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A
FamilyChristian.com Exclusive Interview
Fred
Stoeker
Author Every Man's Battle
and Every Woman's Desire
 From
the television to the Internet, print media to videos, men are constantly faced
with the assault of sensual images. It is impossible to avoid such temptations...but,
thankfully, not impossible to rise above them. Shattering the perception that
men are unable to control their thought lives and roving eyes, Every
Man's Battle shares the stories of dozens who have escaped the trap
of sexual immorality and presents a practical, detailed plan for any man who
desires sexual purity. Every Man's
Battle is a helpful read for any man: those who have fallen in the
past, those who want to remain strong today and all who want to overcome temptation
in the future. Fred Stoeker recently spoke with FamilyChristian.com about the
book that has all the guys talking.
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FamilyChristian.com:
This is a pretty risky topic for a first
time author. What inspired you?
Fred: I had taught a seven-week course on sexual purity twice at my church.
I was teaching it to married classes and the response from the men was nothing
short of just dramatic. They would come up to me for weeks afterwards on the
sly, telling me about their problems and [asking] how they could get over them.
A number of them said I should write a book. At first I thought they were just
being complimentary, but after awhile, I started thinking maybe I should. I
prayed about it and decided that rather than ending up being 85 sitting in my
rocking chair wishing that I would have, I decided I would go ahead and see
what God would do with it. It was something important to do and if it never
got published at least my own kids would have it and they could use it to teach
my grandkids. That was my mindset.
FamilyChristian.com:
At what point did you realize that lust
was more of a problem than maybe you initially thought?
Fred: It was always really bad for me, obviously, before I was saved.
After [I became a Christian] I got into the church and married about a year
later. I didn't understand fully the problems that come with lust. I knew that
the things that I was doing were probably wrong but I didn't know anybody else
that had the problem. I had no one to talk to and I really didn't see the effects
that it was having at first. I suppose you could say that I began to really
understand it three, four years into marriage.
FamilyChristian.com:
What effects you began to see?
Fred: There's kind of an invisible effect and then there's more of a
visible effect. The invisible effect is that when you are involved in sexual
impurity, there's adultery in your life. And when there's adultery in your life,
you may be having sex with your wife physically but your spirits aren't communing.
It's impossible in the spirit realm for your spirits to be communing properly
because of the adultery. So there's a loss in the spirit realm, which is hard
to put our finger on. From a visible point of view, there is no way that you
can have a fully complete relationship with your wife. You're always afraid
to give yourself 100% to your wife because you know that one day, she's going
to find out about this and if you're not fortunate, she's going to leave you
and leave you devastated emotionally. So you don't want all your emotions tied
up in her. You want to have something left that's not crushed in the end. That's
a common thing that I hear when I talk to men, that they really can't give themselves
fully and their hearts are held back.
FamilyChristian.com:
What would you say to the man who says that
his thought life is private and doesn't affect anyone else?
Fred: Well, I would say that's crazy. There's nothing in the Bible that
would lead us to believe that. Christ would never agree with that. I know that
some of the times when I was right in the very act of looking at, not pornography,
but lingerie ads or some of those things, my wife would run down the stairs
because she had just had a dream where she's being chased by Satan and she couldn't
find me in the dream to protect her. I really think that the effects of my sin
were causing my protection to be taken off of her. I also know that there's
generational sin. The Bible's very clear about that. It would affect my kids
whether they even knew about my sin or not.
And it was was having a
huge impact on my ability to worship. I know the day that I finally broke free.
It was about 6 weeks into the process [of putting] the principles into place.
The next morning was Sunday and it was the first morning I was able to worship
freely in my whole life. I didn't stop worshipping for 48 hours. There's more
to this than what we think. If we're in it long enough, we're so used to it
that we don't really notice it but I can assure you that once it's gone, there's
a huge difference in your life.
FamilyChristian.com:
If you were to write a review for Every
Man's Battle, how would you describe it?
Fred: I would describe it as a very practical book that's centered on
getting free. Unlike many of the other books in the marketplace, which are designed
to kind of quantify what the problem is, Every Man's Battle is designed to tell
people how to get free. I don't think that a Christian book is useful if it
just tells you how many people are in the boat with you. I think it's only useful
if it tells you how to get out of the boat.
