I have a confession to make to everyone who reads this. There is something in my life that I have been hiding from everyone because of fear. As all of us have, there is something in my past that I am not proud of. This something I have never told very many people. In fact, until January of this year, only 3 people who knew I was struggling with this: my parents and a friend of ours I’ve been going to for emotional release work. This is something that 35% of all downloads of the internet include. This is something that 64% of Christian men, 87% of Christian women, and 50% of Christian pastors admit that they struggle with. It is something that causes 56% of all divorces.
It is the hidden elephant in the room. It is pornography.
Porn is a HUGE problem in today’s world, as you can tell from the statistics above. It destroys lives. It is a cloud that hovers over the mind of its users. It causes division in marriage. It feels good for a few minutes, but the consequences are horrendous.
It was a problem for me. I was addicted to pornography. However, by the grace of God, I am now set free from it. Until very recently – Sunday, March 7, 2021, to be exact – I was bound by the grasp of lust and pornography.
Though I still somewhat fear slipping back into it, God told me, through a mentor of mine, that if I fear something, it means I have not yet fully given it over completely to God. That is why I am telling you this now – to let it go – to complete the process of healing.
I believe that now is the time for my story to be shared with the world. The fear of man is not going to keep me silent about the darkest part of my past any longer.
This post is to share a part of the journey. It is the first chapter of my book I’m writing about my healing from porn. It will be called More than Conquerors: Freedom from Sin, Satan, and Pornography. I am currently still writing it, but this first chapter is one I wrote about a year and a half ago, after which God told me to put down my pen, so that I could pick it up again once my healing was finished. That is what I am doing now.
The entire process of healing would be too long to be contained in one blog – which is to be expected of a 1 ½ year healing. That is why I am writing the book: to tell my story, how I overcame lust and porn through the grace of God, and to hopefully help others who may be struggling with the same issue. I intention to release more of my story over the following months as I write the book.
With that being said, here is the first chapter of my book.
Chapter 1: the Key to your Freedom is through your Greatest Pain
I have some exciting news for you! I found my key! The key is not a physical key. It will not open any physical door or start any car. The key I’m talking about is my success key. Let me tell you how I found it.
I have been plugged into personal growth and development since the summer of 2016. However, for perhaps the last 3 months prior to writing this, I have felt as if I have leveled off in terms of my growth. I have felt as if I have all the keys that I need to succeed in a new business I just started a few weeks ago, but once I started working on it, I felt as if there was still something holding me back. It was as if there was one key that I was missing – one last door to unlock. I knew which door it was, but I couldn’t figure out which key was the correct one. That was what was driving me nuts. To make it worse, I knew deep down that it was a key I already had in my collection; I just couldn’t it. Then, finally, a couple nights ago, I figured out which key it was.
Alright, I know what you’re thinking, “Just give us the key!” I’ll answer that question, but I must warn you in advance. I am going to be raw and real with you. I’m going to be completely open and vulnerable. I’m not going to mince words. I’ll just tell you like it was up until a couple nights ago. And if you decide to hate me for that, unfriend me on Facebook, or blast me and attack my past, I’m okay with that because my past is not who I am now. I just want to be completely honest with you.
Okay. I’ll start off by making a confession to you guys: up until a couple nights ago, I had an addiction to pornography. Yep! You read that right. I did not stutter. Until a couple nights ago, that is, September 1, 2019, I had an addiction to pornography.
You say, “Really? That’s your key?”
Well, it’s part of it. You see, to fully understand it, you must know the story behind it.
It started about 7 or 8 years ago – so when I was in 4th or 5th grade. It started with one of my classmates. It does not matter who it was, nor do I intend to disrespect any of my classmates with this statement, as I have long since forgiven the person. First, it was an offhand comment less than one sentence long. Second, that person never knew how what they said impacted me. Third, as Romans 8:28 says, “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” And fourth, bouncing off number 3, this was probably the best thing that happened to me in my life. With that aside let me continue.
It started, to tell you the truth, with curiosity (like many addictions) and “only” scantily clad women. I say only in quotes because that’s bad enough. That’s why the Bible says that women should “dress in modest apparel.” Jesus said that if you just so much as look at a woman in lust, then you have committed adultery with her in your heart.
So, it started with that, and went on for about a week or two. Then, I got caught by Mom and Dad. They put up software on the computer to filter out that stuff. It worked for a while. Then they apparently forgot about it, because it stopped working after a while. It was only a little, but it was enough. The Devil had planted his seed.
