Category Healing & Restoration

Pornography and Addiction

THE REALITY: AN ABUNDANT LIFE Mike Bickle says in his book, ‘The Seven Longings of the Human Heart’, Addiction wraps itself around a person, giving their natural appetites an artificial life of their own, while simultaneously short-circuiting their ability to…

Redemptive Love in Redding

FINDING FREEDOM FROM PAIN  I was born to a single teen mom. My dad left three months into the pregnancy leaving my mom was devastated. She cried all the time and as a result, I felt abandoned by my father and…

Giving God Control

TRADING SHAME FOR JOY From an early age, sex became an interesting and a secret desire. It wasn’t until I was in middle school that it became a daily struggle in my life. I began masturbating every night and it…

Fighting to Be a Man of Purity

GOING THROUGH SHAME TO GET TO GOD  I remember the first time I masturbated. I was on a school trip to Germany, sharing a testosterone-charged room with my peers. We were all competing to prove that we were making it…

Embracing My Heart, My Feelings, My Desires

THE AUTHOR OF MY HEART Most of my life, I have attempted to control, stifle, and sometimes completely disown my desires. Unfortunately, when dealing with sexual desire and longing for intimacy, I was unaware that they could be expressed in…

From Lonely to Loved

RAW, REAL, RADICAL GRACE When I was 18 years old, I completely compromised my sexual purity in exchange for what felt like acceptance. It was a reality I had never experienced before, but one my heart had hungered after my…

Free From Masturbation

DAY-IN, DAY-OUT FREEDOM Like most girls, I have always wanted to feel loved and desired. Early wounds of rejection enforced lies that I believed — lies that said somehow I was disqualified from the love I longed for, which, of course, only…

Freedom from Porn

Isolation Never Helped Anyone Like a family relative you keep locked in the basement, porn was only let out when no one was home.  Growing up poor as the chunky pastor’s daughter in a very liberal, small town set me…