Pureheart Testimonials
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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.) |
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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Tom, age 40
It was in one of our first sessions. Tim asked me how many times I had masturbated in my life. That’s one of
those questions you don’t get very often. I had to stop and think—it took me a while. The grand total? At least 30,000 times—and I am only 40 years-old. I
masturbated 7 times a day for many years right up until the time I stated counseling. Here’s the amazing thing. Since starting with Pureheart I have masturbated 0 times—I
am now in my 9th month of sobriety. Praise God!
Of course, I didn’t just masturbate. I belonged to an extremely dysfunctional family so I learned early on to
escape into sexual sin. I discovered pornography early, and by the time I was a young adult, I had already had a number of affairs with married women. I became a Christian and got
married, and while I stopped sleeping around, I couldn’t break the habit of masturbation and porn. I also developed a habit for many years of taking time off work, drinking
alcohol, and then going to strip clubs or lingerie modeling places. Since I was a Christian, I kept all of this secret; even my wife didn’t know for many years. Here’s the
amazing thing. Since starting with Pureheart, I also have 9 months clean from any kind of alcohol, porn, strip clubs, lingerie shops, or any other sexual sin. My relationship with my
wife has improved dramatically, and I feel like I can finally start to grow again spiritually after living so many years as a hypocrite. I don’t want you to think that my life
is perfect now, I still have some major hurdles to overcome, but in terms of purity, it has been a night and day difference. I thank God for Pureheart!
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Howard, age 34
I told my wife what I had been doing. Of course, she was devastated. And angry. We agreed to separate—I moved
across town. I was sure that divorce was on the horizon. Thanks to my sins, my wife, my two girls, and I would become yet another statistic.
I started counseling with Pureheart right around this time—I heard about them through someone at our church. I
told Tim that I didn’t have much hope, but God had made it clear to me that I needed to tell my wife everything—even with the risk of divorce. This was my second time
around in terms of sexual sin, so it was understandable that my wife felt especially betrayed. When I was younger, I had been addicted to alcohol and drugs but I had managed,
basically on my own, to get sober. I couldn’t beat my addiction to porn and sex, however, and so I went to a treatment program in town for sexual addiction. It didn’t
really take—for a variety of reasons. I didn’t remain in accountability after the program was done, nor did I really kick the habit of masturbation. My wife, however,
thought I was clean, and I went back to keeping secrets. Now, years later, I told her the truth. She found out that after a time of sobriety, I had returned to my habits of looking at
porn, and then eventually, going back to lingerie modeling sites and sleeping with prostitutes. Even during this time, however, God spoke to me very clearly, telling me that my only
hope in ever breaking free was to get completely honest. I also knew I needed help.
I have been done with counseling now for a year. I have two years of complete sobriety—no porn, no
masturbation, no affairs, no sleeping with anyone other than my wife. I did have one close call during counseling when I took a trip away from home, but I resisted the temptation by
calling and checking in with my wife and my accountability partners. I continue to meet weekly with a small group of guys who hold me accountable in terms of both purity and spiritual
growth. Miraculously, my wife took me back in—again. Our relationship is better than it has ever been—we hardly even argue anymore (we used to fight all the time). I
can’t thank God enough for a ministry like Pureheart.
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Ed, age 28.
I have only been counseling for 5 months, but already I have made some real progress. Even though I grew up in the
church and had a dramatic conversion at age 15, I couldn’t shake the habit of masturbation and porn. I have never slept with a woman but I have spent countless hours looking at
porn. I started with magazines at neighbor’s houses and then pornographic movies on Cable TV. After I was saved, I had several years of purity, but when I went through problems
at my church, I reverted to my old ways, except that by then, I had discovered the Internet. I used to look at hardcore porn and masturbate until I literally vomited from disgust with
what I was looking at—but even that didn’t stop me. My addiction killed my relationship with God and I began to withdraw from relationships, isolating myself even further.
Whenever I would get stressed or had problems at work, I would binge on porn and masturbation. Of course, this only made me feel worse, which led to more binging, and so on.
I found out about Pureheart through the Internet. I now have hope that I can be pure again, my relationship with God
is growing again, and I am renewing friendships with people I haven’t talked to in years. I put a filter on my computer at home and set a rule of no Internet use after midnight
when I get back from work. I was pure for a month and then relapsed into masturbation and porn for several days. I then got more serious about consequences for my behavior and set up
a plan with my accountability partner (my stepbrother). If I masturbate, I owe him $20 and if I look at porn, it’s $30 a pop. My stepbrother was hoping to make lot of money off
me, but so far he has been very disappointed. I now have 3 months and counting entirely porn and masturbation free. My thought life is getting cleaned up as well, and I have real hope
that I learn to walk in constant purity for the rest of my life. I want to be pure so that when I find the right woman, I can be someone who has a habit of purity and not sexual
sin.
