Roger's Testimony

I'm a faithful believer in Jesus Christ overcoming a sexual addiction to pornography and lust for fantasy and my name is Roger. I grew up in a middle-class family in the Northwest United States with a loving father and mother and two older sisters. Our family certainly had its ups and downs but I never questioned whether I was fully loved by my family. Having no brothers, my childhood choices were to play with dolls or ride my bike so I did both. I was the lead Barbie car driver and took great pride at recklessly chauffeuring my sister's dolls as if I was one of the Dukes of Hazzard. I had a lot of fun with my sisters but riding my bike with my dog Gummer by my side was where I spent most of my childhood. Oddly it's where I first found true happiness because of something that I could control. I would imagine I was on a motorcycle and would push myself to clear jumps that I wouldn't see others try. It was like the noise of the wind would drown out all the real parts of life and that I didn't want to experience. Looking back I'm now able to see where the allure of fantasy became more attractive to me than reality. As the teenage years commenced the Barbie car draw faded and I began to have a desire for female attention. I leveraged any and all of my limited abilities to get this attention. Through trial and error I found that humor was the most effective talent I had to get the dopamine that I was after. I became incredibly hungry even lustful for the chemical reaction that would occur with every teenage note written. Through my teenage years I worked on my ability to manipulate circumstances to satisfy all my cravings. Now to be fair to myself I believe God built me with these desires but I used a distorted version of God's nudges to excuse my dysfunctional behavior. I used female attention as a way to sidestep my insecurities and insufficiencies. My 12-step work has since taught me that I subconsciously believe that if others wanted to interact with me it meant that I mattered and that I was important. On the outside I came across as fun and caring but my private sinful intentions soured my actions. My love for others was always self-seeking. But before we go there let me explain my faith. My entire life I've gone to church. From 0 to 15 we attended this small family church. Then in 1993 we

switched to a larger church that we're still at now. I was literally born into my relationship with Christ surrounded by my entire family who was unswervingly professing their faith. In fact my grandpa was my pastor growing up and I feel like the work he did on the pulpit for all those years in some genealogical way set the stage for me today. However as my double life hit full speed it became more obvious to me that I was attempting to live off the heritage of my family's faith instead of finding it on my own. I knew every move necessary to look like a great Christian but I also knew deep inside that my faith was only an appearance. As I allowed my desire for female attention and fantasy to grow my faith declined into a thin shell. Attending church had become the extent of my relationship with Christ. In lieu of worshiping the Almighty God with a family of believers I would show up to this event to show the world that I was to be lumped in with those who truly rely on Christ's power to overcome. As my negative habits of manipulating and fantasizing over women grew so did my pride. This shield grew around me that blocked out constructive criticism. Though I knew in my head the right answer was to rely on God I lacked the courage to do so. Instead of relying on Christ's corrections I had a complete disregard for anything that stood in the path of my next hit of attention. Add to that the long fantasy I developed the longing for fantasy that I developed as a child and I was one website away from the fight for my life. Proverbs 16 18 first pride then the crash the bigger the ego the harder the fall. Beyond my dishonest Christ-like facade lived a broken man who was manipulating and ruining friendships. While I maintained my technical purity I had no idea how God wanted me to think about women. Instead of spending my time to make their lives better I used them to make myself feel better. Instead of chasing Christ I chased a lie that female fruit was enough nourishment to sustain my well-being. I served God but also allowed my flesh to pull me toward a shallow man who objectified women. The definition of objectification is the action of degrading someone to the status of a mere object. I engaged in intimacy outside of the marital covenant that God planned that fire to exist

within. I made physical soul ties with women that aren't my wife. I manipulated them into relationships that ignored how God tells us to live. I didn't care that God asked me to live with the utmost honor and respect for his daughters. Let me back up for a moment to explain one more thing. Early in my teen years, another dysfunction began to grow. I discovered that I could feed my sexual appetite without another human. I can remember the first time I saw it. I was at my sister's boyfriend's house and a magazine was in the bathroom near the living room. I was probably 13 and it was so gross, but also so intriguing. I was secretly seeing someone in a way I wasn't supposed to. I was eating fruit I knew I shouldn't eat, and it was firing off parts of my brain that had never fired off before, and if I'm being honest, I really liked those parts of my brain firing off like they did. Any addict can probably remember their first time. Pornography allowed me to be incredibly private with my addiction, dangerously private. Within this safe and secret space, I could explore all kinds of sites that would get my brain the sinful dopamine that it craved. I didn't have to manipulate anyone or feel like a loser for getting turned down. Physiologically, my body was doing what it was created to do. However, without God's boundaries, I was trying to enjoy the huge benefit of how God made me without the required work. In God's kingdom, sexual dopamine is a reward to be found only within a marital covenant after the hard work of building trust. Though it wasn't as obvious to me then as it is now, my pornography addiction was isolating me, it was hardening my heart, and it was fueling this avalanche of female objectification in my world. Late 1999, at the age of 21, I met Sarah. She had just finished college, and I'm pretty sure she was on the prowl for a husband.

