(Ep 165) - Hesron Gomez - On My Knees to God

And something came over me, Joel, where I just dropped to my knees in front of the door. And I prayed to God and I'm like, Lord, I'm a coward. I'm a coward. I'm like, you can see from up there, like everything that's been going on, you know, my heart, you know, I really want to do this. You know, I'm convicted. Your word convicted me. I mean, you're the one talking to me through your word. You're the one telling me exactly what I need to do. I know that I need to do it. And you've seen me try. Like, I really, you know, I made the decision that I was going to do it multiple times. And I just can't. You gotta live it. You gotta love it. Testimony goes on and on and on. It's magnetic. It's prophetic. It's got stories being told. Hi, welcome back to the Jesus Magnet podcast. I'm your host, Joel from New Zealand. And today we have Hesron on the show with us. How are you doing, Hesron? Doing good, Joel. Awesome. Appreciate you having me on here, brother. Dope to have you on. Hesron is the host of the Worst of These podcast, where you can find that on all major platforms and also on theworstofthese.com. This is going to be a raw episode, one where we talk about kind of the worst of these testimonies in the sense of what is often hidden, what is often not discussed in church. And when we're talking about porn and adultery and things like that, where the Bible is really that foundation that draws us to not get fooled into these temptations, not to get drawn into them, not to get hooked by them. And this is an incredible story. A little bit of a warning, it will be a raw one, so be aware of that. So Hesron, I just want to thank you in advance for wanting to do this and being so open about your life and your testimony, because this is a topic that is definitely needed. It's getting more and more common in the church, out of the church. And it's one thing that we need to know, Jesus is the answer. Who do we run to when we're going through these struggles? So Hesron, I'm going to just pass the mic over to you, and you can start your testimony whenever you want. I'm going to jump in and out with different questions. But yeah, mic's all yours. Hey, I appreciate, Joe. Yeah, no, it's a real honor to be able to still serve the church. Unfortunately, with kind of an ugly past, right, or some ugly moments, right, that I'm not necessarily proud of. But like you said, I feel like they're 100% needed. And we need to be able to open up and talk about this a little bit more. You know, and there's all sorts of problems that I see that are happening with men in church, right, that make us somewhat of a prayer. You know, we got to remember that passage where Peter tells us that the enemy is kind of like, just like a lion, he's praying, right? So he's just looking for a weak moment to be able to pray on us. And we got to keep open to that. Like, I think Paul's constantly also saying, be vigilant, right? And that's what he means, to be aware. And, you know, in my story, my personal story, part of the problem was that I was in a really conservative environment. So my full name is Hezron Gomez, right? And that last name Gomez is from Latin America. And so my parents are originally from El Salvador. They immigrated to California in the 80s. And that's where I was born. So I was born to a Latin American family, which just the culture itself of Latin America is pretty conservative. You know, and then we add to that a very conservative Christian faith, right? So everybody's dressed with, you know, suits and ties and you got to look spiffy, right, on the weekend. And that's kind of where I grew up, right? So I don't know. I mean, I guess, yep. You grew up in a Christian home. Did you have a faith and did you have siblings or anything like that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I did grow up in a Christian home. My dad has been a pastor since I can remember, right? So he was an ordained pastor. I have two younger siblings. I was the oldest out of three. And it's funny how we all have very different characters, me and my siblings. We ended up in different places in our lives, right? But yeah, it just tells us that everyone has an individual walk, right? That we have to walk. We get called to walk God's path, right? But it's also very individual because I can't walk your walk, you can't walk mine. I can't walk my siblings and they can't walk mine, right? So it's very individual in that sense. But yeah, so growing up, you know, I want to say that around 16 is really when I kind of started questioning whether what I was doing every weekend was something that I really wanted to do myself or it was something that was being imposed on me, right? In the sense of going to church and doing all that. Going to church, believing in a God, you know, so I really, I don't know, I guess, early deconstructions before all this deconstruction verbiage was going around, right? But it was just basically me trying to really know that it was my faith, right? It was me believing and it was not something that was imposed by my parents. Everything from believing in a God to believing the God that I believe in. You know, that Jesus was the one who came in the flesh to give his life for the salvation of humanity or whoever is willing to believe in him as that one Messiah that was sent for us. And so, you know, that all started happening around 16. The thing is that, you know, my parents being immigrants, not knowing exactly how things work fully here in the States around that time, I think, you know, we got put into public school. My kids go to public school right now, but my wife and I are really considering homeschooling just because there's a lot of things that can be really empowered through personal education, right? And there's so many, how can I put it, dangers that we expose them to by sending them off for long periods of time in a day. And having them not just be educated by teachers that have, you know, very secular ideas, but beyond that, the friends that you meet at public school. And, you know, so I know that my