Why pornfreeshamefree.com?
by Josh Proctor (Founder, Caleb Micah Ministries)
I will never forget that day. I mean I will absolutely never ever forget that day. Kelly and I were engaged to be married. We chose to attend a conference for engaged couples. The first night at the conference they walked us through some very basic principles on marriage, and those principles were very helpful. In fact, we still use some of them to this day.
The next day at the conference, they split the guys and the girls up. I really did not know what I was about to experience. A guy got up to speak, and he started speaking about pornography and masturbation. I kept thinking to myself, “How can I get out of here?”. You see what you don't know is that I had battled an intense struggle with pornography, and it had turned into an addiction. It was a secret addiction. I stumbled on pornography when I was 12 years old, and I really do mean stumble. I had never ever told anyone of my intense struggle with pornography and masturbation.
Here I am about to be married and I kept telling myself this struggle is going to go away the moment we get married and can have sex. But now I'm listening to a guy who's telling me that's not true. At first it made me mad, and I decided I wanted to try to sneak out of there. But the longer I sat in that room I started to believe what he had to say.
As he was talking, I became scared that pornography and masturbation were going to follow me into my marriage. I became overwhelmed with guilt, and I knew that I knew that I knew that I had to tell Kelly about my struggle with pornography. I was now overwhelmed with fear. She would call off our marriage and end our engagement. There was no way that she would ever accept me again. The longer I sat there, I just began to weep. I wept and wept and wept.
I remember as he ended his talk the women started coming back into the room (since their talk had ended). Kelly could obviously tell that I had been crying, and she asked me what was wrong. Naturally, I didn't want to tell her. She kept insisting that I needed to talk to her about what was going on, and finally, I agreed. But I told her there's no way that we can do this here at the conference. We had to talk somewhere private. So we left the conference, we went out into the parking lot, and we sat in her red Saturn.
I distinctly remember me telling her to not look at me. I was so overwhelmed with shame.
I distinctly remember me telling her to not look at me. I was so overwhelmed with shame. I said if I'm going to get through this you can't look at me so she stared out the windshield. I did the same thing as I began to talk. I don't remember what I said, but I remember dumping the truck. I was convinced after I shared all of this that she would never want to marry me, but Kelly is a very forgiving person. She always has been, and she's extremely loyal. She looked at me and she said we're going to get through this. She told me it was going to be ok. What an amazing and gracious response!
For some reason I felt compelled to tell her parents of my struggle. I wanted to make sure that they were okay with her marrying me. So we left the conference and went and talked to her parents that evening. And it was there that I dumped the truck again, sharing my intense struggles with pornography. They had a gracious and forgiving response as well. They wanted me to marry their daughter. Wow! Crazy!
It was one of the hardest days of my life, but at the same time, I felt free. I felt like this huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders. You see I actually thought that confession would bring healing.
What I know now is all that did was start the healing process. The first few years of our marriage were marred with my on-again-off-again struggle with porn. I no longer hid it. I confessed it to guys in my life, and I confessed it to my wife whenever I struggled, all the while hoping this would get better and go away.
I will tell you that I got some really bad counsel along the way. I was told things like memorize more scripture. Have more self-control (basically every behavioral modification tool you could come up with). Side note: Self Control and memorizing Scripture are good things. However, the counsel was bad because the counsel was incomplete. I finally learned that behavior modification alone does not work. By God’s grace, He directed me to two men in my life who showed me how to pursue the freedom that I already had in Jesus. I am forever thankful to those men and forever thankful to God for putting those men in my life. They helped me see that Jesus needed to do surgery on my heart.
Not only did God bring healing to my heart, He called me to a ministry where we help men, students and families walk in freedom from sexual sin (like pornography). We know this is not merely a male issue, but that is our ministry's primary focus. For help with females who struggle in this area, check out authenticintimacy.com. At pornfreeshamefree.com, we want men, students and families to experience the truth of the Gospel at a heart level so they can break the chains that come from sexual sin and shame and pursue freedom in Christ.
So if there are lots of resources available, why pornfreeshamefree.com? The answer is pretty simple. God called us to do it. There are many organizations and web sites out there fighting the battle against sexual sin. We are just one more ministry called of God to be in that fight.
At pornfreeshamefree.com, our primarily goal is to let Jesus do surgery on the heart! That's what pornfreeshamefree.com is all about. It's about putting tools in your hands so Jesus can bring healing to the heart and you can really experience the true power of the Gospel. May God give you Grace on this journey as you read, learn, and grow in what it means to walk in Freedom in Christ!
Our primarily goal is to let Jesus do surgery on the heart!
Tags: Josh Proctor
