Tim's Story
Like many Christian men, I knew
that sex outside of marriage was wrong, but I managed to justify my
addiction to masturbation, fantasy, and pornography on the basis that I
was just another red-blooded American male. Unfortunately, Scripture
doesn’t mince words. Jesus clearly states that lustful thinking is the
same as lustful living. Revelation states unequivocally that the
sexually immoral will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven. More than
anything else, I wanted to break free of my addictive cycle, but back
then no one, and I mean no one, talked about sexual sin, much less how
to break free of the pit and live in purity.
Compare your story to mine. In what ways have you justified your
sexual sin?
I was probably 11 or 12 years-old the first time I saw pornography. It
was hardcore, lesbian pornography and I was instantly entranced. I can
still remember the jolt, the incredible high that seeing those pictures
gave me. I had already started masturbating habitually years before,
using sex scenes from books and pictures from catalogs and magazines
like National “Ohsographic” to enhance my fantasy life, but seeing porn
for the first time immediately took me to the next level in my
addictive journey.
What was your reaction the first time you saw pornography?
Of course at the time, I never paused to reflect on why these pictures of
perversion impacted me so powerfully—or for that matter, why I had
started masturbating well before puberty and why I was already so
attuned to sexuality. As a missionary kid, I grew up in nearly complete
innocence (or so I thought). For most of my early life, I lived on
tropical islands—there was no TV, no movies, no bookstores, and
obviously, no Internet. As far as I knew, I had had a normal childhood,
raised by parents who loved me and never mistreated me. Well into my
late twenties, if you had told me back then that I had been both
sexually and ritually abused as a child, I would have laughed at you in
disbelief.
As a teenager, still on the mission field, I rarely had the chance to see
porn, but I became an expert at finding authors who described sex in
their books. I used these sex scenes to fuel my secret fantasy life and
habitual masturbation. However, when I left home to finish high school
at a Christian prep school in the States, I soon discovered that almost
all of the guys in my dorm were hooked on porn. I would steal their
pornographic magazines and books (after all, who were they going to
tell?), so I could look at them and masturbate. Porn was far more
exciting than dry old sex scenes in books, and I soon reached another
milestone in my addictive journey by buying my first pornographic
magazine (while in an airport traveling between school and home).
Have you been living a double life?
I was living a double life. I became the “Big Man on
Campus,” I was the student body president, an honor student, a varsity
soccer player, active in Bible studies, choir and barbershop—I even
spoke to the entire campus on several occasions, urging them to follow
Christ. I had already learned the truism (still just as prevalent
today) that no matter how many millions of people struggle with sexual
sin, we Christians must always pretend it doesn’t exist. Since no one
else talked about their sexual problems, I was left to flounder in my
hypocrisy, despairing of ever being free of my sin/confess, sin/confess
cycle.
Praise God, however, there was at least one man willing to go against the
tide of silence. Way back in 1983, this pastor wrote an article in
Leadership (a journal for Christian ministers and leaders) where he
described his personal descent into the hell of sexual addiction. My
health teacher (God bless him!) at the Christian prep school must have
discerned I was struggling with sexual sin because he gave me a copy of
“An Anatomy of Lust: The War Within.” Even though it was written
anonymously, it is no exaggeration to say this article saved my life. I
know that without this man’s courageous decision to expose his sin, I
would have been dead a long time ago, a victim of insanity or murder or
suicide.
I read this man’s story and immediately saw, in the progressive nature of
his addiction, the parallels between my life and his. By the time he
wrote the article, he had been married for many years, but his wife
knew nothing of his struggle. Nor did anyone in the church he pastored.
He had long since moved beyond porn magazines and was now at the point
of going to live sex shows. In the article, he tells how he finally
worked up the courage to confess his sins to a pastor friend, a
respected colleague and leader of a large church. Sitting in this man’s
office, he poured out his story for the first time, skipping over his
worst offenses. Rather than accept his confession, however, his pastor
colleague began sobbing uncontrollably. This respected pastor pulled a
list from his jacket pocket—the piece of paper contained all the
prescriptions this man needed to treat all the sexual diseases he had
acquired while engaging in every kind of perversion imaginable. In
order to keep his behavior secret, this pastor would only buy the
medicines he needed while traveling to other cities.
What lines have you crossed in your addictive behaviors?
The minute I read that story, God spoke to me through a mental vision. I
clearly saw a sort of flaming, spiral staircase winding down to the pit
of hell. God said very clearly that if I didn’t break free from my
sexual sin, I would end up in hell. I resolved at that very moment to
do whatever it took to break free. I didn’t realize, however, that it
would take me many years before actually achieving this goal. Back
then, there were no books, no videos, no conference speakers, or
anything else to help someone trapped in sexual addiction, only a
couple of men (literally) crazy enough to share about their struggles.
I had nothing to guide me as I wandered through the wilderness,
inevitably sinking ever further into the morass of sexual sin.
