Sexual Sin: My Story

There's no perfect people in this room, you know, and that's the kind of people that Jesus comes after. He doesn't come for the people who have it all together, but people who need Him. And whether that's because we're the ones hiding sin or we're the ones who have been hurt by sin, everybody needs His grace. And I'm just trusting that people who are listening today, that everybody is going to become aware of the fact that Jesus can help them, no matter where they are.

Whether they're the ones who are hiding sin or they're the ones who have been sinned against, that Jesus is their help and hope. Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Ann Wilson.

And I'm Dave Wilson, and you can find us at familylifetoday.com or on our Family Life app. This is Family Life Today. So I would say hiding a secret in marriage or even in your life is probably the biggest agony that we carry. Are you confessing something right now? Well, I don't have a secret, but you know that I carried a secret in our marriage for quite a while. That's interesting you say that, too. You didn't know I was going to go there, did you?

I know I do. Like, wait, I'm confessing something. Here we go.

Boom. But I knew something was going on when you were holding on to that secret, and I kept pressing into you, like, what's going on? Like, I can tell something's wrong.

And I hated that you knew, because I had this struggle with pornography that I was carrying all by myself. And you could feel it. You could feel it in our home.

I could tell that we weren't one. We were separate in some way, and I couldn't figure out why. And one of the best days of my life was the day I told you the struggle. Oh, it was the worst day of mine. Yeah. But we started a journey. Yeah.

You want to live in the worst day? No, let's just kind of go past that, because I didn't respond very well. I feel bad that I didn't respond well, but I didn't at that time, because I was so shocked. And what we know is many men and women struggle with this struggle, as well as others, but it's a secret, and nobody knows. And today we're going to talk about it. I would go as far as saying it's an epidemic in the church that we keep hiding.

Yeah, and we've got Garrett Kell with us today, a pastor who has also written about this, but also had a struggle with it. But, Garrett, welcome to Family Life Today. It's good to be here with both of you and everybody who's listening. I mean, you're sitting over there smiling.

What is the smile? I've loved hanging out with you all, and I love that both of you, there's no perfect people in this room, you know? And that's the kind of people that Jesus comes after. He doesn't come for the people who have it all together, but people who need Him. And whether that's because we're the ones hiding sin, or we're the ones who have been hurt by sin, everybody needs His grace. And, you know, I'm just trusting that people who are listening today, that everybody is going to become aware of the fact that Jesus can help them, no matter where they are.

Whether they're the ones who are hiding sin, or they're the ones who have been sinned against, that Jesus is their help and hope. Yeah. Well, it's fun having lunch with you, because, you know, we just met, and I knew you were a pastor at Delray Baptist Church in Virginia, but I didn't know you went to college with Michael Vick.

You know, that was like a highlight of lunch right there. Sure. He wouldn't know that, but other than he did actually hit on a girl, I was dating once, and anyway, that's another story. But, yes, I went to Virginia Tech, and that's where I came to the Lord, middle of my junior year. Yeah, and I tell you what, I didn't think we were going to go here initially in this interview, but obviously we're going to talk about your book, Pure in Heart, Sexual Sin and the Promises of God. And I want to get there, but your journey to Christ is an epic story. I thought, why not start there? Yeah, there's something about stories and hearing how Jesus woos us and wins us.

It's inspiring, and I think our listeners will be inspired by this as well. Well, I don't know where you want to start, but go back to your college days and walk us into your story. Well, I mean, I grew up in a loving home. We went to church. It was kind of a moderate church where God was kind of a safe conversation. And the only thing I knew about Jesus was there was this awful painting of Jesus. It was kind of like he looked like he was from Denver, and he was in a bathrobe.

It was in front of everything. It was one of those pictures of Jesus, and it was just too much. My life was about sports and sinning and all the ways that parties provide the opportunity for, and that was my life in high school. And then when I went off to college, it was very much the same.

And, you know, I always did it in the name of fun and never thought that I was hurting people. But right before my junior year, there was a girlfriend and I who, she got pregnant, and she told me and she told me it was mine. And I remember she asked me, she said, I want to know, will you be with me? And I wasn't ready to be married. And I was like, no, but I was like, I've got some money.

I'll help us figure this out. And so she decided and we decided that we were going to have an abortion. And I was there through the whole thing.

I remember that we both wept and we didn't know why. And I went back. We went our separate ways. I went back to school and I just dove into the party scene.

I lived with some people who were into raving, a lot of drugs, all that kind of stuff. And I was just empty trying to fill this hole in my heart. And I invited a buddy named Dave down to come for this party.

