Pureheart Testimonials

These are testimonies (summarized) from current and former Pureheart clients. The majority of these men have broken free and now walk in consistent purity, but some have only been in counseling for a few months, having just begun the process. These men represent a wide spectrum of ages, backgrounds, personalities, single and married, years spent in sexual sin, and addictive behaviors from masturbation to sex with prostitutes, but all of them have changed dramatically. These are real men and these are their stories! If they can change, so can you! (For obvious reasons, we have changed their names.)

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Brother "Tom," Age 23

  The first time I viewed a Playboy magazine I was in 6th grade a friend of mine got it from his uncle. I was hooked after that. I took any chance I could to get my hands on erotic material: Victoria's Secret catalogues, swimsuit ads, MAXIM magazines, R rated movies, I even looked for porn if a kid at school said they saw it on the sidewalk on their way to school. I eventually got a stack of porn mags from another friend that were more vivid than I was used to. Masturbation took off and was soon a daily ritual for me. To make things worse I got unrestricted access to the internet the same time I was getting bored with those old magazines. I would stay up till 2AM before sneaking into the living room for a private viewing session. High school rolled around and I got my own room with my own computer. No wonder why my grades were so horrible, the time I should have been spending on homework I spent scheduling my life around when nobody else was home and downloading porn on a Napster-like program that left a clean trace on my browser history. After high school I got a girlfriend. Somehow I was firm in my belief that sex should take place after marriage, but that didn't mean sexual groping and mutual masturbation were off the menu. Our relationship was never about love for each other but our own pain. We both lied to and used each other to make ourselves feel more secure. I finally broke the relationship off. Though it lasted for two months it did severe damage and left holes in me that I kept trying to fill with the wrong things time after time again.

  My largest consequence I faced as an addict was the distance from God. I constantly defied God and only wanted him present when it was convenient for me. I never read my Bible. I didn't believe that God wanted the best for me. My relationships with everybody suffered. I had a mask I would wear for everybody. I didn't trust anyone and didn't open up. I kept all of my pain locked inside. I was never up for making new friends. I would lie to cover up my feelings and sin. My guilt and shame made it almost impossible to face women. I never saw them in the way God wanted me to see them. I only looked and thought of them with my own worldly views. I spent so much of my time and energy involved in ministries I lacked heart for trying to cover up the addict "Tom," that I would lose sight of who God created me to be. I was so focused on sex that I neglected the life God put in front of me.

  Praise God for Pureheart Ministries and the work that they do. After hearing Tim and Jay share their testimonies I had hope. I thought to myself “If they can break free, I can too.” I signed up for a free evaluation. I thought that my addiction wasn't that bad, after all I was a single man in my early twenties, but the sexual survey and Tim proved me wrong. Tim helped me to break out of denial and identify the lies I kept telling myself to justify my behavior. He helped me to realize that I was a prisoner of spiritual warfare. Once I began fighting for my soul I didn't give up I was tired of giving up. I was sick of Satan controlling my life. I made a game plan to stop my behavior. I identified what I was fighting for, what I was standing against, my strengths, and my weaknesses. The material I read for homework was very helpful and proved to be an effective tool in defeating masturbation, full of great tips and suggestions. One suggestion that helped me out a lot was a tangible consequence. I first set the bar at a $50 donation to Pureheart Ministries for masturbating and then raised it to my $750 guitar to insure never relapsing. Thankfully God created me with the gift of being a tightwad and Tim never saw any consequence money from me. Tim also teamed me up with a few guys from my church we meet weekly to check in and discuss our struggle with sexual sin. It's been my great honor and pleasure to get to know and love the men in my group. I am thankful to have open relationships with men I look up to. They keep me accountable and me helping them stay accountable helps me too. I can't brag enough about my group. Pureheart works! If you are willing to spend the money for counseling, do the work, and make some sacrifices you too can be free from the vicious cycle that tore me apart daily.