buddies weren't trying necessarily to do something evil when I'm in seventh grade, I'm 12 years old, and one of my buddies, you know, I saw a bunch of my buddies basically huddle around the locker, right, in the hallway. And I'm like, what are these guys doing, right? Like, what do they have in the locker? And I go over there and he has some magazines, some porn magazines, right? And everybody, right, like we're all kids, we're about to hit puberty. This is kind of exciting, at least for me, first time being exposed to this. It was very exciting, you know, in the sense that it's something brand new. Obviously, I like girls. I'm attracted to females and there they are, right? And so... And that was back in the day when they were using magazines. Yeah, yeah, so he basically... Man, it is everywhere. Everybody's pocket has pretty much all the porn on the planet, access to it anyway. Yeah, so back then, you know, what he did is he stole them from his older brother, right, who had them in his room and he basically snuck them out of the house, kind of just to kind of show and tell at school, right? But then the other interesting, I guess, part, my personal experience is that I lived in this area that is called the San Fernando Valley in Southern California, in the LA area, Los Angeles area. And I live on the West side. And this area was actually known as the capital, the porn capital of the world. So this is where all this stuff is getting produced. And I didn't know this at the time, right, when I was, I mean, I was just 12, first time even seeing this stuff, right? But then somehow, just kind of accidentally, like I'm running into it a little bit more, like on the streets. I remember when we started walking home from, I want to say it was like high school. We would go around this creepy looking house that had like weird gates. It looked like a house, but it was like all fenced in the way that no house was fenced. And it had a crazy gate. Well, I remember one time we walked and the dumpster, they had a dumpster, didn't even have like regular trash bins, had a little dumpster, and I guess it had just been picked up, but there was flyers everywhere. And like, it was all kind of porn stuff, porn related stuff. So we knew that that house, they were doing something, something funky, right? But that's the environment that I grew up in. And it was not intentional, like my parents didn't send me to learn this stuff, right? But it just came with being in public school, right? So naturally, by the time I got in high school, so I'm talking about like two years later, this is like early 2000s, late, you know, 1999, 2000, computers start becoming available to everybody, right? We bought our first one, we brought it home, dial up internet, but hey, we got internet, right? Took forever, but it was there. And so now it's becoming a little bit more available. Before I needed to really try to risk going into the wrong part of the corner store, right? To try to just peek at the covers, or hope that some friend, you know, snuck some more out of his house or whatever. But now when the computers get introduced to your home with the internet, then it becomes a lot more accessible, right? So I start, basically, it's curiosity, you know, and that's why I'm like sneaking around looking at this stuff. But at the same time, like I said, you know, I'm still actively going to church around 16. I'm asking these hard questions about my faith. And yeah, I really make it my own, right? Like I believe in God, I believe in Jesus. It's definitely a time of our lives where sort of all of a sudden our brains are thinking sort of more original thoughts than what's shaped around our parents, our friends. And then you get these, I mean, we're kind of like sheep, you know, when we're younger. And there's little peaks where we decide, you know, I'm actually going to walk somewhere else. And at that age of 15, 16 is that time where it's so important for parents, friends, family to talk about those hard questions in church, to disciple those young minds because they're so ripe for molding that you've got to make sure that they are watching the right stuff. And I think at that point, would you say that it would have been probably beneficial for a mature person in their faith to talk to you about this sort of stuff, that the world has this sort of stuff in it, and the reason it can be really destructive for your mind. But instead of never ever talking about it, you start looking for it naturally without anybody hidden, that sort of thing. What do you think? Yeah, I mean, so it definitely is a very interesting time, right, where everybody's trying to kind of, you know, make of how you're going to identify yourself, right? So identity becomes naturally like a hot topic, even though, you know, we might not see it that way, but that's when we're trying to discover who we are, right? That's when our taste in music starts getting a little bit more defined, the way that we dress starts getting a little bit more defined. And yeah, so it's definitely a very crucial time. And now, to be honest, Joel, I would say today that those conversations would probably have to start even before. Yeah. You know, like I mentioned to you, I had two siblings, right? So sister's younger, she's the middle child, and then I have an even younger brother. He's about almost four years younger than me. And so I was exposed to my first magazine, like I said, when I was 12 years old. When he was in fifth grade, still in elementary here in the States. That's the last year, you know, the year before you go on to middle school. He was exposed by friends. Wow. They were already talking about this stuff. I remember he mentioned something about teachers finding a condom in the boys' bathroom. It was my elementary school. Like, you know, we were kicking balls, soccer balls, you know? It's crazy. And you got kids doing other things within just a few years of a difference, right? So definitely conversations that need to be had, but without judgment, you know? So we, hopefully, the testimony, right? Hopefully this