FamilyChristian.com:
What are some of the suggestions you offer
to men reading this book?
Fred: The first thing I suggest is to re-evaluate the way they view Christianity
entirely. One of the things that most Christians do these days is mix their
standards with God's standards. What we'll do is we'll see a verse that says
something like this, "But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual
immorality" (Ephesians 5:3), and what we'll do with that is say, "Well, that's
just too hard. God can't possibly have meant what He said there" and we'll mix
in our own standards to make it easier to live by. We'll redefine what sexual
immorality is so that we don't have to actually live with that sharp of a line.
And what happens is we get hooked like the Israelites got hooked. They were
supposed to go into the land and destroy every last trace of the religions that
were there before them but instead of doing that, they mixed their standards
[and those things] became a snare to them later. What happens when we mix our
standards when it comes to sexual purity is that we'll say to ourselves, "Well,
you know, I won't actually go out on my wife, but it's okay to look at these
lingerie ads, it's okay to look at these joggers…" and pretty soon [those things]
become a snare to you and you have just as much distance from God as you would
have with any of the bigger things you were going to do. So the first thing
I challenge men to do is to look at their lives and decide that it's time to
live by God's standards and not our own. Once you do that, then you have the
freedom to truly live and to truly fight. Before that, I would say none of my
principles will work at all because you haven't really committed to His standards.
Once you do that, though,
there are three things that you need to do. You need to build three perimeters
around yourself. One is a perimeter of the eyes, which I call "bouncing the
eyes." Men can draw sexual gratification from their eyes and it's natural for
them to do so. What I do is teach men how to train their eyes to bounce away
from the sensual as opposed to bouncing toward the sensual. And that's a process
that really only takes about six weeks. It can be very habitual after that,
where your eyes are doing the right thing. The second thing is to build a perimeter
around the mind. They'll be thinking about old girlfriends, they'll be thinking
about ex-wives, they'll maybe even be fantasizing about things they've seen,
whatever. I train them to take every thought captive. I give them the Scriptures
that are useful to tell them how to do it. And then the last thing is to draw
a perimeter around your heart, where you learn to cherish your wife and see
her as valuable for who she is today as opposed to who you wish she was. I think
that of all the perimeters, that's the most important one because if you have
a cherishing heart for your wife as she is today, that's going to draw you into
purity because you're going to want to be pure.
FamilyChristian.com:
How has building these perimeters affected
your relationship with your wife?
Fred: When I went into this process, I just want to be able to look my
God in the eye. I just want to be able to worship. That's all I wanted. But
then what happened was, the blessings began pouring in. I can hardly even talk
about it because He's so gracious. You know, the thing is, I would have never
dreamed that my actual tastes would change, but that's the glory of God. He
tells us to take joy in the wife of your youth and what happened was, as she
became the only input into my eyes, she began to look totally gorgeous.
FamilyChristian.com:
At what point should a man share his struggles
with his wife and for what purpose?
Fred: I'm probably tighter on this than what some people are. But I also
know from my own experience in dealing with guys that sometimes we let our wives
know too soon and that can be a problem [because most] women don't understand
our visual orientation. They don't understand the hook that this puts into us
and so they can only think of it from their perspective. If they were thinking
those things, they would be perverted so they automatically believe that we're
perverted. And I'm not saying it's not perverted to some degree, but it's not
as bad as what they think.
I get emails all the time
from men saying, "Look, my wife found out about this. She's divorcing me. Help
me." The fact of the matter is, and I know this will sound strange to a woman,
but this viewing of pornography and all the things that surround it often has
nothing to do with the wife at all. I mean, your wife can still the one that
you would never be able to live without, but there's this dichotomy in your
mind. There's this sin, this perversion that takes you in this other direction.
So, a lot of times women react with, "Oh, he's a pervert and he doesn't love
me." But actually he's a sinner that has a bad habit that he needs to break.
It doesn't necessarily mean he's worse than the next person down the street.
I feel you need to wait
just a little bit because when I first tried to break free, I hadn't really
totally made the decision that I hated my sin. And so what happens if you tell
your wife too soon is that she's checking up on you all the time [trying to
help], putting a lot of pressure on you. The worst part is that she doesn't
understand why you can't get free. If she starts to get really resentful it
can put a big wedge in the relationship rather than be a help.
continued...
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