  As a single man I now have 14 months of consistent purity! No porn. No masturbation. I'm so grateful for the work God has done in my life. I'm a new man. I actually pursue God, not run and hide from him. I read my Bible and pray almost daily. I set goals and believe in myself. My communication has improved and I'm beginning to build healthy Christ-like relationships with women because there isn't a barrier of shame. My thought life has improved drastically, I don't find myself lusting near as much as I did and sex isn't on my mind 89% of the time. I've began living a truthful, honest, and open life. I have a huge evangelical heart for men that struggle with sexual purity. I devote myself to my Pureheart group and plan to lead one in later years. I'm more active I care about my health and exercise more often. I make better use of my time, I rarely if ever watch T.V. and I spend my time doing what I love and fulfilling my duties. I give more generously and have recently started to tithe. I've learned to be bold and confident, and best of all I don't see myself as a pathetic, cowardly pervert anymore. I see myself as "Tom," a man of God.

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A Pastor's Story...
My One Year Testimony...One Year Free of Porn and Masturbation!
January 2011

  One year ago, I was at a near breaking point. My marriage was suffering. My personal devotional life was almost non-existent. I was leading the church from a place of timidity and shame. I didn’t want to challenge people too boldly because I knew I wasn’t able to see the change in my own life. The worst thing of all was preaching and seeing my wife sitting on the front row. She was in so much pain, and I knew she knew what was going on inside of me. I felt like a fake but I couldn’t help it.

  Porn and masturbation had been a constant part of my life since my teen years when I was exposed to it in middle school. Things escalated from there, especially when we got internet access in my bedroom in high school. I always thought I would ‘grow out of it’ like when I went to a Christian college, met my fiancé and started in ministry. I was wrong, wrong and wrong again. The patterns of addiction were too deep, and there were a number of practical avenues that I was not closing which left the ‘drug’ available to me. I had personal counseling, marital counseling, and even joined a Christian recovery group for 3 years. In all of that, I had never made it past three months without masturbating or looking at sexually explicit material.

  I found Pureheart Ministries online one day and decided to give the free assessment a try out of desperation. I really wasn’t expecting too much since I felt I had already done ‘all I could’ to get free to no avail. Tim shared with me that he had a nearly 100% success rate with guys who followed his advice step by step. That got my attention. The first step was to ‘get rid of the drug’ by white listing my computer. While I had a filter for many years, I always found a way around it by doing searches, trying to ‘poke holes’ in the system- and there were plenty of loopholes. I didn’t think white listing would work because I often have to use the internet for work-related purposes- and because so many things happen online these days (registration, conferences, purchasing etc). After setting it up, the white listing has been a lifesaver. Because I’m restricted to only a few sites (email, bills, bible programs, etc), I don’t spend any idle time surfing the net. That is something I am done with the rest of my life. If I ever need a site that I can’t access, I can ask my wife at home with her present there.
The second biggest help for me was establishing financial consequences for an integrity break. My wife was very skeptical of this at first, and thought we’d lose our whole savings because nothing had ever worked for me in the past! However, combining consequences with the white listing proved to be a very powerful combination for me. In the one year since working with Tim, I had one incident where I did a search for inappropriate ‘soft porn’ images while logged into my wife’s user. Paying the consequence reaffirmed for me the ‘sting’ of getting wrapped up in this sin again.

  I appreciate Tim’s bluntness. The Pureheart workbook follows the theme of WWII and at times, I really did feel like a recruit in Basic Training taking orders from a drill sergeant! I took it, however, because I know he really has my best in mind, and because we truly ARE in a war. Falling into the enemy’s trap has HUGE disastrous consequences for myself, my wife, my kids, my church, community and the Kingdom of God. I truly believe that. I was losing my relationship with the Lord. My wife was becoming hurt and distant. I was not connecting well with my children. My ministry was suffering. All of those things could have been thrown away in a moment of stupidity by acting out at church and having someone else find out.