It was going to be an epic Halloween party. And he closed the door and he sat on the bed and he looked at me. He goes, I don't do this anymore. I was like, OK. And he said, he said, I love Jesus now. And he said, I came here to tell you that Jesus loves you, too.

And I know this is probably going to be a hard weekend, but I wanted you to know that. I was like, OK. I was like, well, more for me then. And I kind of blew him off, went back out. He was sitting on the couch and our buddies were like, hey, what's up with dude on the couch?

He looked out of place. I was like, I became a Christian. We're all like, oh, poor guy.

You know, because we're thinking we've got everything. Yeah. But he throughout the weekend, I saw he had what I was chasing. I was still empty, but he had peace, a peace that wasn't found in anything other than this Jesus that he talked about. And I kind of mocked him, made fun of him. I even have an email that I sent to him, you know, telling him that, you know, tell Jesus I said hi and I'm sure you'll be back to normal and we can smoke a fatty to celebrate and all this kind of stuff. I just kind of made fun of him a little bit. Does he still have that email? Yeah. Actually, if you if you look up the stand that saved my soul, the whole thing is there.

The email is there. It's really interesting. But it haunted me. And a couple of weeks later, I was in the middle of another rave party. I was doing drugs and all of a sudden I felt a lot of darkness and I became very aware that there was evil around me and evil in me. And it spooked me.

So I went back to my room, closed the door. Had you ever had that kind of sense before? No. Like the darkness thing? No.

No. For me, the darkness used to be I thought it was giving me life. It was fun. It was where I was finding my joy, my peace and all of that. Right. Which now, of course, I see as an idol. Like that's what the Lord's supposed to provide. But it was a counterfeit.

Saint always deals in counterfeits. So I went back and I saw my Bible. It was peeking out from underneath the bed. My parents had given it to me.

I used to hide it under my bed because of my style. But that day was sticking out and I sat down and I played Bible roulette where I just sat down, opened the Bible randomly. But we know that there's no such thing as random luck or chance.

God and his providence made it open to the book of Ezekiel. Ezekiel 18 in the New Living Translation says, The one who sins is the one who dies. A father will not be judged for the son's sins, nor will a son be judged for the father's sins.

But each person will be judged according to what they have done. But do you think I delight in the death of the wicked? No, but they would turn and live, says the Lord. And that freaked me out. I closed the Bible and I was like, OK, what else you got? So I opened it up to the New Testament, which I didn't know what that meant.

I just opened it up and started reading. I was in the book of Romans and came to Romans chapter two, verse four. Again, the New Living Translation says, Don't you realize how kind, tolerant and patient God is with you?

Or don't you care? Can't you see how patient he's been giving you time to turn from your sin? But know you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God will judge all people according to my gospel. And it was right then that in God's mercy, he showed me that he and I were not cool. I felt really guilty and I started confessing all my sins to my sister. And she's like, you're in trouble.

You need some help. And all of a sudden I went sober. And I was on a drug where you don't get sober.

It's like something that lasts for hours. And all of a sudden, just in the middle of it, I went completely sober and I thought, I need to call Dave. And I called that buddy that had come down to the party and he came up to my house at two in the morning carrying his Bible. And he had tears streaming down his face. And he said, do you know what I was doing when you called me?

I said, no. He said I was doing the same thing I've been doing every single night since I left Virginia Tech. I was on my knees praying for you to believe in Jesus. And God heard his prayers.

And I'm the last person who should be a Christian. But for some reason, Jesus wanted me even though I didn't want him. And he sought me and he saved me.

And I've been following him imperfectly ever since. And it's been a sweet journey. God's done a lot of good things. There's been a lot of really wonderful things. I've seen God save people. He saved my sister. He saved my mom and my dad after that.

He saved other people in my life. Well, you ended up having this passion to tell all of your friends about Jesus. Yeah, I became keenly aware that, oh, my goodness, all these friends that I used to invite into sin because I was the orchestra.

I mean, like, I mean, that's why I used to throw these parties because I want everybody to come and have a good time. But now I'm aware I was leading people to hell. And now I have a responsibility. I've found the way. It's like those beggars in the stories of the kings where they find some bread and they're eating it.

And they realize, wait, everybody else is back starving. And I had to go tell. So I went back and started trying to trying to share the gospel with everybody in any way that I could think of. I mean, I nailed verses about hell to a drug dealer's door, freaked him out. I went back to my pastor, a guy named Owen Womack.

He was a good godly man. I told him, I was like, here's what I want to do. How about, because I used to throw these keggers at my house. I was like, yeah, I want to throw a party and about an hour into it, I'm going to get on the keg, turn on the lights and tell everybody about Jesus. And he's like, it's like a Billy Graham crusade. Well, I'm not sure Billy had done it that way, but I think it's the same kind of spirit.