testimony will help a little bit with that. Because one of the things that makes it really scary to come out is that feeling that you're going to get, that fear that you're going to get judged, right? If everybody that is listening to us is already a believer or is starting in the faith, right? They probably have a good idea. That porn is not necessarily a good thing, right? So we already have that, let's call it guilt, right? That we're doing something we're not supposed to, right? Adding judgment to it, like, is not necessarily helpful. It doesn't edify, right? And that's what we're called to do with each other is to edify each other, to build each other up. So, yeah, so I keep asking a bunch of questions, Joel, around this time. I started digging into Scripture just to kind of see if my faith lines up with what Scripture is saying or what they're teaching at church really lines up with what Scripture is saying. And I'm getting involved with the youth group and, you know, a few leadership skills. And around this time, we were assisting a small church where, again, my dad was a pastor. But since it was small, they needed a little bit of manpower, help. So he started getting the youth involved in a training program, basically, to help us start teaching, like preaching. And so this starts around 17 also. And, yeah, so I fast forward. It's just such a great thing that your church was doing at such a young age, actually equipping them to teach the Word. And because the only way that you can teach the Word is to firstly understand, it helps you understand it. So I always think if you want to understand something, try teach it to somebody. Because then you have to break it down so that you can understand it well enough to be able to teach it. And, yeah, what a great thing to do for your church. It was out of necessity, but it was definitely helpful. And, you know, just two weekends ago, a friend from California, from that church, came to visit. And we were actually talking about all the benefits that we got from that experience. And so, yeah, definitely helpful. So fast forward a couple of years, around 21, I get baptized. You know, I wanted to make it public that, hey, I do believe. And I was also seeking, you know, I guess gifts from the Holy Spirit, right? And around that time, Joe, there'd been a period, so I kind of started dating kind of young and had a heartbreak kind of young too in high school. And after that heartbreak, I was like, okay, you know, I'm going to take a little break from girls. But around, I want to say maybe 18, 19, I started looking at ministry as possibly a way that, you know, that could be a way that I could serve, right? So I knew that I wanted a family. And so I knew also that I didn't want to be either breaking hearts or wanted any more heartbreaks myself. I didn't want to be messing around, right? So I was being, trying to be careful with the girls that I spoke to and how any type of dating was going to get started or not. And it was a hard time for me. And I remember this summer, I got on my knees and I was like, okay, Lord, so it seems that you don't want me to get married because I'm not having any luck with the girls, you know? And I was like, hey, and that's cool. You know, if that's your will for me, I'm okay, 100% okay. But I don't have the gift of celibacy, right? And I am attracted to girls. So if you help me stay busy and take care of that, hey, I don't mind, you know, let your will be done, right? Well, that summer in our church, it was like, it's an organization. And so there's like different churches in different areas. And in Mexico, there's quite a few churches. It's easier for us to visit Mexico than brothers in Mexico. They have to go, you know, apply for a visa, get approved, and then be able to travel to the US. So the youth conferences were always held in different Mexican cities where the church was. So this one summer, I go out to the youth conference, and I meet this girl that I had never seen in the previous conferences. And she catches my eye, extremely smart, beautiful. And we start talking. And yeah, within a month, we start dating. And three and a half years later, we're getting married. So that's my now wife. Her name's Carla. And so she's the lawyer in Mexico. You know, she was, I'm telling you, she was a smart one, or she is a smart one. And when she came to the States, it was because around 2009, things got really ugly in Mexico with like the drug cartels. There was a president around that time that declared war on the drug cartels. Like his thing is that he wanted to clean up Mexico in that sense. Well, this one specific cartel declared war on him and said, OK, if you want to declare war, we're going to war. So things got really, really ugly around this time. And so she got a phone call, a threatening phone call, basically asking her for money. And her dad was on a working visa. So he would come and he would work in the Texas area for eight months out of the year. And then he'd go back home for four months in the wintertime. Well, he was over here when this happened. And so she basically let him know what's going on. And he's like, well, you guys, you and your mom, because they were in Mexico, you guys should go apply for a visa. So they go apply for the visa. Thank God they get approved. So I knew she was going to come to Texas, where I live now. But back then I was in California. And we have a small sister church in Texas, right? So I was like, OK, this was around that crash. I don't know if it hit all the way to New Zealand around 2007, 2008, right? So 2009, things are, you know, in California, they were really bad. So they weren't even recovering, you know? So I was like, man, I'm not doing anything big or anything major here. Let me go try my luck over there. I get to serve in the church. I probably need help. And I'll be closer to Carla, because up until this point, I had to be flying out to Mexico. And the calls, and we didn't have free minutes to Mexico like we do now. Back then you had to pay for it, you know? So it was an expensive relationship there. But