  On the other hand, VICTORY also has huge consequences of blessing, life, freedom and helping others to get free. I am so excited to be crossing the one year mark. I feel like a new man. I have gotten into better shape physically than any time since college. I’m eating well, exercising regularly. My sex life with my wife has greatly improved. I am more present with my kids and don’t lose my patience with them as easily. I am preaching with more passion, conviction, and clarity. I am engaging difficult conversations with people without feeling like I have anything to hide. I am a better leader. I am setting goals and praying and working to see them reached. I am excited to see other men break free of their addictions. I have led two men’s groups on this topics, and am waiting for the Lord to reveal his next steps for me. At some point, I hope to take men through the Pureheart training- especially pastors and leaders who are stuck like I was.

  Going forward, I plan to live in integrity the rest of my life. I plan to have a regular weekly check in for the rest of my life. I will never do an internet search by myself again. I will always have white listed internet. I will never have TV. These are simple ways of ‘cutting off my right hand’ that are a small price to pay for the blessings and benefits of living in freedom.

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Brother "Bob"
Six Month Update 8-9-10

  These past six months have been nothing short of amazing. I used to be a person that was carrying a secret that was choking me spiritually. My greatest fear was being found out, that I was addicted to pornography. It had always been in my life, Playboy magazine, but when we got our first computer with internet access ten years ago I was like a little kid in a candy store. The last five years it seemed that all I thought about was pornographic fantasies. I didn’t really think I was hurting anyone. I stayed away from child porn. and animals and I never subscribed to any porn. sight. It was only pictures. That was my justification and denial at work. I might have a problem, but I’m not as bad as others. I had all kinds of reasons why I did what I did. Most of them were family issues and I used porn. as a form of medicine.

  The past two years have been the hardest. I realized I had become very short fused with my wife, and I started experiencing a lot of guilt and shame after an evening of porn. surfing. I knew what I was doing was wrong, but I just couldn’t quit. I tried a few times, but the longest I managed to stay away was two weeks. My spiritual life had become a sham, like what I was reading couldn’t apply to me because I was full of self condemnation.

  Two years ago, at the Men’s N.W. Conference, one of the speakers there was Ted Roberts, author of the book Pure Desire. He talked about sexual addiction and threw out some statistics of church men that made me realize that I probably wasn’t the only person in our church with a pornography problem. At the time I was in a good men’s group from church, and I felt fairly safe with sharing my secret with them. Well, everyone tries to help, but we aren’t equipped to deal with the devil at this level. Good intentions aren’t good enough. You can’t win this battle by yourself.

  The following year I joined a second men’s group. The main focus with this group was accountability and the subject was sexual addiction. This was where the rubber started meeting the pavement. We were studying the book, A Cross Centered Life, by C.J. Mahaney. Justification, Sanctification, and Condemnation were some of the subjects we talked about and learned how to apply these to our lives. At about the same time, Tim Davis from Pureheart Ministries gave a presentation on sexual addiction at our last men’s breakfast. He presented data similar to what I’d heard before. At the end of his presentation, he asked if anyone had situations they would like to share and a number of men, young and old, shared on how easy it was to get caught up in worldly sin, including myself.

  The following week, Tim Davis called and asked if I was willing to meet with him. He said the session had been prepaid. At the end of that first meeting Tim stated that I was in need of professional help. I stated that finances were an issue and Tim told me that a couple of people from our church had offered to sponsor me.

  At this time, I truly want to thank those of you who believed enough in me to sponsor me through this counseling with Tim. Without it I wouldn’t be where I am today.

  During session one, Tim and I banged heads a couple of times to the point of quitting. That was my initial resistance to some truths that I was in denial on. What I am learning is putting my trust in God and to bring Him along side of me when fighting the devil. I’ve found this is easier to say than do. One of the men in my second group made a comment to me that really stuck. He told me,” Brother, you’ve become so complacent in your Christianity that you’ve lost your first love”, which is God. This made a real impact on me because I know now that I need to be God focused. I’ve learned the more I focus on God, the more active the Holy Spirit is in me. I’ve also learned that sin and the Holy Spirit are not compatible.

