"Pornography." If you looked it up in the dictionary, you might find my face-or even my name-beside its definition. Why? My sixteen-year-old babysitter had molested me countless times. That is where the roller coaster of my life began.

It is difficult to describe what is happening in the mind and body of a seven-year-old child once this occurs. All I can say is this: For the next sixteen years, I became obsessed with pornography. Countless porno videos were shown on my television, while porn magazines piled up like dust bunnies in my "secret" places. Somewhere in my mind I rationalized my behavior as "normal" for a teenage boy and that I was merely "experimenting" with such images and stimulation. In reality, there was always an urgency to conceal my actions.

With the concealment, I hid an addiction that drilled deeper into my mind, my heart, and my flesh until it was out of control. Pornography dominated my lifestyle. They were no longer simply images on videotape or in magazines. My addiction became an infection, affecting the way I thought, how I felt, how I dated, whom I dated, what I looked at, and how I spent my free time. To use an old cliché, it became my master and I was its slave. I was in a prison of my own making.

However, those observations did not come to my attention until much later. There was always a "calling" on my heart during those years. I knew that what I was doing was wrong even though society said it was OK. It was not until I became involved with the church that I finally discovered the reason for my behavior. The answer was sin. My flesh enjoyed this ridiculous mind-corrupting ritual of pornographic images, but something deep in my heart was always screaming, "No!" The people of the church reached out to me, helping me understand my predicament.

Was my response to the hope of deliverance instantaneous? No. My mind and body were addicted. I was not ready to give up what I had focused my life on almost exclusively for sixteen years. When I walked into the Church of the Nazarene, however, all the doubts and questions began to fade away. It was clear to me that behind all my rationalizations was the truth that I had been living a life of sin and rebellion. Within a very short time, I categorically knew that I was lost.

The night before Easter of 1999 I accepted Jesus Christ. I trusted Jesus as my Savior. I counted on His powerful work on the Cross and His precious blood to save me. After twenty-four years of rebellion, I was free. Have I now become perfect? No. However, I was given new strength to overcome my lifelong addiction to those perverted images. God is still "cleaning house" in my mind and heart. It was very hard to renounce my life and all its former habits, rituals, and sin. Yet in retrospect, none of it made me a better person; it simply made me heartbroken, embarrassed, tainted, egotistical, and callously judgmental.

I am thankful to the church. I am grateful to all the people who took some time to reach out to me, listen to me, and not kick me out the door because of how wicked I had become. I realized that God's church does care and is waiting to take care of the people that walk through its doors. I was the skeptic, I was the hypocrite, and I was the one not paying attention in the pews, bobbing my head to the snore from my nostrils. However, God changed me, and there is not enough paper or web space in the world to describe my gratitude.

Suggested Reading
Help yourself or someone you know who struggles with pornography, read The Pornography Trap by Ralph Earle Jr. and former sex-addict Mark Laaser.