For the sake of brevity, I will compress the next half of my story. Many of you will recognize in my story the same pattern
of heading down that spiral staircase of sexual sin to hell. Like many
of you, I thought that marriage and a good sex life would solve all my
problems. It didn’t. Even though I was honest with my wife about my
addiction prior to our marriage, none of this stopped my addictive
behaviors. I did find several brothers to hold me accountable and began
to confess my sins regularly, but it was still the blind leading the
blind. I continued finding porn (mainly in bookstores) and masturbating
as before. After college, while training for my first job, I watched my
first “soft-porn” movies at the hotel where I was staying. This was
also the advent of video and video stores like Blockbuster—I was soon
renting “R” movies—anything that I thought might turn me on. Around
this time, I had the bright idea of getting “Cable” TV, yet another
trend sweeping across America. I soon ordered porn via Cable. Even
though I always confessed my sins to my wife and my accountability
partners, I could only manage a month or so of purity, and then I would
find some new way of relapsing. Nor could I break the habit of
masturbation and sexual fantasy.
The Internet was next on the scene, and as an early user of computers, I
was soon looking at porn on the Internet. By this time, I had finished
up my first degree from seminary, but I was starting to buy
pornographic magazines with ever increasing frequency. Even when I was
pastoring a small, house church, I twice bought pornographic videos.
This was the end, praise God, of my career as a sex addict, however,
because all of the work I had been doing to break free and get healed
finally started paying off.
Again, I am barely skimming the surface, but looking back, I can see how
God, in His wisdom, healed me in stages. He knew that what I had gone
through was so traumatic and awful that I could not have remotely
handled dealing with all of it at once.
Stages of Healing:
1) Reading the “Anatomy of Lust” article and making a commitment to get
pure no matter what it cost!
2) In seminary, God brought Neil Anderson’s books (Victory Over The
Darkness and The Bondage Breaker) across my path. I took myself through
the “Steps of Freedom” and, despite having been saved at the age of 7,
truly understood my identity in Christ for the first time in my
Christian life. Dr. Anderson also taught me the importance of
understanding the importance of ancestral sin and curses, and making
sure that I had repented of all occultic influences in my life. (At the
time, I still had no idea I had any occultic involvement).
3) The next stage was dealing with the fact that I had been sexually
abused as a child by my grandfather. I had completely blocked out the
first 6 years of my life and I had always wondered why, since as far as
I knew, I had a happy childhood. I had no memories whatsoever of any
kind of abuse, save for a very strange early memory that seemed half
dream, half reality. The truth of what my grandfather had done came out
independently of my healing process as several of my cousins remembered
being abused by this man. I had several flashbacks before and after
learning of my cousin’s memories where I remembered instances of abuse.
I went through the grief, anger, and depression phases typical of
someone confronting their abusive past for the first time.
4) The next stage of healing was actually breaking free of sexual sin.
The stretches of time I was staying pure were growing longer and
longer, especially once I learned the critical importance of killing
the habit of masturbation and meeting regularly with someone had
already broken through to consistent purity. Ironically enough,
however, once I kicked the sin/confess, sin/confess habit, things got
much, much worse in terms of my overall mental health. Looking back
now, I realize that I was the classic “medicate your pain,” type of
addict. Whenever the pain from my repressed trauma would bubble up
inside of me (usually once a week), I would stuff it back down with my
drug of choice (sexual sin). Once I stopped medicating my wounds, my
past came back with a vengeance. I had assumed that I was done with my
past; I had successfully processed the abuse from my grandfather.
However, my time in hell was just beginning.
5) Now that I am a counselor, I have learned that repressed trauma
often comes back when the victim has children of his or her own. When
those children reach the same age as the victim, when as a child, he or
she was traumatized, this triggers flashbacks of the actual events. My
son looked very similar to me when I was a child and when he turned
5-6, I began having horrific nightmares. I am not talking about your
normal see a scary movie have a scary dream kind of nightmares, I am
talking about nightmares that were so bad they would live me in a
depressed state with emotional pain so strong it was almost a physical
sensation. I kept a dream journal for two years and during that time, I
recorded over a 100 of these kind of nightmares. It got so bad, I
didn’t want to sleep at night. During these years I had to deal with a major amount
of anger at God over what had happened to me, but praise God, I was
able to find someone who had experienced similar things in her life who
counseled my wife and I during this horrific time. I also praise God
for my amazing wife who has stood by my side all these long years—I
would have never survived without her.
6) Praise God, I am now in a place of real internal peace and
practical, consistent purity, having utterly broken the habit of
masturbation and defeated the pull of porn. I can honestly say, despite
living in the most pornographic city in the US, I no longer feel any
cravings for porn. Even my thought life is radically different—and
while I may still struggle with bouncing my eyes from time to time, I
have rid myself of the sexual fantasies that were my security blanket
for so many years. I still have the occasional nightmare, but it is
nothing like it was before. When I look back on how I used to live my
life, it is no exaggeration to say that I have experienced a
miraculous, night-to-day transformation!
God bless you if you read through my entire story. It’s hard to summarize
a lifetime in a few pages. I am living proof that even in the midst of
severe addiction, heartbreaking loss, and terrible evil, God will
keep His promise to bring good out of evil—the greater the evil, the
greater the good! Everything I have gone through, good and bad, has
been incorporated in my counseling and writing. In my teaching you
literally get 35 years of experience boiled down to the key truths you
need to know to break free and stay pure. If I can
break free, by the grace of God, than anyone can. Therefore, you have
no excuse to remain in your sin. Don’t put it off one day longer,
brother, call Pureheart today and start the process of purity!
Your brother in Christ,
Tim
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