Right. I mean, like we've we've got people who've got to know. And and he's like, I appreciate your zeal. He goes, but how about you just use the church here and you can use it for whatever you want. And so we made it known that we were going to have this thing. We called it Christ night. And we're gonna have this deal at this church.

And word got out that I was throwing a party at a church and everybody thought was gonna be a big joke. OK, that's what I wondered, because a lot of people ended up coming. Why do you think they came? And a lot of it was God. Yeah, I think God was working in a unique way. There's been a couple other people, a guy named Gary, who had been a cocaine dealer who got saved. My buddy Dave had gotten saved. There was another guy who had gotten saved. The Lord was working uniquely in our town at this time. And then when I got saved, one of my old buddies, he's now he's now a pastor at our church.

He was a football practice and he was very much not walking with the Lord. And he was bragging about all these things he had done, all this sin he had done over the weekend. And the FCA leader who was there looked over to him and said, Was that before or after the FCA meeting?

Because he used to go to that. And he said, Wow. That convicted him. And then they're like, Yeah. And they started talking about God. Hey, did you hear Garrett Kell became a Christian?

And he started laughing. He said, Listen, I know I'm not a Christian, but I know that guy's not a Christian. So that's like the last guy in our town that you would have thought that would have ever followed Jesus. So when word got out that I'm going to be throwing a party at a church, all these people came. So, you know, in God's mercy, there was teachers there and friends and all these kind of people. And a lot of people heard the gospel. And it was a remarkable couple of months where And you gave an altar call.

I did. We gave an altar call and like two thirds of the people in the room came down. And again, not all of them stayed and persevered in faith. But today there's people who are pastors, missionaries. There's some people I heard a testimony the other day from somebody. They asked how they became a Christian. They said, Well, when they were five, their parents went to this thing called Christ night. And they both got convicted of their sin and turned from it and trusted in Jesus and were born again and came home. And ever since their family's been, you know, trying to follow Jesus together and, you know, that's all in spite of me. Like there's nothing in that that nobody struts into the service of the king.

Right. I mean, the Lord mercifully allowed me to be a part of that. And I'm so thankful. You know, what a great story of God saving one man, but through one man. And this is legacy and generational kingdom impact is what happens when one person says I'm all in.

I mean, you don't know this about me, but when I gave my life to Christ, I mean, we're so similar in terms of I was just a party animal. I was known on the college campus as the quarterback, but as the guy at all the parties with I was the first guy at the kegger, the whole thing. And I actually was mentored when I became a freshman by the senior quarterback. He said, you're going to replace me as the starter, so I want you to learn this.

What? We lead on the field. We lead in the bar.

I'm like, what's that mean? He goes, dude, we're the first ones. We get drunk the most.

We lead both places. That's how you do it. So, you know, I followed that model. Just the other way.

Yeah, exactly. It was a terrible discipleship. But bottom line, when I came to Christ, the guy who mentored me, now he's a follower of Christ. And by the way, he said, you know, God's called me to have this athletic ministry on the campus. I looked at him. When I met him, I'm like, no, he didn't.

There's no way. He wasn't an athlete. And again, I'm not judging, but I was like, no athlete's going to respond to you. And he had this incredible ministry. But what he said, because I said it to Bill, I said, man, now I'm a Christian.

I'm going to go in the locker room and I'm going to put up this big Jesus banner and I'm going to share the gospel. And he looked at me and he goes, eh, that's probably not the best way to do it. We got a better idea.

And you know what we did? He said, I've got a magazine. It's called the Athletes in Action Magazine. It has testimonies of pro athletes in it. How about I get you 100 of these, you give them to all the guys on the team, and then we'll try and set up an appointment with them after to say, what did you think of the magazine? Like, okay.

So listen to this. We did it. Then I think nobody's going to meet with us. We set up an appointment to say, let's talk about the magazine. The last two pages of the magazine were the gospel. So we'd sit down and go, hey, what did you think of the magazine? Oh, that's pretty cool. Did you ever read the last two pages?

Nope. Nobody ever read the last two pages. Can we walk you through it? We saw 25 guys come to Christ in two weeks out of 100. Here's what I want to say, too, is that you guys, I listened to this and even my own zeal when I first gave my life to Christ. I thought, how have I not heard about this? And how are we not announcing this from the rooftops? Like, we need Jesus.

And he is the answer to life and to peace and to joy. And people are going to hell. That's what I was like. I was so fired up about this.