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Bob, age 22
I grew up on the mission field but even there, it was easy to get ensnared in sexual sin. I masturbated for the
first time when I was 12 years old. There was immediate guilt and shame that followed, but it felt too good to stop and I was too scared to tell my parents. I masturbated at least
once a day for the next five years, sometimes more. I didn’t masturbate quite as much when I was 17-22 years old, more like 3 or 4 times a week. That means that in the last ten
years, I’ve masturbated at least 2600 times. I looked at my first porn magazine in a field when I was 12 years old. For the next year, I took bike rides around the neighborhood
every weekend, sometimes for 4 hours at a time, looking for scraps of pornographic magazines and masturbating in the bushes. When I was 15, I started looking at swimsuit models on the
Internet whenever my parents were out of the house. Within a year, I was looking at hardcore Internet porn whenever I got the chance. At 17, I got bored with pictures and started
watching videos online. I didn’t look at Internet porn as frequently when I started attending college (because I assumed the IT department knew what I was looking at), and I
didn’t have the opportunity to masturbate as much since I was normally surrounded by guys in the dorm. However, I would binge during breaks when I was away from school, so my
heart wasn’t changing at all. That’s where I was at before I came to Pureheart.
I was sick of the cycle of shame and guilt that I was going through. I was starting to serve as a youth leader at a
local church, and I felt like a hypocrite since my thought life was such a mess. I had been in three different peer-led accountability groups as a teen, and all of them had disbanded
when we kept failing and eventually hiding our sexual sins. Hearing Tim and Jay speak jolted me awake, and gave me hope that I could really be transformed on the inside.
Pureheart has made standing up against temptation and oppression a reality for me. Instead of just shoving
information down my throat and saying “You should do this,” Pureheart has walked me through step by step, encouraging me to confess routinely to Christian brothers, speak
truth into each other’s lives, pray for each other, and support one another throughout the week. My identity in Christ has been ingrained into me. I now know the difference
between a spiritual attack and a fleshly desire, and how I can practically deal with both. I have cut down masturbation from 3 or 4 times a week to only 1 time a week. I even went 40
days without masturbating at one point (something I have never done before). I went without looking at porn of any kind for 4 months – the longest ever for me. With the support
of my brothers in Pureheart and by God’s grace, I have made it through a one-year engagement without sleeping with my fiancé – something that seemed next to
impossible to me a year ago. None of this has been easy, and I have failed in every area. Yet, the greatest thing I’ve grown in is being able to confess my shortcomings openly
among other Christian men, knowing that I will be accepted, pinned to the wall, challenged, encouraged, and empowered to face another day of overcoming temptation.
Having a trained counselor leading the group who has walked through everything I have and who has overcome the same
temptations I face is one thing distinct about Pureheart. I haven’t seen an accountability group with this quality anywhere else. In comparison to Pureheart, the other
accountability groups that I’ve been a part of were weak in their ability to dig deep and address the heart-issues of sin, shame, and denial.
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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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Phillip, age 39
I have probably had sex over 200 times with different prostitutes—it’s a miracle I didn’t get
AIDS. I was even a pastor once, but completely lost myself in my addiction. I have done about everything there is to do sexually speaking. I lost my job as a pastor, I ruined my
health (reducing myself to basically skin and bones), repeatedly betrayed my wife, and poisoned my family with the toxic spiritual and emotional consequences of my sin. We have
struggled financially ever since I lost my job as pastor and this has caused both my wife and I great stress. I believed that God had given up on me, that my sin was too much, and
that I had lost my salvation because of the things I had done.
I have been in counseling with Pureheart for over 2 years. It has been a long haul and a difficult road back. I am
still numb in many ways, but slowly but surely I am coming back to life. I have not slept with anyone other than my wife for two years. I have relapsed occasionally looking at porn on
the Internet and I struggled for a long time to break the habit of masturbation. I reduced masturbation to once a week for a number of months, going for about 3 months without it and
any porn, but then I relapsed back into my once a week pattern. Currently I have 3 months again clean and I believe I have finally turned a corner on my acting out behavior. We are
now working on the inside stuff that caused me to become addicted in the first place. I know that I still have a lot of work to do, but for the first time in a long time, I can see
light at the end of the tunnel. My relationship with my wife is slowly improving, although there is still a lot work that needs to be done there, and I am praying again, talking to
God about my life. He has recently opened up a new job for me that I am very excited about. I feel like I am the prodigal son—I am not all the way home yet, but I am well on my
way.
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