I like to tell her that. I sold her a lie that I was a strong believer in Christ, and she fell for it. After dating for about a year, I left my new girlfriend and my family and whatever accountability I had and moved 300 miles away for university. I assured Sarah that I was a faithful man of God and expressed my commitment to her with a promise ring. Two years of long-distance dating later, remember we didn't have free long-distance or FaceTime, we were married, and Sarah joined me at school. What she didn't know is that while at college, I allowed my life to spiral into a world of sexual addiction to pornography. All the years of dating, I had been secretly swapping out my real-world connections for those only found in a fantasy world. I had grown increasingly less confident, and my brain was addicted to self-administering dopamine and serotonin. I misled my new bride into believing I was reliant on a Savior with whom I actually had a decreasing familiarity. I hit my lowest point within the first year of our marriage when in the middle of the night Sarah walked in on me, engaged in my addiction. That night she figured out that the man I sold her was not the one she actually married. This elaborate bait-and-switch was the lowest, most embarrassing season of my life. My pride had grown so large that even though I understood I needed help, I literally could not ask for it. Worse, my ignorance of the severity of my addiction stalled my desire to even ask for Christ's assistance in my recovery. Instead of putting effort into growth, I worked to push my secret sin to a depth I thought nobody else would discover. I added more and more locks to this private room in my brain so nobody but Sarah would ever find out. After being found out, the next seven years I attempted to manage my sexual impulses and began to accept the sad fact that my sexual health would always remain questionable.

In some distorted view of God, I believed that He just made me to have these desires, and that I would just have a broken desire like this the rest of my life. During these seven years, I degraded at avoiding poor choices for months, but I would inevitably have a weak moment that I had no idea how to work through. Once I failed again, I'd throw up my hands and binge, as if to say, what is the point of even trying? The cycle of building trust with my wife only to have it wiped out by my broken promises was exhausting for the both of us. I was absolutely committed to getting past pornography and lust. But my best ability proved to pale in comparison to the habit that I had built. Realize I'm not God. I admit that I am powerless to control my tendency to do the wrong thing and that my life is unmanageable. We moved back home and rejoined our church in 2006. A few years later, my wife began to work with a group of people in our church to start up some weird recovery program for what I assumed was just for drug users. She asked if I'd be willing to help her out with serving the program, but I assured her that I didn't have any addictions and I wouldn't even know how to relate with the real addicts. After a timely team church conference message from Pastor Jensen Franklin, who just came back recently for our 15-year anniversary of this decision and some soul-searching, I agreed that instead of playing basketball on Tuesday nights, I would assist at handing out life rings to all of the addicts. How noble. On August 18, 2009, Celebrate Recovery began at our church. That same day, I allowed God to deeply pierce my heart for the very first time. I started to understand what he really did for me on that cross. He stole my sin. He scandalously swapped my poor choices out for his connection with God the Father, regardless if I ever accepted his gift. That same night, a foreign seed of empathy began to grow. I felt tender love again for the first time since I saw those images at 13.

But it came with a lot of work. It was like God asked me to fall on a sword so he could bring healing to my world, which doesn't make any sense. He wanted me to finally come clean and allow his light onto my private sins. Unfortunately, that required me to accept that someone may know that my faith was paper-thin and that I had allowed poor choices to develop into real addictions. C.R. taught me how to do this by introducing me to an odd confess culture. Openly examine and confess my faults to God, to myself, and to another person whom I trust. James 5.16 says this, Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. At the two-month mark in my recovery, I was given the opportunity to do a cardboard testimony. Of course, I immediately said no. Why in the world would I put my terrible choices on display? God would never ask me to do this. That's what I believed. Then there was a service at a men's conference I went to where they challenged us to step up as men and lead like God calls us to lead. Here he is again calling me like he always had, but this time his words hit the ears of a new man. A different man who was now ready to try anything to get well. I'm glad to say God made a way for my fragile self to have just enough courage to confess in front of our entire church, all three services. With my mom and dad in the front row, smiling but a bit confused as to why their son was on stage, I stepped into the lights that weekend and shattered the reign my private sins had held on my psyche for all those years. I held up my sign that read, I've secretly allowed lust and pornography to grow in my life. Now what they didn't tell me was I also got to write a redemptive hopeful statement on the back of the cardboard, so I flipped my card and thousands of people read, God and I are going public. And God is so faithful. After my uber public confession, I experienced the most incredible surge of recovery courage. It was perfectly timed because I was learning how to live life in reality, not fantasy. I was learning how to do the work of leaning on my Savior in life's hard times,

