When I was in bondage to sexual addiction, breaking free from it was the biggest thing in my life. Whether I might slip or act out defined who I was. If I fell, I was a horrible Christian; I was okay if I made it through the day without acting out.
Because sexual sin and porn were such a big problem for me, I figured that once I broke free from it that the Christian life would be all downhill.
Having not acted out for years, I can say it’s a blessing not to have lust ruling my life any longer. I have the power to say no. I don’t miss those miserable shame hangovers, or looking at my wife and kids and feeling like I need to crawl in a corner. Most days I have more confidence. The pain from my sin in our marriage has evaporated and my relationship with Michelle has never been better. I can talk about the Christian life with others without feeling like I’m a hypocrite.
All these blessings and more are mine by the grace of God. None of this means I’m not tempted; I feel the pull to lust like everyone else from time to time, but God’s given me the inner strength and change of character that can withstand temptation and refuse to cave in.
However, I was dead wrong about the Christian life being a piece of cake after breaking free from sexual sin. Once my lust dealt with, God went to work in deeper places of my heart.
After the Lord set me free from the bondage to lust to sexual sin in 1999, in 2000 I started a Christ centered support group in my church for men who struggled with sexual addiction. Blazing Grace followed at the end of 2004.
The ministry grew like a weed, along with my ego. I wanted Blazing Grace to be the one with the answers; a big organization with me at the helm. Then early 2007, I started to burn out. A nervous breakdown followed, and by January of 2008 I surrendered Blazing Grace to Techmission, who graciously agreed to take it over in my absence.
God took me out of ministry for the next four years and performed intense heart surgery. It was deeply painful; dealing with sexual sin was nothing in comparison. He reached into places in my heart that I’d not seen or been aware of and shined His light on it with unyielding intensity.
He exposed fear, anxiety, doubt, anger, bitterness, lies, and pride, among other things.
The pride was the worse. There was a mountain of it; dark, hot, and stinking. I’d never seen or understood how big my pride was until God stripped me of the ministry and forced me to look at it. All of it. I hated everything about it. I hated the idea of being in ministry again because I saw how much my pride was woven into it. I thought I was done with ministry, especially Blazing Grace. I thought God was done with me. I couldn’t stand myself or what was inside of me.
Then there was the fear. I got hit hard from 2008-2010 with intense spiritual warfare. For a long time I reacted in fear. The enemy pounded me with everything in the book: “God’s done with you, you’ve failed Him too much. There’s no way he’ll use you again.” And that was just the mild stuff. I’ll write more about the spiritual warfare in future newsletters or blog posts.
A lot of the bitterness that was uncovered had to do with lies I’d bought into about myself that I hadn’t been aware of; lies that still drove me, such as “you can never measure up. You’ll never be good enough.” In part this drove my ambition to build something big for God. Building a ministry doesn’t impress Him; we can’t “be good enough” because of it.
In spite of the mess I was, God kept showing up. He walked me through the landmines of my heart, gently diffused them, and showed me that He is truly is as faithful, kind, and long suffering as He says He is. When He says “I will never leave you nor forsake you,” He means it. I needed a deeper revelation of the love of God to heal, and He came through big time at the lowest moments of my life.
I’ll write more about what God taught me in the next blog post.