What happens? You know, why don't we have sometimes that same zeal and this hunger to let our friends know about Jesus? Yeah. And, you know, I think there's ways that Lord uses youthful zeal. And there's also times when after you. So I don't know that my zeal has changed.

It's just hopefully it's matured some. There's some of my zeal. There's certainly times my zeal ebbs and flows. And that's part of walking with the Lord. But I wouldn't want us to feel unnecessarily guilty if the way we're following the Lord changes a little bit.

Or shamed. And yeah, because that's, you know, the Lord uses all kinds of things. That's why I love having young, zealous people around that helps, you know, to fan some flames. You want to correct some. Because I did some crazy stuff. I'm sure some of my sermons would need to be deleted off the Internet. If some of those old ones that I did, they just weren't, you know. I mean, even the first three years of preaching at the church end up pastoring in Texas.

Like, I had them delete the first three years off. Just because I was like, you know, let's just pretend that didn't happen. The Lord worked in the midst of the mess, but let's start over. It's so true. But there is something about the zeal of a new believer. Yeah, it's sweet. That is contagious. And sometimes you can get in a rut as a more mature, longer believer and you're like, what happened to that? And me, it stokes something. Even our kids have done that in us as parents, which has been really beautiful. But here's the question that, you know, we want to get into.

Because I don't know if you had this experience, but I sort of thought when I came to Christ, now my sin life is done. I won't struggle. And we struggle. And one of the struggles we talked about already earlier was pornography. And you wrote a book about it and you opened the book with your struggle. So let's talk about that a little bit.

What happened? Let's add, too, that you're married. You've been married how many years, Garrett? Yeah, I've been married for 14 years. And you have six kids. Six, oh, yes. So you're busy.

Yes. You're just glad to be here right now. My wife always calls these kinds of trips, but you're going on vacation. Yeah, exactly. She is doing all the hard work at home.

Because your oldest is 13 and your youngest is three months. And so, yes, she's doing a lot right now. But yeah, as you said, when you become a Christian, I know for me initially there was, I want nothing to do with sin. And I turned from it. But then it was amazing how quickly it would creep back in. And I was stunned a little bit. I didn't know because I didn't get into a church right away.

It was me and the Bible and just a couple Christian friends that I was meeting here and there. So I became very confused and riddled with shame and guilt when I would continue to fall back into sins and all kinds of stuff. But I think you're right that when you become a Christian, there's still temptations that abound and we still have our sinful flesh. And we've got to learn, okay, what does it mean then as Christians to walk now with the Holy Spirit? Yes.

But how do we walk where we're still going to be struggling and we've got to find ways to fight against it? Yeah. So talk about that. I mean, you open your book, which is a powerful book about purity in heart and especially as we already said, towards sexual sin. But you had a secret sort of like I did that you battled.

Yeah. So I still remember the first time that I saw pornography. I was at a friend's house.

I was in fifth grade. He said, hey, hey, why don't you come in here? I want to show you what I found. And he had found some pornography.

His dad is hidden. And I can still if I tried to bring up the image in my mind, I could still see that wrinkled page in the in the sunlight and what was on it. It awakened in me something that day, this corrupted curiosity, sexual curiosity. We're wired for that. We're sexual beings. God made a sex is not a wicked thing. It's a wonderful thing that God gave his gift to husband and wife.

So it's a good thing. But sin gets a hold of it and twists it and distorts it and perverts it. And that was my whole life as a nonbeliever. And then as I became a Christian, I still had those struggles and there was relationships that I tried to get into that didn't go well. I kind of broke away from those kinds of relationships.

And what became more prominent was a struggle with pornography. It felt safer in one sense because I wasn't sinning with someone that I could see in regards to like flesh and blood. I remember I was I had been a believer for about three years. I was sitting in a Bible study.

I just started seminary. And as soon as the pastor said, amen. I remember hearing not out loud, audibly, but just this pull of you're going to go home and you're going to look at pornography. And I did. I drove home from Bible study as a seminary student, someone who wanted to be in ministry, who loved the Lord. And I went home and I sat on my couch and I pulled up a pornographic Web site and I looked at it for hours. None of my roommates were home.

And it was click after click after click after click. And I remember when I finally just unplugged the computer. I remember sitting there thinking, I guess I'm just always going to be like this. So I've got to figure out how do I be a Christian and walk with this guilt and this.

Because I didn't feel like I could talk about it because I didn't know anybody else that was struggling with this. This is we were in a church that was healthy in the sense that it preached the Bible. It had a high view of Jesus. It was evangelistic.

It was service oriented toward the community and all those good things. But there wasn't the kind of culture in the church where it was normal and expected to confess sins. So I created this facade where I would basically wear a mask and I would say, hey, you know, I'm struggling a little bit. Pray for me. And that's what confessions looked like.

