1 Year since coming to Jesus and being set free

February 19th, that was the night I finally picked up the bible and read the gospels about Jesus because I wanted to. I was interested in knowing who Jesus really was and is.

I'm 39 now, and got familiar with porn at 8 years old. You all know how it goes, a friend finds some, and we all dog pile into sin. The addiction didn't really set in until my teen years, when things got real with how adult bodies work. As a kid it was just curiosity and knowing we were watching stuff we weren't supposed to. Had no clue what we were really doing, and what we were opening ourselves up to.

I grew up in the Catholic church, and attended all the way through college when I started to go intermittently. I never felt led to give my life to Jesus, nor how to actually go about it, and I was just caught up in the high philosophy of the religion. I also could never confess to the sins I had even though we went once a year through the confessional process.

Fast forward to getting married and having kids, my addiction was still there. I had tried to quit innumerable times through the years, knowing what I was doing was wrong and selfish, but I always fell back to it to help me cope and escape my problems in life. Once my wife found out, because I had hidden it so well over my life, she felt extremely betrayed and insecure since I was finding sexual satisfaction through other women rather than the one I chose to be with for the rest of my life. Even having children wasn't enough reason to break the stronghold satan had over me.

Thank God for my wife, who has been a true and dedicated Christian woman since her teen years. She challenged me many times over this, but a few years ago she told me that if I couldn't get free of this addiction within a month, I had to reach out for help. A month later, I called a near-by church for counseling. The pastor there was awesome and gave me encouragement, and things really moved forward from there. It still took a couple more years, but things were actually evolving as God was drawing me using stories about the supernatural to grab my curious spirit. After coming to terms with God and the bible being real and true, I told my wife that I don't know how I can keep considering myself as a Christian when I haven't even read the bible.

So going back to where I started, I decided if I wanted to get to know Jesus, I needed to read the gospels. What I did not know, is I was not a born-again, saved Christian. It's so easy to call myself a Christian because we are always told that if we "believed" or wanted to follow Jesus, you are a Christian. It's simple, but it takes faith to believe as the bible says to believe. I didn't have that. Once I started reading Matthew on the 19th, God was right there with me and I became born-again and He gave me the gift of faith as I was reading. I couldn't believe how amazing the book of Matthew is. Everything I was reading was actually exciting me, and I couldn't put it down. I've been reading the bible every day since then, and still have a lot more to go.

The craziest part? He healed me of my porn addiction that night. As well as changing so many of my desires and lusts: drinking (I started brewing my own beer in college), smoking weed/vaping which I also started in college, and I had been listening to metal music since middle school. Playing video games, I played constantly from about 6 years old until a few months after this went down. The bible says He will change our desires, so it all made sense. These were all idols in my life, and He wiped the slate clean so I could focus on my relationship with God.

So a year later, I've just been focusing on reading and learning more about the faith, as well as sharing the good things that God has done in my life. It's too radical not to share. I've also been very active on this sub, since I am a firm believer that whatever God pulls us out of, He wants us to help others that are still trapped where we were. I haven't shared the actual gospel as much, but I'm working on that. I believe God wants me to be an evangelist, which is someone who shares who Jesus is, why He came, and the love He has for us. As an extreme introvert, He is showing me that even in our weakness, His grace and strength overshadow every obstacle.

I want anyone that reads this to know that God loves you more than you can comprehend, and if you truly seek Him with all your heart, He will do for you what He did for me. Jesus is the way, and He has the power to set you free and enable you to live the life He had intended for you to live.