I ended up moving out here. She ended up coming a few months later. The visas are usually, the visitor visas are usually for six months. So six months, we're almost coming up. And she's like, hey, you know, I'm going to go back home. And she had already started her lawyer, like a business, right? Her business, she had a partner. She's like, and you already know that we've been working hard. It's going to be really hard for me to come back if I do go back to Mexico. And I popped out the ring, and I'm like, well, then just don't go, you know? Let's get married. And yeah, we did. And so one thing, Joel, that I kind of want to just throw in there is that when good things are happening, when I'm like really into the Word, really, you know, have like spiritually strong, let me call it like that, right? There's a constant prayer, deep diving into the Word, serving at church, and no major problems. For me, like there was no need for porn, right? So I would taper off, like, you know, it was like it never really happened, right? And up until this point, nobody knows. Not even my close friends, not even my best friends from church that might could have well been doing the same thing, but we just never talked about this kind of stuff, right? So I get married, and yeah, we start our new relationship, right, in marriage. And I want to say we had our first child close to four years after. So we were four years into our marriage, we had our first child. And the reason why this is important is because all I remember was the church encouraging us that we were doing the right thing by getting married. But as far as advice, there was really no more advice. Like no marriage preparation. No pre-marriage counseling or anything like that. No, no, no, no. Well, not at my particular church, right? And so, and I've heard that a lot of this counseling is also kind of very superficial kind of talk and just kind of like very superficial, right? But I think we need to learn to get into the nitty gritty of stuff, like the hard stuff. Like the easy stuff, anybody can go through it just fine. They'll survive, right? It's the hard stuff that we should be talking about because that's what's gonna really rock you. And you gotta be able to know how to look up towards the one that delivers us. But when you're not trained to do so, you don't know where to even look, right? So the baby, she's a true blessing, all my kids are. But I mean, she rocked our relationship because now I didn't know that I was gonna feel like this, but I felt like this beautiful little baby was stealing my wife, right? Yeah, I didn't have the same time with her. I didn't have the same intimacy with her. Like things just started changing, right? Now, obviously, I knew she was gonna be an awesome mom, right, I knew that. That's why I felt like she was gonna be an awesome wife because I knew she was eventually gonna be an awesome mom too. And that's what she was being, but I didn't necessarily know what I was gonna go through emotionally, right? And the way that I was gonna feel. How long did that take you to feel like that? After one or two years of having a child or? Maybe, maybe, so one thing that I have like vivid in my mind that I could bring up as part of the conversation is, I remember we were driving, I don't remember where to, but the middle console of the car, I usually have my hand there, and I usually would grab my wife's hand and we would hold hands, right? So if we got any married listeners out there and they've never heard of the five languages of love, it's a must read for all marriages to be able to understand that we have different ways of expressing our love and feeling loved. And we really should learn how our spouses receive love and also express their love, right? So mine is the two strong languages are words of affirmation and touch. So like holding hands for me is like a big thing. Well, somehow the little one gets out of her car seat or whatever, and I'm driving, so I'm not looking back to see what she's doing, but I could just see it kind of like in hindsight, like she saw her hands, she didn't like it because she was very jealous from mom. She didn't like it, so she gets up out of her seat and she literally takes her hands apart. And my wife does nothing, like she keeps her hand, basically she puts it on her lap to comfort my daughter. And then for me, that was like an offense. I was like, dude, you're gonna let this little one just do what she wants, right? But again, there's no education of us modeling what it is to have a loving relationship, that to teach our daughter that it's 100% okay for mom and dad to be able to grab hands, to show affection towards another, and- That's such a funny, that's just such a funny jealousy for a little baby to have, a little child to have of mom and dad holding hands. And that's such a, I've never heard of a baby doing that before. I'm about to have my- Oh, you go, sorry. No, I was gonna say, and it's just my luck, right? So it's like, this is my experience. I'm the one that needs a touch and I have a baby who doesn't like her mom touching me, right? True. So I don't know how to cope with this, right? And by now there's smartphones. So like you said, now porn is in my hands, right? And all I have to do is find some time where nobody's around me, whether this is in the bathroom or is it just I'm home alone or whatever. And yeah, this starts becoming my escape route instead of also me thinking like, hey, has anybody else gone through this? Hey, let me go talk to my pastor. Let me go talk to this other brother that I have a good relationship with. I always had friends at my different jobs that were also believers, right? You gotta come to them and be like, hey, you know what, this is going on. But one, being in that mindset where you don't talk about this kind of stuff, that's kind of one thing. But then two, it's like, you're a man, you know? You're supposed to suck it up and deal with it, right? So coming up with this kind of stuff, I mean, I don't know, I feel like you just, as men, we just don't do it. It's not a manly thing