[Phone beeps]
I was 14 years old when I had my first real experience of pornography.
I thought I shouldn't be doing this
but sometimes that's what kind of plays into the excitement
and it builds the excitement
like this is wrong this is
naughty but I'm I'm kind of enjoying it at the same time and I was taking any
opportunity that I could rushing home from school at the end of the day to
make sure I was the first one home. Making sure that I was up late after
other people. At that point we had one family computer there were no
smartphones no tablets and so we had we had a PC in a study and had a glass door
but we hadn't coats on the back of the door so it's kind of like the potential
for accountability whilst also providing the utmost privacy- the irony of that.
My waking thoughts were dominated by replaying images that I'd seen or
thinking ahead to the next opportunity that I would have to get in front of the
computer and I would sort of keep images where I could access them at other
points in the day as well and try and hide those because that was just what
I thought about - when's the next time I can look at this? I have no doubt that it
was an addiction because of the way it affected my daily life. I wasn't
functioning the same as I used to do. I started taking more risks as well so
it was no longer just when I was on my own in the house. My brother caught me
- now he's about just over a year older than me -
I just raged at him for invading my privacy you know and I had no right to
speak to him the way that I did and actually I'm not that sort of person
either I've never been given to fits of rage, I don't shout, my character had
changed in some way as a result of I felt cornered in that moment and I was
frightened that my brother was going to go and tell my parents what I've been
doing. Such a stark change in my character - it's one of the unexpected
effects of looking at porn. The three years that I spent really struggling
with this in my life - I could have done with having shared it with somebody so
when I talk to people about this I'm so strong about accountability with people -
finding somebody that you trust that you can talk to who's not going to judge you
is is not going to have a go at you about it but who will help you to make a
change in your life who will ask you the difficult questions and at the same time
as all of this was going on I was still going to church every week still
belonging to a Christian family still believing the stuff that I'd been taught
growing up about who God is. So I went through this cycle over a period of a
couple of years of going to church feeling really guilty and saying to God
on that Sunday, "right that's it I'm stopping now"
and I would go home and I would I would delete a bunch of stuff, well everything
that I had but it wouldn't be long before I went back to it and I just
couldn't seem to break out of that cycle of guilt. Deleting, returning and in guilt
again and it just kept going round and round and round. As the years went by, I
just became more and more desperate more and more aware of the fact that I
couldn't break that cycle on my own. I was 17 years old and it'd been probably
about three years that I'd been struggling with my issues with porn and
we went to a youth camp called Soul Survivor. People would give talks about
God. I'm sure it was good - like the stuff that he was saying, there was some truth
in there - but he shouted out over the crowd, "There's something on you! God can
see it and I can see it!" Like there were about 10,000 young people - they wouldn't
have just picked out me but I was really scared in that moment because I knew
that there was something on me. And he asked for people to respond by standing
if they wanted somebody to pray for them for any addictions that they had or
eating disorders or things of that nature and I said, "God I can't do this on
my own I need you to do something." Jesus in that moment
completely set me free from the addiction I'd experienced and not only
that but in those 12 years since he's been showing me that there's a better
way of living. I wrote a book which is called 'A Better Kind of Intimacy' and the
aim of the book really is to help people to discover what I discovered through my
experience - that my ultimate value is in him, that I'm loved by him, I'm his child
and that he made me on purpose and I don't need to be looking anywhere else
for that value because it's made perfect in Jesus