Right. And that I just took that into seminary and into early parts of serving as an evangelist and pastor at the church that I was at. And then we planted a church out from there and I ended up passing there for seven and a half years.

But the first three years that I was there, I had a secret struggle with pornography. I wasn't married. I was a single pastor at that time. I was in an unplanned place out in the middle of nowhere, West Texas, at an unplanned pace. I wanted to be married. I wasn't.

I didn't know what to do with all the stresses and pressures. And the ministry was being blessed like the church was growing. We met in a storefront. We went from 13. We always we start with 13. Always said we have one more than Jesus started with. So we were in good shape and went from 13 to 30 to 60 to 90 to, you know, fire code violating 120.

We couldn't invite the fire marshal was the joke because we would get in trouble. So then we then we bought a roller skating rink and they called us the holy rollers and we met there and it filled up too. And God just was blessing. But the whole time I was struggling. And what I mean by that is I had a pattern of every two weeks or a month where I would oftentimes on a stressful day, I would escape to pornography. Sometimes it would be for two minutes.

Sometimes it would be for two hours. And then I would delete my search history and I would call a friend and be like, hey, just wanna let you know I'm feeling a little tempted. Would you pray for me? And they'd be like, yeah, sure. And I'd be like, hey, things are better. You know, I'm good now. But like I was never honest and I was confessing my sins to all kinds of different people.

So I had 12 or 15 different friends and nobody had like a pulse on how I was actually doing. So this whole time I am getting up in front of people, telling them about Jesus, teaching his word, God is blessing. But all the while my conscience is haunted.

That does weird things to you. Yeah. And here's the thing. I think what you just described, so many are living that life. And they may not be a pastor or being up preaching, but it's the same life. There's a secret.

They may, like you said, hey, I'm struggling a little bit. But it's like they're afraid to go to the reality of the darkness that's really gripped them. I've been there. You've been there. I'm guessing listeners are there.

I think a lot of women too, because there's an extra amount of shame because they're a woman and that feels even more weird. Here's the amazing thing. We don't have time to get to the answer. So we're going to leave you right where you're hanging and say, if you're that guy or that gal, don't miss the next part of this. Because we've been there, but there's a way out.

Right, Garrett? Jesus provides a way. He says, come unto me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. So if you're feeling the shame and the guilt and you're weary and hiding, I want you to know Jesus is the answer.

Yeah. Come to him. Sexual sin is something that so many people are trapped in today and they try to buckle down with self-discipline and it doesn't work. And one of the things I loved about this conversation is that Garrett Kell, who's authored the book Pure in Heart, he doesn't claim in his book that you need to come to him for all the answers. What he does instead is come alongside you in this book as a kind and thoughtful, wise older brother who's not immune to the struggles with sexual purity himself.

That's what I love about this. He talks about it frankly and gives us hope in the process. As Dave and Ann Wilson have been talking with him today, I've been so encouraged to hear that once again, he's not pointing us to a program for solutions. He's pointing us to the gospel.

He's pointing us to Jesus himself. As I said, Garrett has written a book called Pure in Heart and it's available in our Family Life Resource Center. You can find it on our website at familylifetoday.com and you can order a copy of Garrett's book there. And while you're there, this week when you make a donation of any amount to the Ministry of Family Life, we want to send you a copy of Sharon Jaynes' book When You Don't Like Your Story.

The subtitle of it is What If Your Worst Chapters Could Become Your Greatest Victories? So when you make a donation of any amount to the Ministry of Family Life, we will send you a copy as a way of saying thank you for your donation of Sharon Jaynes' book When You Don't Like Your Story. You can order it at familylifetoday.com or you can give us a call at 1-800-358-6329.

That's 1-800-F as in Family, L as in Life, and then the word TODAY. Now if you wanted to hear more about this topic specifically, Garrett Kell had a chance to sit down with Ray Ortlund and have a frank conversation about sexual sin and our struggles with it. That's available on our Family Life app. You can download that anywhere you get your apps or you can go to familylifetoday.com and subscribe to the podcast feed to get that episode there. Now this content today as we've been talking about sexual sin or any of our Family Life programs have been helpful for you. We'd love for you to share today's podcast with a friend or a family member. And wherever you get your podcast, it can really advance the work that we're doing at Family Life if you scroll down and rate and review us. Now tomorrow Dave and Ann are going to be talking more again with Garrett Kell about being transparent with our sin, being honest about what's going on in our lives. That's coming up tomorrow. On behalf of Dave and Ann Wilson, I'm Shelby Abbott. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life, a crew ministry helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.