As soon as I moved away from home and got my own computer and an Internet connection, I became addicted to pornography. Before that, my problems with lust were just as out of control—I just didn’t have access to pornography.
Despite growing up in church and saying the sinner’s prayer dozens of times, I never actually got saved. It was not until 2005, during my third year of college, that I truly came to know Jesus. My head knowledge of the Gospel became an experiential relationship with a living Savior, and I was born again through genuine faith in the Gospel.
After becoming born again, I felt truly free for the first time. I had a whole new perspective on life. I didn’t want to be watching pornography or doing a lot of the other things I had been doing, and I no longer felt the irresistible urge to watch pornography that I had once felt. Not only that, I had a real relationship with God for the first time. He would speak to my heart and let me know that He loved me and that He was with me. I had been an unhappy person for most of my life, but after I got saved, I felt true joy for the first time.
After about three months of freedom, I became very tempted to watch pornography, and not knowing how to deal with the temptation, I gave in to it. That failure was the beginning of a downward spiral that resulted in me falling back into drinking and doing all sorts of other ungodly things. It got to the point where I would be out at bars getting drunk and chasing women on Saturday night, and then hungover in church on Sunday. Eventually, the shame of the double life I was leading got to be too much, and I quit going to church altogether. This continued until I graduated college and for the first year or two afterward.
Eventually, I simply got tired of being hungover all the time and my drinking slowed down. Army life also had a huge effect because driving drunk would have been a career killer, and I got sick of paying for taxis and then going back to get my car. I also joined a group called Officers’ Christian Fellowship (OCF) and started to learn how to have fun on the weekends with other Christians without going out to bars.
It was during this time that I became friends with my now-wife, and we started going to church together on Sundays. The church we were going to was a non-denominational church, but their doctrine was “word of faith.” I really had no idea what that meant at the time. At one point, we attended a “New Believers” class at the church, and the teacher began to teach us word of faith doctrine. It seemed like a great revelation to us. When the class was over, I asked the teacher for book recommendations. He told me to look into some books written by Kenneth Hagin, who is considered the father of the word of faith movement.
I read a couple of Kenneth Hagin’s books and thought I was learning a lot. I also began to follow some other word of faith preachers on TV—mainly Creflo Dollar—and I started to read books from other word of faith preachers. It didn’t take long before I was fully indoctrinated into the word of faith mindset. I also read several John Bevere books, and he became my favorite author. I don’t know if I would say he’s a word of faith preacher, but he follows a lot of the same doctrines. He also seems to have some ideas of his own.
Even though my drinking problem had mostly become a thing of the past, I still could not seem to quit watching pornography. I tried my best to implement what I learned in those books, but it never worked. I could go two or three months without watching if I tried really hard, but eventually, in a moment of weakness, I would always fail — and then fall headlong back into it. This vicious cycle of sinning and repenting went on for years.
I tried everything I could think of to quit. My main strategy was to starve my flesh of worldly things—especially anything that would trigger my sexual urges—and fill my mind with the Word of God. This strategy is what I picked up from all the word of faith teaching I had listened to. I would spend almost all my free time praying, reading the Bible, or watching some minister on TV. I had learned that if I would walk in the Spirit, I would not fulfill the lust of the flesh (Galatians 5:16). I thought walking in the Spirit meant doing a lot of spiritual things and filling my mind with spiritual things, so that’s what I did.
I had also read in the John Bevere books that if I spent enough time building my relationship with God, I would come to love Him enough to lose the desire to sin. So I spent time with God by praying, reading my Bible, and going to church. I also found a bunch of Scriptures that dealt with sexual immorality and read them out loud every day.
In the middle of all this, I fell in love with my now-wife and proposed to her. After we got engaged, I decided I was not going to watch pornography anymore. I knew that in the eyes of God, it would be adultery (see Matthew 5:28), and I did not want to hurt my new fiancée. When I failed to stick to that decision, however, I decided I would not do it anymore after we got married. But I couldn’t stick to that either.
This vicious cycle continued for the first five years of our marriage without her ever knowing. Over time, the constant failure really began to wear on me. I hated what I was doing, but I just couldn’t stop. This habitual sin was destroying my relationship with God, straining my relationship with my wife, and eroding my faith.
