Mark writes, “I was raised in a Christian home and accepted Christ at an early age – unfortunately, I have learned that I didn’t fully understand what that meant. I knew that I was a sinner and that I could never earn my way into heaven. I knew that God sent his only Son Jesus to be born of a virgin live a perfect life as fully human and fully man, and to die on the cross to pay the price for my sins. I also knew that three days later, He was raised back to life and seen by more than 500 people. It seemed I had lots of head knowledge, but what Christ did for me on the cross hadn’t really made it to my heart.
Growing up, I would often worry that heaven would be boring because there was no way to get in trouble – in retrospect I realize I was rebellious and holding on to being a monarch in my own small kingdom rather than surrendering fully to the one true King and this is why I was sinning with pornography and impure thoughts.
I was first exposed to pornography when I was eight years old. I knew it was wrong, but I indulged my lusts for years. Finally, I had had enough and decided to stop. The problem was, I couldn’t. I could go for weeks or months resisting the temptation to look or lust, and then in a flash, it was back. This cycle repeated itself for more than twenty years each time driving me deeper and deeper into despair.
God should have turned His back on me, but He didn’t. Instead, He used a circumstance at work to get my attention. As a condition of employment, I am subject to sitting for polygraph tests. At my last exam, the polygrapher asked a simple question: “Have you ever lied about something important to someone you love?” That question broke me because the week before my wife had asked if I was looking at pornography, and I had lied and said no. Some would say my world began to unravel, but I would say I began to live again.
After not passing my exam, I came home and confessed to my wife. Next, I contacted the men’s ministry at my church and asked for help. This secret sin I had tried to deal with on my own for so many years was now out of the closet. I was vulnerable, but instead of condemnation from the church, I experienced nothing but love and support. (I would come to appreciate this later as men being Christ’s hands and feet.) Our church was planning a small study for men on purity, but in the meantime, one leader told me about the Setting Captives Free Purity courses that he had taken.
I enrolled in Setting Captives Free Purity course the next day. As I studied the Gospel every day, God showed me what I didn’t fully understand before. Jesus didn’t die on the cross for me to look to it once and return to life. He died in my place to pay the penalty for my sin and also to break the power of sin in my life. I have experienced new depths of what Christ did for me and am finally living an abundant life. Pornography has no hold over me now, and I am living as a free man.
Two scenes from my life stand out above all others to me. One is me with the shackles of sin around my ankles that allowed me to move so far from pornography until the chain went taut, and I fell back into the pit. The second is of Jesus on the cross looking down at me with love saying I am suffering so that you don’t have to, me responding in desperation asking for help, and Jesus reaching out to touch the shackles and breaking them wide open.
You see, this is exactly what Jesus did for me. He took the punishment for my sins on the cross so that I could go to heaven AND he broke the power of sin in my life so that I could live a superb life now. Jesus said it himself in John 8:36: “So if the Son set you free, you will be free indeed.”
The following is a video of an interview between Mike Cleveland and Mentor Rick Spurr. Watch and be encouraged.
Question 12. Do you relate to Mark's or Rick's story? Please share your thoughts.
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