If This Brother Can Break Free, Anyone Can!
These testimonies are from current and former Pureheart counselees. Most of these men and women have broken free and now walk in consistent purity and/or healed marriages but some are still in process. These brothers and sisters, married and single, represent a wide spectrum of ages, races, nationalities, denominations, backgrounds, personalities, and levels of addiction and dysfunction but all of them have changed dramatically. If they can change, so can you! For obvious reasons, we have changed their names. Here are their stories (unedited)
Brother “Adam’s” Testimony, Age 54, Married
I would like to start with this. If you are serious about breaking the bondage of your addiction this is the book for you. If you are only trying to satisfy your wife or requirements of your ministry position to not lose what you have, you need to check your motives again before reading it. There is no room for a façade as you start this journey. Not to say that you cannot have doubts or are still really wondering if you can be free, but if your motivation is that you will do this to get through the storm at least be honest with yourself and with Tim. One of the first things I remember Tim saying to me is that he can help addicts but he cannot help liars. Be honest with yourself, with Tim and with God with where your heart is.
I remember Tim praying for God to break me without mercy and I thought YIKES, that is a scary place to be. While God broke me, I am not sure I would have been able to stand had He done so without mercy. While it was painful, God was faithful to see me through.
I lost my mom to cancer just 4 days after my 17th birthday and my father was an alcoholic until I was about 23 years old. I don't want any of my sin to be blamed on any of that. While I was saved as a young boy and had a heart for God, I was also double minded and allowed myself to become a split personality, if you will. I was trying to serve God and myself at the same time and you can imagine which one I served best. You guessed it, myself.
I was introduced to masturbation in junior high by a friend and tried it on my own one night. I fueled masturbation with soft core, well really erotic material on late night cable television. I was still holding on to the illusion of purity and saving sex for marriage. I later got involved in petting with my girlfriend and though I was still a virgin until I was 20, I had given myself to many women in fantasy and acted out physically many times. I went to Bible college and not long before graduation, I began going to bars. I found that alcohol loosened me up and helped me with my awkwardness. Not only that, I learned that I didn’t have to wait for the woman God had for me, that the women around me were drawn to the bad boys. Rather than wait for God, I found my own way. Rather than get into details, I am posting my lifetime totals below.
Lifetime totals:
Masturbation: 5,600 + Thoughts & Masturbation: 5,598 + Erotic Material: 20,000 = Grand Total: 25,600
Fantasy: 8,400 + Looks: 24,000 + w/People in any way: 800 = Lifetime Grand total: 58,800
The people in any way would include any form of sex either before marriage or outside marriage and would include probably about 45-50 different people. It includes visits to massage parlors and prostitutes during either of my marriages. It is abhorrent to even think about the number of ways I acted out. It was a progressive slide from even as a young teen thinking about sex with my eventual wife to masturbation to images of scantily clad women on TV to looking at more graphic images, pornography, and then into prostitution.
I believe the Holy Spirit led me to Pureheart at the right time. I had been to Every Man's Battle weekends and weeklong intensives in the past as well as weekly accountability groups at my church previously, but had fallen back into sin or maybe I should say, I had never overcome my sin previously. I found a way to dance around the perimeter of acting out and find different ways to act out.
About 9 1/2 months ago a pastor friend of mine told me that I had a problem with my will and need to submit to God's will. I found myself always trying to do things my way. My local accountability partner had told me that I needed to come clean to my wife of everything I had done most recently (she had known about most everything from years prior, but nothing recent) and I was naturally resistant to his advice. Once I let go and realized that I couldn't do it my way any longer the timing was right for Pureheart. I had to be willing to do it His way and I was finally ready.
Just before finding Pureheart, I shared with my wife, all that I had done since the last time she knew about anything. I had to confess that I had been lying to her about my purity and it was devastating. I fully expected our marriage to be over and while I hated the thought of that, I knew I couldn't keep doing what I had always done and expect a different result. I confessed my continued use of pornography, encounters with prostitutes and once where I had stopped just short of purchasing services and trips to massage parlors where I too came close to being a paying patron. I also had to confess a drunken and near fatal encounter with a drunken client in a hotel room nearly 5 years prior. Sadly even that was not enough to have woken me up at that time.
