings, it's easy to say me too, but the hardest thing to do is confess the thing that seems unmentionable to you, but the thing that's unmentionable to you is actually holding you captive. And you can feel like you're free, but you're still walking with this limp and you just continue to walk with this limp for so long that you feel like, well, this is just who I am. I'll always be this way. But freedom is,

for me, it's like thinking about like John 21, you know, where Peter is being confronted by Jesus and Jesus is like, do you agape me? Phileo, agape, phileo, phileo, phileo. And it's like for Peter to get to Acts 3 where he's saying, you denied the Christ, you crucified him. He's speaking with such zeal because so did he. And to be free from something is, you know, in the same way, it's like how you, how you learn something well. If you can, if you can ingest information and then teach it to someone else, it has the opportunity to metabolize. And I think until your, your faith metabolizes so that you process it and can regurgitate it in a way, there's this aspect of your heart where in its crevice, you're not free.

And I think if you confess 99% of your sin, then there's this still 1% of you that's enabling you to experience all that Jesus has for you. And I think that's really what it's about. It's like you can think that you're free or operate as if you're free, but you're really wearing a mask, and you're pretending like you're okay when you're not. And you want to be free, but you're pretending that you are, or you've convinced yourself, well, this is as free as I can be. And again, it all goes back to you are not the catalyst for your freedom, the cross is, and there's nothing that you can disqualify.

There's nothing, you know, there's no behavior that you can participate in to disqualify yourself, what is accessible to you because of the cross. But it's so easy to believe that that's not true. You know, Joshua, my dad, Josh said to me many times, he says, people confess what is known. And you just let that sink in for a minute. Like, wow, there's such a temptation to only confess what other people know about. Because if they don't know about it, then I don't have to deal with the pain of it. And yet what that does is that steals our freedom.

That's a faux kind of freedom that you're talking about. Yeah. I actually think one of the biggest lies people are tempted to believe today is a lie about freedom, that freedom's doing whatever I want without any restraint. That's a lie about freedom, that freedom's doing whatever I want without any restraint. That's a lie about freedom. And really what freedom is, is orienting our lives around God's design and God's truth. So freedom involves recognizing there's a real objective world that exists. God has designed us to live in relationship,

and sin breaks that relationship with God and with others. So the only way to be in healthy relationship is not through 99%, like you said, but through 100% confession. Then we're living as God designed us. And I think that's what Jesus referred to in John 8, 32, you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free. So yeah, the way that I talk about it is, you know, like this westernized view of freedom is, you know, talking about, well, freedom is the thing that I get access to say yes

to. But Christian freedom is, well, you have the opportunity to say no to the things you want to do so that you can say yes to the things God has called you to do. That's so counter-cultural because our cultural idea is so much like, if you want it, do it. And I have to affirm your heart's desires. But in reality, freedom is not doing what I want if I have the wrong wants. Freedom is cultivating the right desires

that line up with God's design. And so I just, this is one of my favorite chapters in the book because I talk about this a lot but uh we got three more let's weigh into these i know folks are anxious to know uh lie number five false purpose yeah i mean again like how do you find your purpose um and i think uh you know proverbs 3 talks about this where it's like um like the bridge to find your purpose is through the act of surrender. It's not, you know, if you're that person listening to this and you're like, hey, who am I supposed to be? What am I supposed to do? How am I to figure it out? And like we,

each and every person in this world, we have a purpose, and that purpose is found first in submitting to the person of Jesus and conforming our lives in accordance to the life that individually was designed for us because we have gifts and talents and a plan and a purpose that are unique to our humanity, like us individually, but you can't sort those out on your own because I think the false purpose is, well, if I see you, Sean, and I want to have the happiness in which you portray, I believe that, well, I need to adapt my life to look like yours so that I will, you know, I will, on the other side of true because there's an individual calling in my life, and God wants you to be in submission and surrender to Him, and that is where you find your purpose. And your purpose is not making the most money and being the most influential and doing all these things.

