Chris Franz and I are in a men’s small group together. He grew up Catholic, served 12 years in the Army, and has been married to his wife, Ruth, for 14 years. In this episode he shares the part of his story most men never say out loud: a struggle with pornography that started when he was 12 years old, and what finally happened when he stopped hiding it.
A slow drift
Chris never made a decision to walk away from God. After he joined the Army, church slowly dropped out of his life, and about ten years went by. What brought his family back was their daughter. She came home from Christian preschool asking questions about Jonah and David and Goliath. Chris and Ruth could answer the stories, but when she asked why, he said, “we had no answer.”
“Only God sees this”
Chris came back to church, went through Rooted at Bethel Church in Richland, Washington, and was baptized again. He was serving and helping lead a small group. He was also still carrying the same secret, and he had a way of explaining it to himself. If this was the worst thing he struggled with, it was between him and God. In his words, “only God sees this.”
That is how a secret survives for decades. The first thing Adam and Eve did after they sinned was hide, and God came looking for them anyway: “Where are you?” (Genesis 3:9, NLT). Shame tells you to hide. God keeps coming after you.
Right there on the website
In 2024 Chris’s marriage hit its lowest point. He went to his church’s website looking for any kind of help and found Seven Pillars of Freedom, a program through Pure Desire Ministries for men dealing with sexual brokenness. “I could never have gone out and found this on my own,” he told me. “It was God putting this in front of me.”
The behavior was never the whole problem. Seven Pillars helped him deal with what was underneath it, and the hardest and most important part was telling other men. James 5:16 says, “Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed” (NLT). Chris now leads men through the same program.
Conviction or condemnation
A lot of men confuse these two. Conviction is the Holy Spirit pointing to a specific sin so you can confess it and turn, and it always pulls you toward God and other people. Condemnation says you are the sin and you are too far gone, and it always drives you into hiding. “So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1, NLT).
You are not alone
In a 2024 report from Barna and Pure Desire Ministries, 75% of Christian men said they view pornography at least occasionally, and 82% of Christians who struggle with it said no one is helping them. If you are carrying this, Chris’s message is simple: you are not alone, and “there is freedom on the other side of confessing this thing.”
Scripture from this episode
Genesis 3:8-10, 1 Kings 19:12, Proverbs 27:17, Romans 5:3-4, Romans 8:1, Romans 12:2, 1 Corinthians 10:13, 2 Corinthians 1:3-4, 2 Corinthians 5:17, 2 Corinthians 10:5, 2 Corinthians 12:7-9, Ephesians 5:11-13, Ephesians 6:10-18, James 5:16, 1 Peter 5:8
Find a Seven Pillars of Freedom group at puredesire.org/groups, or join one at Bethel Church in Richland: Seven Pillars at Bethel