to do, right? Talk about your feelings and what I felt when my daughter separated our hands. Dumb thinking, but I think that's very common, unfortunately, you know? Oh, for sure. I find it intriguing that you're talking about that because my two love languages are also words of affirmation and physical touch. And yeah, for me, as long as my wife just tells me how awesome I am, I'm good. And yeah, the physical touch thing is a funny one. And with the daughter, was it your daughter, or you've got a little baby daughter? My first one, yeah. And my wife and I are about to have our firstborn later on this year, and I'm just trying to imagine myself in those shoes because that could quite easily happen to us because I've got the same love languages and stuff like that. And it's really important when I'm hearing that story is for your wife to recognize that that is part of your love language, that physical touch, like wanting to hold her hand. Even if it's not her love language, she needs to recognize that it's yours so that if the baby does pull the hands apart, that she knows, no, no, no, daddy likes to hold my hand, so I'm gonna hold his hand. And to show your daughter how to show love to somebody and how they receive love, how different people receive love. But yeah, no, just, that's awesome. But I see how you got down the track of, well, if I'm rejected from that, then I'll run to something that is not gonna reject me. That's right, and it's super easy, right? You don't get rejected, it's super easy. And a new definition of sin for me, Joel, nowadays, after everything that I've gone through, is, or just qualities of sin, which are basically the easiest route, or like the path of least resistance and immediate satisfaction. If those two things are present, let's be a little bit more aware of what's going on because we could be dealing with sin. We're looking for the path of least resistance or the easy way out and immediate reward or immediate satisfaction. There's something that we should be paying attention to. And that's exactly what pornography provided, right? But the thing is that there's some physiological things that happen when we indulge with pornography that are very similar to drugs. So there's this interesting website called The New Drug. It's totally secular, but it has tons of information, scientific information and everything, and how they're proving that pornography is a new drug. Because it mimics exactly, physiologically, same things are happening in the brain. We get the same amount of dopamine that somebody does when they're doing like hardcore drugs. And in the same manner, the more that you do it, the more progressive it needs to happen. So in drugs, right, the dose gets larger or people start testing harder drugs. In porn, you basically need it more, and you also start kind of exploring different things. And the problem within the industry is that it's really a crazy industry that just, they're looking to have people addicted to it. That's the other end. From the industry side, they're trying to get people addicted. They're trying to have them never leave because it's a multi-billion dollar industry, right? So unknowingly, these things are happening, right? Kind of all at the same time. And just to not make it long, and you could dissect it however you want, if you want to a little bit later, but this goes on. I hide it all. Oh, so there's another little aspect to my story that just adds to all of this, is that somewhere around this time too, there's a conversation at church where somebody says, oh, Hezron, and they tell my wife, Hezron's gonna get mad at you. And she laughs and she says, Hezron doesn't get mad. And I was like, so my ear really comes up, right? Like, what, wait, what? And so she's like, you know, maybe since all the time that we've been married, maybe I've seen him mad twice. That struck my ego in a way that I hadn't felt like never, Joel, to be honest. It made my ego inflate. Like now I'm the patient, non-aggressive husband that doesn't get mad. The reality was I did get mad. I got upset about a lot of things. I just didn't know how to deal with it. I didn't know how to come and communicate that with her in a healthy way. Like when that thing happened with my daughter where she separated our hands, I was extremely upset, right? But I didn't say anything because I saw her reaction of just putting her own hand in her lap. I'm like, okay, I guess she wants to comply with the child. I want to keep things peaceful. I don't want to make this a big deal. I'm just going to shut up about it, right? I'm a man it up, right? So all of a sudden I'm the patient guy. So now I'm definitely not saying anything because I like the title, you know, of being the patient husband. And so, but things get a little bit progressively worse where in hindsight, because you don't see this when this is happening, it's really hard to pay attention unless something stops you, right? But nothing had stopped me. So one thing that I noticed is that now I'm trying to look for this stuff while I'm not just alone, but even when, or so what I had told you is things, situations that made me really uncomfortable, right? That was my escape route. Well, now, even when I'm bored, I'm starting to look for this stuff, right? So now I'm sitting in traffic and I'm by myself in the car, pulled out the phone and there's junk right on my phone. And something that, again, I didn't notice the progression, but it's happening, right? And so eventually I don't fix any of the issues that I had with my wife. I can't confront her about anything because one, now I'm the patient husband that I don't even get upset and I want to be that for her. But then on top of that, I also never learned how to do any of this stuff, right? And so it just kept progressing, progressing until I guess I had the really big desire or need to want to act out on what I was seeing and the stuff that I was consuming. And so that led to adultery. I guess some of the other factors is once the porn progresses the spiritual life also gets a hit, right? So now I know I'm