I began to wonder if I was really saved. I began to wonder why I didn’t have a testimony of being set free like others I’d heard. I got to the point where I would put on a happy face on the outside, but on the inside, I was depressed, miserable, and my faith was hanging on by a thread. When I went to church, I couldn’t even stand during the songs. I definitely couldn’t sing. I just sat there wondering what I was supposed to be happy about. The sermons frustrated me because they weren’t helping. In private, I could barely pray. Eventually, all I could say was:
“Lord, please don’t leave me this way.”
With the little faith I had left, that prayer became my heart’s cry. I was desperate. The last thing I remember trying was buying a bracelet that said Man of God on it. I decided to treat it like a wedding ring of sorts—to remind me that I was “married” to Jesus (2 Corinthians 11:2, Romans 7:4).
The culmination of my shame and failure was watching pornography with that bracelet sitting on the desk next to my computer. After that, I had all but given up. All I had was that prayer. I couldn’t do anything but cry out to God for help.
Backing up a little: in 2014, my wife and I got out of the Army and moved to our current home. After trying a few churches, we started going to a word of faith church about 30 minutes from our house. But in my desperation and lack of confidence in the pastor, I eventually decided we should look for something closer.
So we went to bed one Saturday planning to go to a popular church in our local area the next morning. But as I was looking, something caught my eye about a local church that was having services in a hotel conference room: the website had section on the website about living in freedom from sin. I was intrigued and desperate, so we decided to try it. We instantly fell in love with the church. Everyone was kind, the music was good, the pastor was all about Jesus, and it was closer to home.
After a few weeks, the pastor mentioned some kind of affiliation with a well-known (notorious to some) televangelist. I thought to myself, “Great—another one of these churches that follows some corrupt televangelist.” We had attended a service at a church that followed Joel Osteen before, and we were very turned off by that.
I didn’t know much about this particular preacher, but I looked him up. I found out he had once been involved in a sexual immorality scandal. I wasn’t thrilled about that at all — but I also read that he had a testimony about how God used that failure to lead him to the answer:
“Jesus Christ and Him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2).
I had my doubts, but given what I’d been doing, I thought it was worth a try.
A month or two later — on May 8, 2016, Mother’s Day — God showed me the answer. The sermon that day was titled: “How to Have Victory Over Sin”. My ears perked up when I heard the title. At that time, I was still miserable and barely hanging on.
At the beginning of the sermon, the pastor started talking about walking in the Spirit (Galatians 5:16) and living under grace (Romans 6:14). At first, I was frustrated by this because he wasn’t saying anything I hadn’t heard before. I knew grace was the answer. I knew walking in the Spirit was the answer. But if I really understood them, I wouldn’t be in bondage. I wanted him to go deeper but he wasn’t doing it yet.
I started yelling at him in my head,
But what do I do?
I was desperate to know how to walk in the Spirit and live under grace because clearly I wasn’t doing it. Just as I was yelling at him in my head to answer the question, he put a chart on the projector screen. One side of the chart represented the mindset of someone living under law. The other side represented the mindset of someone living under grace.
The law side focused on trying to have victory, righteousness, and relationship through what I do.
On the grace side, the focus was on experiencing victory, righteousness, and relationship through what Jesus has done.
The following chart isn’t the exact chart he put on the screen, but it’s a close adaptation. Take a moment to look at it and evaluate whether you’ve been living under law or under grace. If you examine it and realize you’ve been living under law, you just identified why you’ve been failing to walk in victory over sin. It is grace alone that breaks the dominion of sin (Romans 6:14).
As I examined the chart and realized I had been living under law instead of living by the grace of God, the Holy Spirit opened my heart and helped me see why I was failing and how to break free. He showed me that without realizing it, I had left dependence on my Savior and was instead depending on myself when it came to walking in victory over sin. Everything I thought I knew—everything I’d told others—was wrong. Instead of looking to the Gospel alone to give me victory, I was looking for victory in all the things I was doing.
A conviction from the Holy Spirit that I was committing spiritual adultery by not looking to my Savior alone for help came over me. At the same time, I was somehow overwhelmed with joy; I had found the answer I’d been searching for for years: my Savior! Jesus! Of course Jesus is the answer to this problem! Tears of joy and shame ran down my face.
The pastor explained that living under law isn’t only about living under the Law of Moses or doing ceremonial works. Any time we look to our performance of a rule or routine as the means of victory over sin or relationship with God, we’re not living by the grace of God; as such, we’re living under a law mindset. Even good things like Bible reading and prayer can become law when we trust in the act of doing them as a means of victory over sin instead of trusting only in what Jesus already did.
Law rests on my performance. Grace rests on Jesus’ finished work.