It's to know God, to serve Him, surrender to Him, and then to love His people in the uniqueness of who God has made you to be. Your personality, your gifts, your talents, there certainly is a calling in your life and there is a purpose to your life, but it's not found in modeling your life based on someone else or what the world advocates as being your best life. Man, Joshua, this one rings home so true with me because growing up with a father who's so influential and strong personality and a world changer, I always associated, no one ever told me this. I just watched it.

I was like, if you have to have a life of purpose, I've got to be like my dad in particulars. And yet I'm wired differently. I have different energy. And it was kind of through high school and really in college, I just started to realize reading some of the books by Brendan Manning, interestingly enough, it was like, okay, wait a minute. I'm not to pattern my life after any individual person or some cultural script, but according to how God has uniquely wired me. And when I looked at it that way,

it was just so freeing and created a sense of purpose in my life that I can tell you, I'm not trying to, even though people ask me this, like, are you trying to be the next Josh McDowell? I'm like, no, I don't compare myself to my dad, believe it or not.

That's a losing game for one. I just want to be the person God has designed me to be with my gifts and my experience and use that for the kingdom. And I'm telling you, it's freeing to me. And it's one reason why I just so enjoy what I do because I don't have to compare myself to anybody else. I love that in your chapter. Yeah, I mean, it's just true that the most effective and efficient version of you is you. It's not you shifting your life or shaping your life after someone else. It's simplistic.

As simple as it is, it's you being the person God created you individually to be. It's not a different version of you. Well, that's where your pastoral heart comes through in this book that I appreciate. Well, people will be disappointed if we don't get to at least the last two lies. So lie number six is imitation intimacy. Yeah. I mean, for that, it's like people think that know, if you polled 10,000 people, which we did, and you asked, okay, if I say the word intimacy was the first word that comes to your mind, and 91% of people said sex. And while sex and intimacy, they exist in the same conversation, True intimacy, biblically defined, is proximity

to God. And it is through being with Jesus, being loved by Jesus, and experiencing the love of God through that lens. If you see love through that lens, you can love people you can love yourself um but if you think love is again romans 12 2. if you're like for me um i was exposed to pornography for the first time when i was 13. um i didn't have a father in the home um never really saw the a healthy dynamic between a man and a woman so um someone who felt you know abandoned and rejected and and wanted um you know we had a god-given desire for for intimacy um and what my heart was actually longing for was a relationship with god through the person of Jesus. But in my sin and in my ignorance, I was believing that, well, if I act out this imagery that I'm seeing, this looks as if this is connectivity. This looks as if this is romance. This is love.

So that's the danger of the world educating me because my mind was educated by the world. And if there's not a contrast, I don't have something to compare. So I believed, well, if I seek out women in relationships and live in this promiscuous way, then I will feel accepted. I will feel loved. And it didn't work. And momentary pleasure is exactly that. And momentary pleasure often leads to long-term brokenness and hurt and pain. And I kept searching for that dopamine hit of what I saw in that magazine that day

until the day that I met Jesus, because I was trying to, you know, in a counterfeit way, get the desire that my heart was longing for. And I think if we believe that intimacy is on the other side of sex first, we will be disappointed over and over again. And that's why pornography is so damaging because it's a fictitious representation of an act of intimacy and it's not intimacy at all. It's all fictional. And if you believe that the objectification of people and that sex is transactional, instead of loving people and using things, you'll learn to love things and use people and think that you can click a button and people will do what you say.

And that has a real carryover into your real life. You'll be a bad friend. You'll lack integrity. You'll be depressed because your expectations of interaction with people are fragmented because you've believed a lie for so long that that lie has become truth. And that's really the center point of the book where it's like, if you believe a lie to be true, you will live as if that lie is truth. And that will be the worldview in which you live your life through. I was just teaching a class to my high school students last week,

and I forced them to come up with a definition of intimacy. First, I asked them, I said, what's the deepest desire of the human heart? And eventually they said, it's for relationships. Lies break relationships. What we want is intimacy. And they concluded, they said, you can relationships. Lies break relationships. What we want is intimacy. And they concluded, they said, you can have sex without intimacy and you can be intimate without having sex. Now, sex is meant to be experienced with intimacy, but they're not the same things. That's why a lot of my single friends will say, I can live without sex, but I cannot live without intimacy. What is intimacy? I think it's when we are truly known for who we are and know others for who they are and are still loved and