not supposed to be looking at this stuff. I'm serving at church, right? So now there's a bunch of shame, there's guilt. I feel like a hypocrite. I don't want to be a hypocrite. I don't want to be offending God. I don't want to be offending my wife, but I am. Now I can't control it either, right? So it's just this really bad downward spiral that I kind of created by not confronting the situation. And how did the adultery part happen? Was that somebody seduce you because you had this image of being a very patient man which would be very attractive to others? Yeah, no, not necessarily, Joe. I kind of, I sought it out. I was social media and all this stuff is kind of also becomes easy for anybody to be able to do. Some things like this, you know? And yeah, but it was also another way to strike my ego like you said, because with someone that you just meet you're getting the recognition or the words of affirmation that I'm not getting at home. And it's not because she's not willing to do it. It's because she's busy being a good mom, right? So now I'm feeling like big jerk because I know all of this is going on too, right? Yeah. And up until this point, Joe I'd just been a coward about everything, right? Like I can't confront my wife. I don't seek for help. I don't know how. And we started a small little business here in the Austin area. We do construction services for the apartment industry. And so, you know, we'd started this together and I saw that it wasn't really flourishing like I thought it should. And one day I'm at church and not paying attention to the sermon. I think it was partly because I'm spiritually not fully there, you know? But I opened scripture just randomly and I land in Proverbs. It's Proverbs 28. And I started reading through and I land on verse 13. In Proverbs 28, 13 says, he who covers his sin will not prosper. So I got a lot of things going on in my life and I've been doing nothing but covering, right? And the prosperity, it wasn't only just in the business. It was in the business, in my family relationship, my spiritual relationship. I mean, there was no prosperity anywhere, right? I had gained about 30 pounds of weight because yeah, once the flesh starts taking over, brother, it starts taking over a lot of things. And so I found myself in a really, really, really dark place but this verse caught my attention. It said, he who covers his sin will not prosper but he who confesses and steps away or something like this. I'm translating from the Spanish version that I read but he who confesses and steps away will find mercy. I knew that I wanted mercy, right? And I could argue that in my own way, like with my own, I guess, strength, whatever type of strength that I consider that I had, I was trying to get away, right? Remove myself from that situation but the confession part was definitely not there. But there was a conviction, Joel, like man, I haven't felt in forever that this is what I needed to do, right? So I immediately look at my wife and I'm looking at this verse and I'm like, and in my head, I'm like, I need to tell you what's going on. And I'm like, tonight I'm gonna tell you. So the night comes, things happen, I don't tell her. Like, okay, I'll tell her this week, right? There's gonna be a chance that I'm gonna be able to tell her this week. The week passes and nothing. And so the following weekend, I'm at church again and it's almost like I wanted to verify that I read what I read. So I go back to the passage, bro, and it's there, it hasn't changed. It's still telling me that I need to do what I need to do. But this goes on for a couple more weeks. And right around this time, I had read a book that's called The Miracle Morning by, I forgot his name, Hal Elrod, I think is his name. But it talks about how to shape your mornings so they could prepare for you to have a really good day, right? Just like morning routines and all of this. And like, again, my spiritual side had been suffering. So I knew that prayer and reading God's word in the morning, first thing in the morning would benefit me like a whole lot, right? But now I had encountered this verse that told me that I wasn't gonna go anywhere if I didn't confess to my wife, right? So I was like, okay, so something needs to change and I need to tell my wife. Well, I don't wanna bore you, but it was a couple of weeks of this, I can't do it. And one of these things that I wanted to start doing in the morning was a little bit of exercise. So I get up at five in the morning, nobody's awake here at the house, and I'm about to go take a jog around the neighborhood. But as I'm leaving the door, I think that the night before, supposedly I had tried to tell my wife and I didn't. And something came over me, Joel, where I just dropped to my knees in front of the door and I prayed to God and I'm like, Lord, I'm a coward. I'm a coward. I'm like, you can see from up there, like everything that's been going on, you know, my heart, you know, I really wanna do this. You know, I'm convicted, your word convicted me. I mean, you're the one talking to me through your word. You're the one telling me exactly what I need to do. I know that I need to do it. And you've seen me try, like I really, you know, I made the decision that I was gonna do it multiple times and I just can't. And like, I've attempted to also leave like all these, like the porn and, you know, the situation that I had put myself in and I couldn't, you know, and I told him, I need your help. It was very emotional. I remember even crying. I took the jog and kind of ran it out, ran, you know, ran out the emotions. That Saturday night to Sunday morning, I don't know, it must've been like three in the morning or something like this. I wake up and I see that there's light around the door for our bathroom in our bedroom. So I'm like, oh, my wife's in, she's in the bathroom, right? So I turn around, I'm tossing and turning and I'm not sure, Joel, like I don't remember if I actually fell asleep or if it was just me really trying really hard to fall asleep, but there was a lapse of time that happened, good solid