The pastor then began to teach on Colossians 2:6, which says:
“As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in Him.”
Through his teaching on this passage, the Holy Spirit helped me to finally see not just what it means to walk in the Spirit, but how to actually do it: as we received Him.
We walk in the Spirit the exact same way we received the Spirit.
We didn’t receive the Holy Spirit by struggling to resist sin or striving to exhibit the fruit of the Spirit. Nor did we receive Him by doing spiritual things. We didn’t work to receive Him, we didn’t earn it, and we didn’t deserve it. It definitely didn’t happen by the mere act of praying more or reading more.
According to Ephesians 2:8-9 and Galatians 3:2-3,
We received the Holy Spirit by grace alone through faith alone, not of works.
The Spirit of Christ was given to us as a free gift.
Just as we receive the Spirit as a free gift initially, we receive His help and power daily in the exact same way. Instead of doing something to earn or deserve His help, we place our faith in Jesus and what He has already done and trust Him to supply us with the help we need to walk out our freedom. As we do this, He works through the Spirit to empower us to turn from sin and walk in holiness.
The whole rest service, as I came to this life-changing realization, I continued to cry tears of joy.
I knew my days of watching pornography were over.
At the end of the sermon, the pastor gave an altar call for anyone who needed to repent of living under law. Normally, I would never go up to the front of a church, especially with my face covered in tears, but that day, I wasted no time going to the altar.
At that altar, I determined in my heart that I would never again look to anything other than Jesus Christ and Him crucified as a means of victory over sin.
Even though I’d tried a million things before and failed, I knew that this wouldn’t fail. Those other things I tried depended on me. Now, I was leaving the way of self-dependence and beginning a walk of dependence on Jesus alone. I knew this wouldn’t fail because Jesus wouldn’t fail.
On the way home, I still couldn’t stop crying. My wife didn’t know what was going on. I just kept telling her, “I can’t believe it’s that simple.”
A few days later, the first temptation to watch pornography again came. This time, as I’d done so many other times, I didn’t fight it with effort or spiritual discipline. I didn’t quote a verse, pray, read, or distract myself. I just believed. I believed that the power of the cross was enough. I believed that Jesus paid for me to have the help of the Holy Spirit. I rested in His finished work and believed that as I did so, the Holy Spirit would fight this battle for me.
As I abided in this place of faith and rest in Christ, the temptation left.
Normally, nothing would ever make the temptation go away except giving in to it. But that day, it left. From then on for the next few weeks, every time it game back, I just kept resting in Jesus and relying completely on Him, and as the good Savior He is, He helped me — every...single...time.
Now, any hint of temptation in that area rolls right off me. It has no real pull on me.
It has now been over four years since that day, and I have not looked at pornography even once since.
After seeing how easily the most addictive thing I ever faced was broken by the power of the cross, I began looking to the cross for everything—every temptation, every weakness, every spiritual struggle. The results have been life-changing:
Where my anger used to be almost uncontrollable, it’s now reduced to the occasional harsh word—and even that followed quickly by apology.
Where I used to be borderline alcoholic, I now have no desire to drink at all.
Where I used to have a gambling problem, I haven’t gambled once since that day in church.
Where I used to cuss constantly, I know only have an occasional slip.
Where I had spent years stuck in a cycle of struggle and defeat, I was now finally progressing in my walk with God.
And the depression? Gone. Not being able to stand during the worship songs? Gone. These days you will find me in service with my hands lifted high, praising the One who has become my all in all. Even as I type this and think of Jesus and all that he is to me, tears of joy are filling my eyes.
It’s like I was born again—again.
The joy of my salvation has returned, and I don’t think it’s ever going to leave again. I can’t get enough of Jesus. He’s everything to me. I depend on Him daily—and He delivers me daily.
He shed His blood not only to deliver me from the penalty of sin—but also from the power of sin in my flesh.
I’m haven’t become perfect my any means, but by the grace of God, I can say that sin is no longer my master. I am free indeed.
You can argue with me about this all you want. But you’ll never convince me that the answer is Jesus but, or Jesus and, or Jesus then, or Jesus plus anything.
Jesus alone is the Way. Jesus alone is the Truth. Jesus alone is the Life.
The message of what He did at the cross is the power and wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:18–24). It’s not just how we start the Christian life. It’s how we live it out day to day. It’s the Truth that makes us free. I don’t need any other insight, message, or method. I have the Gospel of my Savior, and I’m convinced that I don’t need anything more than Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.
You can also watch a video of this testimony on Youtube.