accepted. That's what we deeply yearn for. So I'd love that you tackle that and talk about the lies that break it. Now, in some ways, this lie number seven, you already covered, maybe just sum it up for us to kind of bring it all full circle. What do you mean by hijacked healing? Yeah. So again, like you, I think then our healing is contingent on our presuppositions or what we think needs to happen for healing to happen. And, you know, again, like Jesus is asking the, you know, the man that's waiting on the

bubbles to come up, you know, it's like, do you want to be healed? It's like, well, yes, but, you know, the bubbles have to be there and I'm paralyzed and there's no one to pick me up to put me there. And what's true is like to be healed is going to cost you something, but what it's going to cost you is not what the world tells you is going to cost you. Healing is found on the other side of repentance. Like you look at Romans 2, 4, it's like God's love, His kindness,

His patience leads us to repentance. And you just have to trust it. Man, you are not God, and He is both good and just. And if there's unforgiveness in your life, the only person that is dealing with the negative consequences of that regarding you withholding that forgiveness is you. Like you pay the price for that. And I think, you know, like the world talks about, you know, cancel culture.

And, you know, you can't be forgiven if you do this or you should be canceled if you did that. And, man, I've just found that like the enemy wants to hijack healing because a healed person is a whole person and a whole person is an effective person. And, and just thinking about that, uh, you know, peace, you know, again, like John 16, 33, like just thinking about like Shalom, like that. Um, um i i just have this like mental picture of you know um because when you think about shalom it's like this wall or this fortitude that's completely intact or you know the soldier is armor is like completely intact and for me i just have this mental picture of like for you to find the peace of god um for you to understand not only that you need to extend forgiveness, but for you to forgive

yourself at times. Sometimes that wall, you need to hand Jesus the bricks in which you're trying to build the wall that you have in front of your life and allow him to build you up with his truth. And it's almost like exchanging one brick for another because you can't be complete without him. Joshua, your book is great. You take seven big lies that all of us have been tempted to or have believed on one level or another. You speak God's truth into them, share from your own experience. You give people real practical tools to overcome these lies. It's not esoteric, and you give people hope to do so. I hope everyone's going to pick up a copy of your book, Seven Lies That Will Ruin Your Life. It's excellent. Enjoyed it. You can text me anytime.

That's for sure. Always enjoy hearing from you. It's fun, super proud of your ministry, grateful for your voice, and we will definitely do this again. Thanks for coming on. Thank you so much, Sean. One last question, I just gotta know, I'm not sure when this is coming out, so people might be hearing this late, but who you got in the tournament?

So who do you got winning, guys and girls in the tournament? Well, you just officially dated this podcast because it's going to come out afterwards. So you have forced my hand. But from the beginning, I picked NC State to win it all. They're 11th seed. At the beginning, I picked them.

And at the stage recording this, they're in the final four. So if you forced me right now and said put your house on it i'd probably pick yukon but i went with nc state early so i'm gonna ride that train to the end when this comes out people will know if i'm a prophet or not perfect what what about uh what about the girls oh gosh you gotta go with with iowa right there we go yeah so it means for me for me like raleigh guy and then yeah my wife is uh from iowa went to iowa cheered at iowa so we're obviously you know we'll be we'll be cheering for iowa in our house for sure that's fun exciting stuff and you and i need to get a workout someday and also play some one-on-one i'm bringing my game back that's gonna happen

my friend sounds Sounds good. Sounds good, brother. Hey, before we leave, make sure you hit subscribe. We've got some other insightful and fun conversations coming up from a range of people. We have an ex-Satanist who's coming on that was moved by apologetics, interestingly enough. We have another radical ex-Muslim coming on. We're going to talk about near-death experiences again. Make sure you hit subscribe.

And if you thought about studying apologetics, I would love to have you in class with me at Biola. We are on campus and online in our Talbot Apologetics program. Check it out below and think about joining me. All right, Josh, always fun, brother. All right, brother. Great to see you