hour, hour and a half maybe. And Carla was still not out. I'm like, something's going on, right? So I get up and I opened the door to the bathroom. She's sitting on the toilet. She's not doing anything. She's just sitting on there with my cell phone on her hand, bawling, crying her eyes out. Turns out that that night she had a dream. She said it was a very different type of dream. Colors were vivid and that I had like a letter in my hand and I gave it to her. And as soon as I put it into her hand, when she opened her hand, it wasn't a letter. It was some intimate clothing and scared her, woke up because this freaked her out. And she knew that something wasn't right. And she didn't know what it was, but she said that the first thing she saw was my phone. So she's like, okay, I'm gonna grab this. She went into the bathroom and she started digging through my phone. And I thought I had deleted everything that needed to be deleted, but God had answered my prayer in a way, right? And so now as crappy as I feel because I've been a coward, but now we can bring it out in the open, right? So confess everything to my wife. My dad was living with us at that time because he had just moved from California. He hadn't gotten his own place. So I wake up my dad in the morning and so confess to him what's going on. And that week I called my pastor and told them what's going on. And I was serving in the church, like in the ministry. So I told the pastor that I also felt like I needed to confess to the church what had been going on. So I did. And yeah, that was the end to my ministry there at church because of my convictions too of what we can find in scripture that qualifies someone that is trying to lead a church. But yeah, all that mess came from being a coward. And also remembered this, you ever heard of Jim Rohn, the personal development guy? I don't know if you're into that kind of stuff, but. No. Like Tony Robbins or something? Yeah, so actually I think he was one of his mentors. And he used to say something like, simple stuff, like things are not gonna change until you start changing, right? Until you change. So I decided that I was gonna be the opposite of everything that I had been that had led me to the hole that I had found myself into, right? And again, I remember scripture. I mean, God tells Joshua, right, when he's going into the promised land, take courage and be brave, right? So those words are for us too because the path that he's calling us to, to get to the promised land is gonna require for us to be brave, right? It's not gonna be easy. God promises to Joshua, he says, I'll be there, but you gotta also do your part, right? So I feel like God does the hardest part and he's leaving us the easiest part, but we gotta come through with our part, right? Yeah. And so around that time too, sorry, dude, I'm kind of a big reader. So Tim Ferriss, he had put out a book called the Tools of Titans. And I had seen it in the story, it looked fat and huge. Dude, I don't know if I could go through that. So I got it in the audio book and it was good. It was really good. And basically in that book, he's interviewing a bunch of people because he hit his forties not knowing what he was gonna do in his forties. He had all this success in his thirties, nothing planned for the forties, but now he's kind of like in this life crisis, right? Like, what am I gonna do? So he just gets to all the decks of people that he knows and sends them 15 questions. And one of them was, what is something that you're doing right now that you think you're gonna be doing for the rest of your life, right? And I feel like these numbers are not exact and they're not probably true, but this is how I felt kind of, I explained it, where I felt like half of the people in the book said that one thing was therapy, that they were doing therapy and they were gonna do it for the rest of their life. And I think maybe even 50% of the people that therapy was the thing that they were doing that they were gonna do for the rest of their life, they didn't even need it. They just did it because a friend told them that it was a good thing to do and they started it and it was so great that they were just gonna do it for the rest of their life. And this reminded me of Matthew 19. Matthew 19, the Lord is talking to the Pharisees and I don't remember the exact verse, it might be 15, somewhere on there. He says that from the heart comes adultery, robberies, murders, lies, like everything good and everything bad comes from the heart. Whatever you find in the heart, that's where we're gonna produce, right? So I wasn't in a good place. I was reaping what I had sowed, but it wasn't good. So I remembered God's, Jesus' words were that I need to start looking to my heart. And I remember this book. book and half of the people were doing therapy and stuff and I'm like, okay, I need to start digging in the heart. And I didn't know how so I was like, therapy is the way to go. I prayed. Somehow, I was going to say coincidentally, but really God sent. I hooked up with a Christian therapist who really helped me explore what was in my heart. And ever since I've been trying to figure out how does someone that grew up in church knows quite a bit of Bible because I'm a pastor's kid and I was teaching scripture. How does somebody like that end up in such an ugly hole? It's a number of things, but being a coward is definitely one. And one way that we can easily fix that is by just asking a question. Coming to a friend and asking a question. Doesn't it have to start with like full confession? Like just start asking questions. From something that you said at the start, you said that you were, this is a little, rewinding a little bit from this episode. You mentioned that there's one part of your life where you were saturated in scripture, you were serving, you were praising the Lord, you were discipling others and kind of doing what God called you to do. And it was like you never had an addiction to pornography. It never crossed your mind while you were in that place. And it's interesting because on the outside of