Talking to your pastor about starting a conquer series group can feel intimidating, so here are five things to consider before talking to your pastor about starting a group for your church. 

1. Start with why! Tell your story of how a commitment to sexual purity helped grow your faith, marriage and accountability around pornography and a healthy lifestyle. 

2. Tell them you want to start a Conquer Series group for the men of your church. Be clear that you want to be under their guidance and accountability. Sexual health can be a hot button issue in the local church so be sure to take notes on any concerns your pastor might have. Remember, if your pastoral leadership asks clarifying questions it's not a no, but a sign of interest.  See it from their perspective: You may likely be the first person to ever approach them about starting a sexual health group for men! 

3. Let your pastor know what Conquer series is. Say something like “Let me play you a short clip that tells you what the Conquers series is about” and then play the introduction video on the front page of the conquer series website. It will give Your pastor a good idea of what the Conquer Series is about. To see the video, click here.

4. Tell your pastor when and where you want to start your group, but be open to when they would envision starting the group. Having a start date shows them you are serious about doing this but being flexible to their schedule shows a willingness to collaborate. Be a team player with your church leadership helping them succeed in men breaking free from sexual secrets!

5. How much does it cost? Getting a digital subscription for $50 a month is a great way to go because you get a digital study guide,  journal and other great features. Men in your group can have ownership by helping to pay for your subscription right from the Conquer Series app to help offset the monthly charge for your church. Plus you can cancel your subscription anytime, no questions asked. Pretty Slick.  

If you want more help or have any other questions as you take on this challenge please contact us by emailing breakfreewi@gmail.com

Forgotten. Impatient. Entitled. Feeling like my time is being wasted at a job that is not ministry. Wanting to eat not just one brownie but also the whole row!  I want to masturbate to medicate the pain and lack of control in my life.  All of this and more I confess regularly to Christ and brothers in my Conquer Series group.
 
I want all these things more than a life dedicated to the disciplined path of following Jesus. How vile and idolatrous! You would think after the past four years of prison, treatment, and reentry I would trust God more than my own fleshly desires, but no, the battle continues.  If I were God I wouldn’t bother with me.
 
What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? (Romans 7:24)
 
Thank you, Lord for your grace. My desires are not pure and I need your grace badly. Turning my back on sin is not simple, as it requires repentance. 

Admitting to moral failure and selfishness is painful; like admitting these things will cause my death kind of pain. I remember at one point of confession I literally wanted to rip out my veins and crawl out of my skin. It’s no wonder we want to hide sin away in secret when confronting our sin can be traumatic.

It can and will drive a person into deep shame and suicide. But there is hope!
 
Aren’t Christians supposed to be impervious to depression and sinful thoughts? By no means! As I read from a list of theological giants I see each one of them talks about their own battle with “concupiscence” which is a very old word for “strong sexual desire.” We are not alone. Don’t listen to Churchianity that says we need to get our act together before going to church, rather lets understand that the same people who put the liturgy together and wrote the hymns are vile sinners who have humbly admitted their sin and have pressed on in life surrendering daily to Christ.
 
I am not alone.
 
You are not alone!
 
There is hope when we repent and press into a community of faith. If you struggle with “concupiscence” why not join the Sexual Integrity 101 online group with Break Free and find a home where you are safe to repent and start a whole new direction in life!

So earlier this week I shared a nugget about how the truth hurts. But there is more to that story if we are willing to include it in our story for growth and change. Being confronted by truth from the Holy Spirit, or others speaking into our lives can be for the good; life changing. As I shared in my testimony I had two dear friends of mine confront me about how I was engaging in sin regarding my addiction to gay pornography, masturbation and fantasy life. It was true. I didn’t like that it was true, but nonetheless it was true. I am thankful to God for softening my heart to really hear the truth and accept it that day. Just a few days earlier I was argumentative with them in an attempt to explain away my addiction that It was out of my control. (Lie). Confronted and convicted by truth. Now what? Truth checks. Do you and I have control over our actions and thoughts? Yes. Over the years I have come to realize more and more the lies I have believed about myself. Those lies can come from others, Satan, or even myself and my emotions.