About that time, my parents had gotten started with a network marketing company, which I also just recently got started in. The following February (which would’ve been February 2016), Dad went to a company convention in Las Vegas. He came back with some personal development and network marketing training materials that a friend of ours had given to him. Dad started playing some of it intermittently for the next couple months, whether it was driving in our van or at home. One night, he was playing a part of Jerry Clark’s program called “Insider’s Secret into Making Your Fortune in MLM: Vol. 1.” The particular part he was playing was Mark Yarnell’s one hour segment about how your paradigms shape your future. To this day, I don’t know what exactly it was that intrigued me so much about it. It might’ve simply been my subconscious mind saying to pay attention. I started listening to that specific part on my own whenever I found the opportunity, whether it was mowing the lawn or riding my bike. This was probably about late April or early May of 2016.
Here’s the part of the story where it gets interesting, which began to set up a repeating pattern for me, and was part of the revelation that I had a few nights ago. But it first needs a little context before I get into the rest of the story.
For those of you who have seen Episode Eight of the sequel Star Wars trilogy, you will remember where Kylo Ren brings Rey in front of Snoke, Snoke says something I thought was interesting: “Darkness rises and light to meet it.” Whether you believe this statement or not (it is a movie after all), I found that, for me, the opposite was true: light rises and darkness to meet it. This would mean that, when you start to do the things that help you on your path to a richer life, the Devil – life, fate, whatever you want to call it – will throw things in your path to try to knock you back down to where he wants you to be. In other words, when you let your light shine, the darkness will immediately try to snuff it out. And it will always oppose the light in as great strength as the light is. However, you may rest assured that the darkness can never snuff out the light unless you allow it to.
Now that we have that established, you can guess what happened after I started to casually listen to Mark and other personal development speakers. About a month later I again started looking at porn, though still “only” scantily clad females. That lasted about a week or 2. Then I quit for a while and basically forgot about it for the rest of the summer. I think the reason for that is, even though my self-confidence and self-esteem were so far in the tank (because of past programming, school, and other things) that it took a ton of listening to the good stuff to balance out the darkness that was already in me.
Summer turned into fall. I was listening to personal development more and more. Then, slowly, more and more, I started looking at porn again, though “only” about once a month or so.
Then a huge, life-altering shift happened – GoPro 2016. For those of you who don’t know, GoPro is a deep-dive leadership training event centered on the industry of networking marketing.
In 2016, they had Tony Robbins, Sir Richard Branson, and Mel Robbins, along with several other great speakers. You can be sure, my “light” was sky-high. Plus, a very close friend of ours, Jacob Rakowski, did a Facebook live with me, the first one I ever remember doing with someone. That was another personal barrier that I had started to overcome.
But guess what happened soon after that event? Yep, the attacks from the “dark side” grew more and more intense, and 4 weeks after the event, I was at the lowest point of my entire life. It got to the point where every night I would wait until everyone else was asleep, then I would go downstairs and look at pornography. It never got violent, but it might have if it would’ve kept going.
Then, on New Year’s Eve, I slipped down again. This time, while I was in the middle of viewing it, the computer froze. I panicked. The guilt flood gates were open. I wrote a confession to Mom and Dad. It was hasty and panicked, but 100% sincere. Then, for the first time, I truly felt the weight of the guilt. I felt how low I had sunk, and felt worse than anything I had ever experienced. I rewrote the note, more thought out this time, quietly put it on their dresser so they would see it, then went to bed.
The next morning when Dad woke us up for the New Year’s Day church service, when he came into my room, I could feel his pain and sadness, and it made me feel even worse. After that they put a more secure system on the computer, and for the next year and ¾, I didn’t so much as think of looking at porn, which shows how far the “dark side” pulled me under.
I told you this would be raw and real, didn’t I? This is probably totally different than you thought it was, isn’t it? Well, buckle up, hang on to your hats, and let’s keep going. It’s about to get even more interesting.
After the above-mentioned confession to Mom and Dad, I really began to get concerned for my spiritual well-being. It didn’t start in earnest until maybe a year later, but I began to pray to God more often. I was concerned about my past. I knew from the personal development videos that I was listening to that my past doesn’t have to bear any weight on my future here on earth, but what about for eternity? I couldn’t bear the thought. I was in inner turmoil. I knew that God could save anyone, but would he do that for me?
Also, in June of 2018, my family became heavily involved with the Civil Air Patrol (CAP for short), which focuses very heavily on leadership, mentorship, and character development. So, once again, “the light” was beginning to rise. But, yet again, “the dark” attacked in October 2018.
This time, it was a longer, more drawn out, complicated process. It started very heavily for about a week, then I got caught again by Dad and Mom. This time, I felt so much guilt after the end of the 7 days that I literally couldn’t sleep that last night before I was caught. Dad came up with a few questions to help me get to the root of the problem. It helped, but it wasn’t the fix because only a couple months later, I started again, though, as I implied earlier, it was a more intermittent occurrence. Until July of 2019, which I’ll get to in a little bit.
