The latest review of Google Search Trends shows that the week of Christmas brings a spike of porn-related search traffic in the U.S. every year.
Although a popular porn site revealed that Christmas Day is its lowest day in the year for site traffic, data from Google Trends reveals that the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day brings a peak in porn-related searches equaled only in mid-summer.
The dip on Christmas Day would suggest that people are typically with their families and friends for the holiday. That said, the Christmas period can be a very difficult time of year for those who have lost family members or friends, or may be spending Christmas alone. The search trends following Christmas Day make a lot of sense given that a significant portion of Americans have been conditioned since they were teenagers to use pornography to medicate emotional pain.
With 68 percent of men in the church already using pornography on a regular basis, churches are in desperate need of a way to help men overcome pornography this holiday season.
The traditional approach that churches have used to address the porn issue is to tell men to try harder—pray more, read your Bible more, memorize Bible verses. … But is this approach really working? A fascinating new cinematic study called the Conquer Series challenges this old approach. According to the film, men are seeking out porn to medicate the pain and worthlessness in their lives.
According to the director, Jeremy Wiles, “they usually find porn at a very early age and it helps them cope with the pain they’re facing in their childhood. But they don’t realize what the enemy is doing to their brain.”
The film series reveals through scientific testimony the effects porn has on the brain—physically changing its structure and deactivating parts of the brain where moral decisions and reasoning are made. What starts out as a moral problem quickly becomes a brain problem.
“Most men, without realizing it, are medicating the beliefs they have about themselves: they are worthless, God hates them, if only people knew the real me. So this increase in shame drives the need for more medication in the form of pornography, which releases dopamine and a concoction of other neurochemicals, and gives them a euphoric ‘high’,” Wiles says.
So, why does porn use increase during the Christmas season? As an adult, have you ever been around your parents and felt like a child again? According to Wiles, “Men are acting out around this time of the year partly because Christmas brings together families, which is a good thing, but many men re-experience the dysfunction and trauma they grew up with when their family comes together. They feel like a child again.”
“Trying harder doesn’t work. The answer is not to avoid spending time with family or make a pledge to never watch porn again; rather, it is to get into a process where you can find healing from what’s driving the behavior and learn biblical strategies to find freedom from porn,” says Wiles.
Dr. Ted Roberts, host of the Conquer Series says, “We are wounded in relationships, but we heal only in the context of relationships.”
Thousands of churches across the nation are watching how the powerful information in the Conquer Series is bringing about real change within the hearts of men in their church. The Conquer Series is a six-disc cinematic DVD series for men that uses war analogies to help men understand the battle they’re facing with pornography. Dr. Ted Roberts, host of the Conquer Series, has helped thousands of men find freedom. It has become “ground zero” in the movement to help men find freedom.
“Churches are in a great position to run a Conquer Group to help men find accountability and connect with others this Christmas season and into the New Year,” says Wiles.
If churches do that, they will help men break the bondage porn has on their life and connect with the true meaning of Christmas—that God loves us so deeply that He sent His Son to Earth as a sacrifice for our sins. “When men truly grasp God’s grace, his unrelenting love for them, that there is no condemnation in Christ—it gives them the freedom to not sin anymore,” says Wiles.
Order the Conquer Series as a gift for your church this Christmas at conquerseries.com. {eoa}
Joseph Mattera 
BJ Foster 
Shelby Bowen 