  It was during the first session that I realize my mind was clearing up. Before my mind was like a fog with flashes of trash to feed my fantasies. I also destroyed all my cd’s and dvd’s that contained saved pictures over the past ten years. Everything I had in the house or garage that was sexually related became trash. Paper was burnt, vhs tapes were drilled. Nothing could be salvaged for later use. It’s hard to describe the rush of joy when I drilled the computer discs. and secured them together with bolts and nuts. They sit on top of my computer cabinet like a trophy.

  I have done more reading in the past year an I’ve done in the past forty years. Besides reading the books from the men’s groups I’ve read, Pure Desire, The Shack, and Truefaced. All excellent books.

  Recently, Tim asked me to identify all my soul ties to sexual sin. This would be anyone or anything that caused me to sin against God. The prayer Tim and I had with God revealing these soul ties and asking for forgiveness was one of the most heart wrenching emotional talks with God I’ve ever had. Step by step I’m getting stronger because God is with me and the Holy Spirit is there to help me along the way.

  On July forth, I made another stand on addiction. I quit smoking. I asked the Holy Spirit to take the lead on this and for the most part it’s been pretty easy.

  One of the hardest things I’ve faced so far is establishing a consistent devotional time. The weeks that I slack in devotional times seem uneventful and ho-hum. If you don’t put God first you know who’ll be there to jump in. Summer time seems to be hardest to find quiet times for devotion without falling asleep.

  Now this is ironic. I’m struggling with devotional time and I get this urging to read Ecclesiastes. If my understanding is correct it says that mans work on earth is meaningless. We really can’t change for the better what God has made. Our goal should be to worship our God and enjoy the blessing He bestows on us. I took notice of chapter 7, verse 26. “I find more bitter than death the woman who is a snare, whose heart is a trap and whose hand are chains. The man who pleases God will escape her, but the sinner she will ensnare.” Some might call this a coincidence. I think it was a nudge from the Holy Spirit.

  My battle is not nearly complete, but it’s no longer hopeless. God and I are still dealing with issues of total trust. There are still family issues, but I’m not using porn. as medicine to numb my mind. I haven’t used the internet for pornography for over six months now. I hear frequently that I’m not the same man I was six months ago.

  Again, I thank you and my wife thanks you. God bless you.

Brother "Bob"




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Brother "Fred,"
10/6/10
I started my time with Tim and Pureheart in October of 2009, having been led by God to his phone number, after a couple of false starts with other attempts at deliverance. My story is fairly mundane, but no less destructive than those more flamboyant. I was a porn addict from a teen, being 53 now, and married just over 30 years. My wife was the one that finally got fed up with my behavior, my excuses, my accusations, and the hurt she endured. She was the one that I saw dying before me, and it cut me to the heart. Knowing in myself that I could not do this on my own, I tried a couple of “long distance” programs, from books/workbooks, to considering email type homework and counseling. Nothing settled with us, until I found Tim. After one phone call, in which I was able to talk to Tim directly, I knew within myself that this is where my path to deliverance would lie.

I was also a seminary graduate and a pastor for over 30 years. As part of my healing process, I chose to take a sabbatical to concentrate on my purity, which has opened the door to understanding and pursuing my true destiny with the Father. I didn’t see it then, (Tim did), but my weakness and addiction was holding me back from being what God wanted me to be. It literally held me down, bound me so that I could not move closer to God, or forward in my life. Furthermore, it was threatening my marriage, which would have devastating effects on not only my two children, but to the hundreds of people we have served in our fellowship over the decades. I was at a critical impasse in my life, and needed a strong, knowledgeable, brother to help me.

Tim was, and Pureheart is, just that. Psychological counseling from a Biblical basis. Both health and healing in one package. Over this past year, we have worked through his incredibly thorough, and Biblically accurate, “briefings”, and are almost though them all. Along the way, he uncovered some hidden damage from childhood sexual abuse and emotional neglect. We explored deeply my “emotional IQ”, which was a HUGE breakthrough in my life. Today, I am aggressively building my weak areas, with God’s help, so that I can be better for Him.