Phillipians 4:8 Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

This verse has been critical for me in remembering the importance of truth checks. Isn’t it interesting that the very first direction for our thoughts is at truth?! Truth checks take some time for self-reflection. Since same-sex attraction is heavily impacted by thoughts of identity and worth that is often where I have to ask some questions. Some questions I have had to ask myself include; is my masculinity determined by my ability to fix a car, lift so many pounds, look like that, or whatever else it may be? Sometimes I can recognize the truth quickly and am rescued right away from the destruction of lies. Sometimes I struggle to believe the truth and and go back and forth in my mind about truth and lies; rescuing can be a process. My prayer is this, as your story is being written day by day – what is guiding your thoughts, feelings and behaviors. Is it true?
As I close I anticipate the next blog entry focusing on key Biblical truths that have been helpful to me in my story; being rescued from the lies of identity and same sex attraction. 

“For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self -control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection and brotherly affection with love. For these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.”  (2 Peter 1:5-7)

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​My moral failure was symptomatic of a desire to hurry up and become a mature believer. The past few years of incarceration and re-entry to society has been an unrelenting exercise of discipline. I have felt the Good Shepherds crook slowing my unbridled brain so that I would pay attention to His love.

“Patience is waiting. Not passively waiting. That is laziness. But to keep going when the going is hard and slow-that is patience. The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.”   -Leo Tolstoy

​A scripture guiding my recovery and reliable traveling companion is 2 Peter 1:5-9. These wise words are a light upon my path as I slog through difficulties. Peter uses a brilliant form of deductive reasoning to help bring clarity to the white-knuckling emotions that come from the slow pace of spiritual growth.
Peter’s blueprint of spiritual growth is the following:

1. Diligently add virtue to faith.
2. Virtue increases knowledge.
3. Knowledge develops self control.
4. Self control leads to perseverance.
5. Perseverance sprouts godliness.
6. Godliness gives birth to brotherly kindness.
7. Brotherly kindness procures love.

When I came across 2 Peter 1:5-9 memories of studying deductive reasoning in one of my philosophy classes came to mind. As a man who struggles understanding the relenting waves of emotion, learning the application of deductive reasoning through God’s inspired word brings compassion and curiosity in dealing with moral failure. 

The first thing learned in treatment is how thoughts and feelings lead to actions. This is nothing new, but what I realized is how much my feelings were controlling me more than biblical reasoning.  I had no problem believing that I loved God but how often do our actions work contrary to our beliefs?
Both the Bible and the brain affirm this quandary. Science and scriptures do affirm one another!

The Bible: One of the most revealing scriptures concerning wrestling with the flesh is featured in Romans 7:15 where Paul says, “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” Comfort from scripture is that you must come out of the shadows to deal with your moral failure because you are not alone in struggling with the flesh. If you think your sin is so special that you must keep it hidden you are missing the power of the cross. Your focus remains squarely on idolatry of your own will power rather than trusting God to help you overcome temptation. Self control doesn’t come from willpower it is a fruit given in relationship with the Holy Spirit. 

The Brain: The cerebral cortex, the largest part of the brain, is the ultimate control and information-processing center in the brain. The cerebral cortex is responsible for many higher-order brain functions such as sensation, perception, memory, association, thought, and voluntary physical action. The Amygdala is survival central. It processes the information even before the prefrontal cortex gets the message that something has happened. It defines what food is critical for survival and what is vital for you sexually.

“An essential feature of the brain anatomy is the fact that there are more connections running from the amygdala to the cortex than the other way around. That means the amygdala will win the battle every time. That explains why Paul is in such despair in Romans 7. When these two parts of the brain are at war with one another it’s a bit like Mike Tyson facing off with Woody Allen.”  -Dr Ted Roberts

The big take-away from this is no amount of willpower I possess can stop my sexual desires. The notion of “just try harder” will not work to overcome the addiction. The only way through is overcoming the idol of self sufficiency by patiently relying on our triune God to provide healing over time.  God has given us the blueprint of this process in 2 Peter 1:5-7.
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Next week I will take a deep dive into 2 Peter 1:5 to glean nuggets of truth to aid in the long journey to health. Will you join me? Afterall, part of the blueprint is brotherly affection.