After sharing all of the sin that I had continued in since the first she had learned of 14 years prior, I fully expected I would have to move out, which would have been the 4th time since our marriage 18 years prior. Instead I took residence in a bedroom downstairs and she watched me as a began (and I say began, as I am not sure my real battle for purity had ever really begun with past revelations) my journey to purity. I was finally ready to do it HIS way.
I started Pureheart 8 1/2 months ago, but had started my most recent journey in purity about 30 days before I started my Pureheart counseling. I am confident in saying the following two things. Had I not been ready to forego my own will and submit not only to God, but also through Pureheart, and be completely honest with my wife about my sin, I would not have been successful in walking in purity. I won't say that there weren't times that I felt the work was unnecessary, I chose to submit to the authority I had chosen to place myself under through Pureheart. In the last 9 months, I have had only a few (2-3) accidental incidents of erotic material with no lingering. I have had no incidents with sexual contact with anyone outside my marriage, pornography or masturbation and even deeper, I am effectively bouncing my thoughts, not giving place to the devil and actually taking thoughts captive before they captivate me. I am submitting to semi-annual polygraphs to, as Tim put it, provide my wife the evidence of the gift of an honest husband. Just the thought of that brought me to tears.
With that said, I am not patting myself on the back. While I have been faithful with daily devotions, I am struggling with worship and prayer time and the Holy Spirit is working on me relating to how to better engage my wife and to foster more intimacy in our marriage. God is taking me to the next level in challenging my motives, my thoughts and my words. As I got the log out of my eye, I can now more clearly see the sarcasm, impatience, attitude and sometimes just flat out sinful harshness toward my wife. She deserves so much more than I have given her. Time to step up, own up and step out to become the man God has created me to be.
Group counseling has created more accountability than just me, my wife, God and a counselor. Sure, any or all of those should be enough, but having a group of men counseling together for a year creates another level of accountability. Daily group texts and knowing others are counting on me to be a man of my word has been transformative. Tim encourages us to establish tangible consequences for sinful behaviors. When I first heard about Tangible Consequences, aka TC, I thought that it sounded perhaps a bit legalistic in paying for sin, but that is not what TC is at all. For those of us who have gotten caught in sexual sin and really, any addictive behavior, one issue we have is that we fail to connect behavior to consequences, because the consequences are usually so far down the road, we get into a delusion that consequences really don't exist. The reality of "Be not deceived, God is not mocked.." was something that did not seem real to me, but let me tell you the consequences are real and God isn't mocked. One day, all that is done in secret will be revealed. TC is a way to better connect behavior with the reality of the consequences that one day will bear out.
My TC was set at $100 for each willful act of looking at pornography or erotic material, $100 for each masturbation and $500 for any sexual contact, even if in word only, outside my marriage. I am happy to say, that I have not paid $1 for any of this acting out.
I had a separate TC for failure to exercise at least 4 days a week and/or lashing out at my wife. This TC was an ice bath. My wife enjoyed pouring the icy water over my back and shoulders the two times I had to take the ice bath. Trust me brothers, TC's work and while they aren't really fun, I must say my wife enjoyed it more than I would have liked, but it does make me smile to know that she knows that I take this serious enough to walk it out in such practicality.
One piece of advice, come ready for change, but be ready to do the work. The Holy Spirit will use the work to change your heart. The homework showed me the depth of where I was but also showed me the heights to which God wants to raise me and gave me a vision for something bigger than myself. Time to step out and live out my God given destiny. Time to stop with the petty living for myself and live for those who are counting on me to build a legacy for Christ.
5-Year Update: Brother Adam continues to walk in purity 5 years after going through the Pureheart program with the polygraphs to prove it. He has remained free of masturbation, porn, and any type of acting-out with women. There has been some exposure to erotic material but this has been rare and quickly reported to both his wife and Band of Brothers. He continues to grow in his walk with God and while there have been definite ups and downs with his wife, they have both made major progress in their spiritual and personal growth, in communication, and in conflict resolution. Brother Adam is now leading a Band of Brothers group at his church and taking these brothers through the Basic Training! series.