My wife says it is nice to have a husband again, both in life and in bed. I have never known such intimacy, such closeness with her. And not unexpectedly, I am seeing the same closeness developing with God. Where I thought I had a relationship with Him, I was at best, an occasional acquaintance, not by His choosing, but by my weakness and addiction.

Tim not only “helped” me through my addiction, but even greater, restored me to the place God wanted me to be, open and close to Him. I have a ways to go still, but the growth, particularly this last month, has been astounding. My wife says I am a new man. She wonders what happened to the “old Fred”, but not too much, as she is quite content to leave him where he is! She even commented last week, noting that she couldn’t believe that she would say this, but she thanked me for being so screwed up, for without hitting that bottom, we probably never would have grown so close, and would not have moved so far and so fast together with God. God allows in His wisdom, what He could easily prevent with his power so that He can bring us to a higher place in Him. This was true for Abraham, Joseph, Job, and Paul, and even, little ol’ "Fred." There is always provision from God in any affliction we are in. There is always strength in Christ behind the weakness of the flesh, if we only press through the walls to get to it. Pureheart, Tim, ministered to the base elements of my weakness, addressing the physical and mental where needed, but even more, inspired the spiritual, so that I could breakthrough beyond the physical affliction to claim my place as God’s man.

Thanks Tim.


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Fred, age 22.

            At 19, I was already going to adult bookstores and buying pornographic DVD’s. I had been masturbating regularly since I was 9 or 10, moving on to porn when I was in high school.  By the time I started Bible college, I was already deeply addicted. My thought life was obsessively focused on sex; my mind was full of lustful thoughts and sexual fantasy. I knew what I was doing and thinking was wrong, but I didn’t know how to stop. I talked to a number of people about my struggles, but they either told me they would pray for me or minimized the problem.

            Hearing Jay and Tim share their stories had a major impact on me. I immediately joined a Pureheart group. I took in as much of their teaching as possible, applying everything I could to my situation. I am happy to say that, even as a single man, I have been able to defeat the habit of masturbation (I had never been able to break the habit before). I had initial 6 months masturbation free, and then relapsed over the summer because I didn’t maintain accountability during those months. I now have an additional 8 months with 0 masturbation. During these last 2 years I have looked at erotic material on only 2 occasions, and even that was for a short period of time. Best of all, I am now engaged to be married. I have been completely honest with my fiancé about my past—she also helps keep me accountable. We have stayed pure in our relationship and have been careful not to cross the line. Thanks to Pureheart, I can give my future wife the gift of a pure, self-controlled, and faithful husband! I highly recommend Pureheart!

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Thomas, age 57

            When I started counseling with Tim, I had little hope. My marriage was completely dead; I felt no affection for my wife and we hadn’t had sex for over 7 years. I had kept the secret of my addiction to pornography for basically all of our married life. I would buy porn mags and go to adult bookstores and strip clubs. In the later years of our marriage, I had even started sleeping with prostitutes. I justified my behavior because of the lack of love and sex with my wife. I also didn’t believe I could ever break free of my addiction, but my wife had caught me looking at porn on the Internet and had given me an ultimatum. Either get free or get out.

            I have been counseling with Pureheart over a year now. I have also been active in several men’s recovery groups, attended conferences on purity, and have read a variety of books relating to getting clean. I am a very different person than the man I was a year ago. Apart from one relapse in masturbation early on and looking at erotic ads once or twice, I have been clean for the last year. I have 9 months of no porn, no masturbation, no adult bookstores, no prostitutes, and my thought life has improved dramatically. My relationship with God that had been dead for so many years has now changed, and I am actually enjoying my quiet time with Him on a daily basis. My wife and I have gone through some seriously hard times over the year, but despite them, we are still together and slowly building a relationship once again. Best of all, I can tell my two boys that their dad is now living a pure life.