“For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self -control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection and brotherly affection with love. For these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.”  (2 Peter 1:5-7)



​The first thing Peter tells us to do when we receive the gift of faith is to supplement it with with virtue.  I am learning the difference between adding virtue to faith rather than focusing on working to please God and currying favor with other Christians. Scripture is clear that I can’t earn God’s favor because he is all ready pleased with me. “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.” (Ephesians 2:8)  As a felon it’s so easy to forget this promise from God because feelings of shame which leads to fear of how other people are judging me. My focus goes directly to works because I want to convince them that I am not some sick monster defined by a wretched mistake. I feel a drive to constantly point to my works and prove that I am a changed man, but have found doing this only leads to depression and despair. I want to isolate because my flight instinct kicks in when I am surrounded by people who know my very public offense.

What is the difference between living a works based life verses living with virtue? I believe the simple answer is gratitude. God opens the door for gratitude through the propitiation of Jesus Christ. Since I am God’s beloved child I want to live a life of gratitude for the incredible gift I could never pay back. My offense was against God and God alone. He forgives me, brings healing and restoration through the work of the cross. Choosing to live in the shadows of shame is no longer an option as a Christ follower. How can I possibly hold myself in contempt when the creator of the universe has pardoned me? According to Peter I am now free to add virtue to my faith.

This begs the question, “How do you add virtue to faith?” This is not as simple an answer as I would like because we need to figure out what virtue is in a culture that has tossed the concept away in favor of loving the world and excusing base behaviors. Throughout theological and philosophical history there has been some debate about what the virtues are, but a reasonable consensus over centuries of thought point to what scholars call the “Transcendentals.” All who are sensitive to new age terminology can drop the red flag, I am not talking about transcendentalism. The root idea behind these transcendentals come from Plato’s forms.

In order to unpack this term think about the popular notion of your desire to be a humanBEING not a humanDOING. The transcendentals are the properties of being human and are defined as Truth, Beauty, and Goodness. From a Christian worldview we seek Truth, discover Beauty and desire Goodness. Since we are free from sin we are now delightfully empowered to shed works based thinking and embrace a journey of attaining the virtues of truth, beauty and goodness!

“All things desire God as their end, when they desire some good thing…because nothing is good and desirable except forasmuch as it participates in the likeness of God.”  (St. Thomas Aquinas, Treatise on the Virtues)

​Adding the virtue of Truth In the current mood of 2020 belief says that Truth is not as important as how you feel. The art of truth seeking is a difficult proposition to untangle because Truth has a way of making you feel uncomfortable. Truth makes you face pain while feelings tell us to cover over truth with a veneer of denial and a good dose of positive self talk.

Truth can be seen as judgmental and in our woketopian world making truth claims is a vice because it can make another person feel bad about themselves. For example, in a day room conversation I told a fellow friend and inmate that I believed the Bible was more reliable than the Koran because the Bible is God’s word to us and the Koran was not God inspired. This was unacceptable to his ears because I made a truth claim about God that pointed to the exclusive teaching of Christ.

Even as some Christians read this they might say I was insensitive to my friend because it could have caused him to feel threatened or outcast. However, and here is the rub, Truth will always inform us of flaws and false beliefs we are holding that are rooted in our emotions rather than logic.  If our passions, devoid of virtue, are the only thing we allow to inform us we merely add trite pleasantries that don’t challenge deeper thoughts about our relationship with God and ultimately keep us from being transformed by renewing of our mind in Christ who is the Truth.

As a felon I have had to stare my crime in the face over and over again through treatment. The work of wrapping my head around the fact that I was capable of something so evil was torturous. I lived a life of denial of pain of my own sexual abuse for so long I found what I was truly looking for while engaging sexual fantasies online was to escape the reality of my pain and sooth my anger with the flattering lips of pornography. "With persuasive words she led him astray; she seduced him with her smooth talk." Proverbs 7:21

I also found the reason that I liked working at warp speed and conquering the world for the cause of Christ was also my own attempts to self medicate. It’s easy to cover up pain and hide vices like pornography by operating at light speed. I told myself “I am doing good things and that is more important to God than overcoming a sin that no one needs to know about.” Talk about adventures in missing the point!

It leaves me in worship considering how kind God is that even when I was His enemy He loved me enough to chase me down, bring unrelenting discipline of His Truth, throw me over his shoulders and take me back home. No amount of coddling my ego and soothing me with lies from hell could bring the sweet relief of the rock solid Truth of Christ’s sacred heart and divine mercy.