Mid-summer of 2018 saw my family transition from private schooling to homeschooling and from going to church to having church at home. On Sunday mornings, Dad would have a passage from the Bible for us to consider together, and in the evenings, he would read aloud John Bunyan’s book The Holy War. If you have not read that book yet, you must. That book was such a comfort to me because I could relate with exactly what Bunyan wrote about. I felt as if I was being converted along with the city we were reading about.
After I was discovered in October 2018, I began praying more earnestly, imploring God to please get me out of the mess I had created for myself. Then, during the winter of 2018-2019, I received the first assurance that I was a child of God. It was in the middle of the night, and everyone else was asleep. I had been playing Amazing Grace and How Great Thou Art in my head. After I was done, my inner dialogue was something to the effect of, “Let’s read from the Bible.” “Where should we read?” “I don’t know. Let’s just open to a page. God will guide my hands.” That’s exactly what happened. I opened to Psalm 134, which reads as follows:
Psalm 134
A song of degrees
1. Behold, bless ye the LORD, all ye servants of the LORD, which stand by night in the house of the LORD.
2. Lift up your hands in the sanctuary, and bless the LORD.
3. The LORD that made the heaven and earth bless thee out of Zion.”
The first 2 verses are an accurate depiction of what I was doing that night – i.e. standing in His house, and lifting up my hands in my sanctuary – and the last verse was the blessing I felt God’s answer to me that night.
I was stunned and thought, “This can’t be a coincidence.” But over the next few weeks, the “dark side” tried to convince me that it was. However, after a string of assurances like the one mentioned above, I have come to KNOW beyond any reasonable doubt that I am a child of the one true God, saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.
You can just imagine the assaults from the Devil – whom I’ve just been labeling “the dark side” in this chapter for simplicity and illustration’s sake – that I had, and it wasn’t from porn this time (thankfully). It was about doubt, guilt about my past, among other things. Finally, porn reared its ugly head for the last time. It was mid-July – after the 2019 Joint Dakota Leadership Encampment through CAP, I might add – that it started again. This time it was “only” once per week, every week (mostly) for almost two months until September 1, 2019. Interestingly enough, it was always around Sunday. That brings me to the night that this all came together for me.
I want to clarify something. Looking back on it now, I can see that, most of the time, my desire to view pornography had nothing to do with me. It was simply a reaction from the dark side to the good, clean, powerful, and positive things I am putting into my mind.
That night, September 2, 2019, I found the key. Here’s how:
I had been dozing a little restlessly for about an hour and a half. Something inside me apparently was telling me to stay awake. (It may also have been the coffee I had earlier that night.) Everyone else was asleep once again. I had been pondering over the preceding couple days the possibility of finding a meditation that would help me release the porn addiction, but, for whatever reason, I just hadn’t looked for one. Then, on September 2nd, I just decided to do it. I’m so glad that I found one.
What the man speaking the meditation said literally changed me. After I was finished with it, I literally felt as if my entire DNA was changed, that I was cleaned at the molecular level. For the first time in over 6 years, I was finally free of it.
I must say: by no means am I advocating that you should go through what I did. Once you start down that slippery slope, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to get out of it without outside help. The only reason why I was able to get free from it while so many others are not is the grace of God. Honestly and truly. If you or anyone you know is under that heavy weight, yes of course, get yourself/themselves cured mentally by whatever meditation (not medication) that resonates with you. The one I found might not be the one you need. Take care of the mental aspect, but also the spiritual. One of the 10 Commandments is “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” And Christ Himself said, as I reiterated earlier, that if you simply look at a woman in lust, you have committed adultery in your heart. That qualifies porn. What I’m saying is simply this: absolutely heal your mind, but also, heal your spirit by asking God to forgive you.
Why do I tell you this? Why do I risk my reputation to give you the truth about my past? The answer is: I believe in living honestly and openly. It’s like Zig Ziglar and Mark Twain said, if you tell the truth, you have nothing to hide. If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.
There are three things that, besides what was mentioned throughout this story, were revealed to me. These are the three keys I received:
First, if there is anything in my life that can be a testimony for others, it is that God can save anyone and use them for His Kingdom. No excuses can be used if you’re not one of His children.
Second, just because you may have looked at porn then sincerely asked for forgiveness, then looked at it again and asked for forgiveness, just to repeat that cycle like I did; as long as you truly asked for forgiveness, that doesn’t make you a hypocrite or diminish your self-worth. It simply means that you haven’t yet learned to master your emotions. And third, as you grow in your strength, awareness, and confidence in the good, the evil will try to pull you in the opposite direction. It will try to lure you in with many pleasant looks (sometimes literally), and unless you’re not very, very careful, you will fall into its trap. If you live unconsciously, you will rise and fall, rise and fall, rise and fall, over and over again. You must have the awareness, strength, and capacity to know that the more you let your light shine, the more the darkness will try to snuff it out. However, if you keep your fire burning when it is no larger than a candle flame, eventually, it will become a roaring blaze no one will be able to stop.
Super Success 