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Joe, age 25

            I began masturbating when I was very young.  It was about the age of eight when I started and my addiction grew from there.  At first I would look at things like lingerie ads in the paper, or find some thing on television that had women scantily clad for a stimulus.  Then one late night I while channel surfing I found a show on public access TV that was all about showing nudity.  I became a regular viewer of the show and kept digging my self deeper and deeper into my addiction.  A couple of years after finding the “sex show” on television I get my first computer and in very short order realized that even though I was under age I could get pornography on line. From that point I no longer had to wait each week or search for some ad in the paper for the stimulus I wanted to masturbate.  All I had to do was log onto the computer and there it was.  I spent hours looking at pornographic pictures and videos on the internet.  Then I found the dating sites and chat rooms.  I found that there were women out there that were just as addicted to sex as I had become, though I didn’t think of myself as an addict.  I began to chat with women on line and eventually to meet them as well.  Through much of this I also had a girl friend, who eventually became my wife, who I was sexually active with but that knew nothing of my secret addiction.

            During the time that I was moving deeper into my addiction I was also leading a double life.  I attended church, spent time with my family and friends.  Looking back on those years I can see that I was not really connected to my family or friends.  I would spend time with them but I didn’t really enjoy it.  I was just numb inside not feeling much of anything.  Worst of all I had NO relationship with God.  Sure I went to church and I could talk about the Bible.  It wasn’t that I didn’t believe in God, I just didn’t care about God.  The only person I felt any connection to was my girlfriend, who I was sleeping with.  Then one day it happened.  My girlfriend, now my wife found one of the chat rooms I had gone to on the computer and everything came out.   My wife was obviously hurt.  She had caught me looking at pornography in the past and knew that I had slept with another woman once while we were dating and had temporarily split up.  Now I had to tell her that I had slept with a number of women both before and after we were married, women that I had met over the Internet and hooked up with just to have sex.  I promised that it would never happen again and that I would get help to stop doing it.  I didn’t.  I did try to stop my self and while I never did sleep with another woman again I could not break myself of looking at porn, masturbating (I was still masturbating 20-40 times a week while having regular sex with my wife), and even sexual chatting online. 

          I knew that I needed help to get out but I didn’t really want to get out.  True I didn’t want to hurt my wife or have to deal with another episode like when she caught me before, but I still didn’t want to stop.  The thing that finally changed my mind on that was the birth of my son.  I began to truly try to break this habit, that is when I began to think of it as an addiction.  I just wasn’t able to do it on my own.  I continued to find myself going back to porn and masturbating. Finally my wife found out I was still involved in porn and gave me an ultimatum.  I get clean or she and my son were going to leave.  I remembered that my mother had said she saw these guys on television talking about breaking sexual addiction, and while I was ashamed and didn’t want to have to tell any one else what was going on I decided to go ahead and try Pureheart.

           When I began the Pureheart program the biggest thing I got right away is that it is
possible to break this addiction.  That along with reading the “Who am I List” and making myself do the devotions started to make a change in me.  It wasn’t instant though it was fast.  I began to want to get free.  I found that I started to enjoy reading my Bible and praying.  Combine that with basic things like not using the Internet, and blocking channels on the television that carry content that could be a stimulus I started to move in a positive direction.  The biggest thing that helped me though was finding my accountability partner.  At first I was calling him several times a day.  The amazing thing, aside from him not getting sick of me is that it actually helped.  When I would have the urge to masturbate or find porn I would call him and we would talk or pray.

          Just using the tools and ideas from Pureheart was the best thing I ever did in trying to get out of addiction. Since I started counseling with Tim (9 months ago), I have masturbated 0 times, looked at erotic material once (I found one of my old porn mags in storage, but I threw it away and did not relapse), and have been completely faithful to my wife. My thought life has taken longer to get clean, but even that is now night and day different.

          I still have a long way to go before I will be the man I really want to be.  But I am on the right road now.  I can see myself growing in God.  I am connecting with my family on an
emotional level that I don’t ever remember having before.  I know that at any time the urge to
masturbate or do any of a number of other things could hit me.  I also know how to fight and
defeat those urges and stay headed in the direction I am going.

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