“My dear son, be patient, because the weakness of the body are given to us in this world by God for the salvation of the soul. So they are of great merit when they are borne patiently.” -St. Francis of Assisi

It was the first time in three months that I was allowed to go outside and walk around the prison yard. Yes, it was a deep winter freeze of a Wisconsin December but after being locked inside for what seemed like an eternity confined to small spaces with other men, it was euphoric to walk around outside by myself to be alone in thought.

The chill made me feel alive again. As I walked I looked across the prison yard a shiver ran up my back, though not from the cold. “I have over a year yet in this place.” My right shoulder tensed and a newfound anxiety tick I never experienced in 45 years of life scrunched up the right side of my face. The Holy Spirit soothed the knot in my stomach and whispered a reminder “God disciplines those whom he loves.” I chuckled and said out loud, “Well, God, you must love me very much.”

What was a time in your life when you found a vice you carefully clung to? Have you given it to God? Tell us how you found freedom through confronting yourself with truth!
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Are you in ministry and struggling with pornography? You are not alone. If you want to break free and confess your sin to a non judgemental brother and anonymously begin a journey towards healing and freedom please, drop me an email: jasonwkaat@gmail.com I would like nothing more than to have sweet revenge against Satan, our common adversary. Freedom is possible!

Welcome to Day Room TheologyThis blog is not for the faint of heart, spiritual elite or easily offended. I had a moral failure in April of 2017 that landed me in Oshkosh Correctional Institution over an 18 month period. Prior to this date I was in youth ministry for over 20 years, married just as long to my college sweetheart. Our oldest was in college and my youngest in their sophomore year of high school. Life seemed to be going along at great speed and I was at the top of my field eyeing an executive ministry position in a national youth ministry organization. My problem was that I had a secret struggle with pornography and a history of sexual abuse which I shoved to the back of my conscience figuring if I just keep moving foreword and doing my best that my dirty secret would eventually go away. Surely the better I do in life the less my sexual secrets will have power over me. My career will save me, my reputation will save me, and all the great friends and connections in ministry would atone for my secret sin and it would eventually just go away.
I was wildly wrong and my career became an idol that slowly replaced my first love. Only Christ is able to bring about the healing I needed through His kindness and forgiveness. Had you asked me at the time if I believed in salvation through Christ alone I would have given an emphatic “Yes!” and yet the specter that continued to dog me in this process was the question “If I truly believed, why did I suffer needlessly relying on my own works and hide behind titles?” I believed in Christ as my salvation but I thought my sin was special and would loose my job and career if I brought it to light. Ironically, it was the fact that I did not bring my deep hurt before the light of the gospel that I wound up loosing my carefully constructed career and all the titles. I literally grabbed my dreams of ministry leadership and all I proclaimed to be true and threw them in a dumpster and lit it on fire. WHY? This and many other facets of restoration is the struggle the following posts will unpack.
God disciplines those whom he loves. This blog is about the process of pressing into the light of Christ after committing a horrible act that brought shame on His church, my family and community. From the very start it was obvious that Christ was not done with me and in that moment was He was laying the foundation of powerful reconciliation only God can procure.
Most of this blog was actually written while I was in prison as I worked out my salvation in fear and trembling. The reason this blog is called “Day Room Theology” is because I set myself to read scripture daily as well as many spiritual formation books and classics from the world of theology that I could get my hands on during what prison culture refers to as “Day Room”. You see every day after breakfast we would go back to our cells for standing count. This process took a good hour of time and all the inmates anticipated getting out of our cell for a few hours. At 8AM sharp every day our CO would quietly proclaim “Day Room” over the loud speaker and the inmates would pour excitedly out of their cells for desperately desired social interaction. Some would go to class, some to work in some particular area around the prison yard, some to programs and others to hang out at one of the many tables where you could only fit four people to play cards, drink instant coffee, wheel and deal for food or other “contraband” items, or in my case, read scripture and study theological classics.
Some entries will be purely reasoning through the process of how God wants to restore brokenness to Himself, some entries are reflections from Bible studies I held daily with other men who were curious what the “bible guy” was reading that day, and some are purely personal reflections that came about when no one showed up for a conversation about God and I was immersed in note taking from a theological classic.
I hope in this blog you will find the delightful fragrance of God affirming a filthy sinner that He will relentlessly pursue him and will be faithful to complete the good work He started in him before the foundations of the earth were laid! Welcome to Dayroom Theology.