instead of counting on my ability to joke or manipulate my way through tough circumstances. I was learning that women aren't objects God put on earth for my pleasure. They're humans he put on earth for his pleasure, and my job is to protect them as best I can. I was at the initial stages of fighting to get my life back. Just like my once thin faith, the once daunting confession barrier proved to be just as weak. Soon after, I developed the habit of weekly small group confessions, open share confessions. God helped me discover a fresh mentality of, I don't have time to care what people think of me. There are too many people in need of his help for me to manage, or should I say manipulate, how others would receive the information that I was a broken human. I had to push past the risk of people seeing me as a pervert. I held tightly to the truth that God didn't see me that way, and that's good enough. In private, I was slowly becoming a different man. A Christ-like man that has pride because of whose he is. As my recovery continued, the work was real. I was often overwhelmed at how many layers there were to my brokenness. I didn't always want to attend Celebrate Recovery, but I very rarely missed a Tuesday night. I began to enjoy the journey and appreciated the little bits of growth I had never felt before. The more effort I put in my recovery, the more I had a thirst for Jesus. The more I thirsted for Him, the more fun I had with Him. And the more fun I had with Him, the stronger my spirit grew in resisting my flesh's pornography addiction. Lord willing, in five days from reading this, I will celebrate 15 years of sobriety from pornography. I have replaced so many negative habits with life-giving positive habits. Along the last almost 15 years, God showed me some things about myself. Number one, I absolutely thrive when I'm within accountability. After getting found out by Sarah, I tried to be better for seven years, but could really never kick the habit. I was white-knuckling it all the time. And it wasn't until I found true accountability, my OpenShare group, my accountability partners, my sponsors, that I began to find true health.

I rarely miss church. I attend Celebrate Recovery every week. I work through step studies. I meet with my sponsor every Thursday at 6 a.m. Now I have a group of guys I meet with on Saturdays. In addition to that, I have plenty of real men who call me on things from what I eat to where my eyes go to what I watch on TV to even how I talk about myself. I live a transparent life now that displays God's brilliance despite my brokenness. Number two, my pride needs to constantly be popped. Instead of trying to live a perfect life as others may see it, I need to finally start living my life like the messy human that God made. I'm a sinner saved by grace. I don't need to live life wondering what other people think. Just a life concerned with pushing people toward the true God. Number three, reality is a pretty cool place to be. Today, there's no more fantasy. I can enjoy movies and being the Barbie car driver for my daughters. Not so much anymore because they're teenagers. But there is no other woman than my Sarah. God has shown me how to sustainably see my wife as my absolute standard of beauty. The same woman I was falling out of love with is irresistible to me today. She's so much more than just an object. Her love for me is the greatest gift in my life and her trust is my most prized reward. Other women may be beautiful, but they are fool's gold to me. They are of no value. I also know that I can't just have fantasy highlights in life. If I never experience the reality of a rainy day, I'll never deeply appreciate the sunny days. Today, I accept all of life, the good and the bad. Exercise is horrible, but I love how it changes me. The same is true with hardships in life.

If I have negative intent, then I'll report that negative intent to my sponsor. It's not about being right or good. It's about allowing Jesus to help me every single day. I'll say on my best day, I might be a 60 out of 100. And on my worst day, probably a 40, maybe a 10. And I need Jesus to make up that difference for me. The most recent recovery lesson that I've been learning is it's not my job to dispense my own rest. If I try to manufacture rest, it's not nearly as sweet as the rest that comes from Jesus. Rest is God's job. As I put in work for Him, whether it be for church or family, my job or CR, He provides the rest. It may look like a compliment, a gracious response, or even a canceled meeting. Regardless, the good rest always comes from God. I love how Matthew 11, 28-30 says this. Are you tired, worn out, burned out on religion? Come to me, get away with me, and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me. Watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace, and I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me, and you'll learn to live freely and lightly. Moving forward, I will accept hardships as a pathway to peace. I will sacrifice for my three daughters and my wife because God asked me to steward my family well. I will praise God because He's delivered me from so much. And I will continue to put in work at CR because I know how much it can help others. I've seen marriages renewed. One of my closest friends is now free from heroin and owns a pizza shop.

I saw CR help a woman who lost her husband of 42 years, and I've seen it. bring a fresh mindset to many churches. The opportunity for growth from Celebrate Recovery is so powerful, and not just to those with dependencies, but anyone who has fallen short of the glory of God. To the newcomer, if you keep showing up to CR through this program, through this ministry, God will lead you out of your mess and into the best version of you. In fact, if your CR attendance includes weekend services at your church, you'd find a huge family of people just like you working to move their lives forward. And to the person who thinks they don't need to do a testimony or get a one-day coin, you have no idea who needs to hear your story. Let's never underestimate how God could use our ingredients as nutrients to change someone else's life forever. If you never talk about your story, you may miss that God-breathed opportunity to change a life, perhaps even your own. Thank you for letting me share.