you, I guess, falling back into the addiction of pornography, you had mastered how to look the same. Nobody could tell that you still looked like you were serving in church. You looked like you were praying. You looked like you were worshiping. You looked like you were in the word of God. And every time that you actually did those things, it created a confrontation in your spirit. And you had mastered the facade of being able to look like a Christian, but not be a Christian. I love how it's one of those things where eventually God sort of boxes you in because He reads our heart. No matter what we look like, He reads our heart. And I don't know, it's just one of those amazing things that just for anybody listening, I've been there as well when it comes to putting on the facade of being a Christian. I know how to act like a Christian. I can speak Christianese well enough with Bible quotes and things like that. And when the pastor calls you up, you know what to say and things like that. And I think it's just important for all of us to realize how important it is to disciple one another, to be open with one another, to confess our sins to one another, and to be real with one another. Because we live in this world, and I look at Instagram or Facebook where you take these snapshots of the best parts of your life, and that's only what people see. And you get really good at pretending to look like that. And you get really good to pretend to look like that spiritually as well. And you can almost trick yourself into thinking that you are like that until you go to church, and then everyone's worshipping, and you're like, I feel like a hypocrite. I feel like I shouldn't be here. And I just find that amazing that, I think it's, have you ever read the Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis? No. I mean, I've heard of them, and I know what they're about. That's very good. So it's about these demons' perspective towards us, and it's written from their perspective. And one of the things, so demons are giving each other advice on how to sort of be the most productive in darkness to make sure that we're distracted and that we don't become a Christian, things like that. But one of the things that they say is with your, they call them our patients, but with Christians, when you are talking to them or when you are tempting them, make sure that they stay, that they're miserable, but they don't hit rock bottom. Because if they hit rock bottom, they will fall to their knees, and they'll cry out to God. So you want to keep them just above that, so they're just miserable. They're not too miserable to cry out to God, but they're not sort of happy enough to want to run after God either. And I found that really impactful in my life, you know, that a lot of the time, sometimes God, it's not in His will, but He allows us to hit rock bottom, because He knows how good that's going to be for us. And it's actually the devil that stops it. Like, how crazy is that thought? Yeah, it is crazy. I mean, because that's precisely where I felt lingering, and I wish I could just disappear, man, during that time. And hitting rock bottom is the hardest thing that I've gone through. Like, your rock bottom was when you saw your wife on, like, finding your phone. You're like, everything's shattered. But before then, you were just miserable. You knew that you're a hypocrite. You knew that you should be praying more and seeking the Lord more, and you're looking at other women, and you knew that. But you were just on that miserable level, and God allowed you to hit that rock bottom, knowing that this is actually what's going to change him. He's not going to change by climbing his way out from where he is. He needs to go face first onto the ground so that he can essentially fall on his face and worship God properly, rather than lifting your hands hypocritically every week on Sunday. Yeah, so the way that I explain it, Joe, is that when I hit rock bottom, I had two options. Either I died spiritually, where I just... Gave up. Yeah, gave up and just dig myself even further. Or I wake up, right? But when you wake up, baptism for me happened through the water, happened years ago, right? But spiritually, I don't know if it happened at the same time, right? Because I'll tell you right now, that Hezron from over two years now, that Hezron doesn't exist. And it had to happen. If not sin, like Scripture says, God said it to Cain, is just waiting at the door just lingering. It's constantly there. And this is the dangerous part, is that if every listener who has time in walking with the Lord would just pay attention to their lives, there are times where we're on fire for the Lord, man. I mean, we're praying, we're worshiping, we're serving, we're doing a bunch of things. We're in Scripture constantly. Like this feels good. Everybody feels good. But before you know it, before you know it, something happened, you don't even know how it happened. But all of a sudden, you're not reading Scripture the same. You're not praying the same. All of a sudden, you're making excuses why you can't serve. Before you know it, you're in a kind of a dark place. I don't want to call it fully dark, but it's not your best spiritually, right? And we go through these motions, right? The problem is that we're not always paying attention to where we're at in this roller coaster, right? And we should prepare ourselves a little bit more to know how to deal with it, right? Because all God is waiting for is a cry, sincere one, right? He just wants it to be heartfelt, and He could work with that. He could work with an open heart, right? But if it's a doubting heart, you know, when there's doubt, our faith is tumbling, you know? And so we need to be a little bit more aware of where we're at, because when we hit those lows, we're all going to hit them at one point. The thing is, what are we going to do? Are we going to come to the Lord and know also that our faith community is there to support us, too? Yeah. Right? Somebody said something like, you know, the person that worries suffers twice, because the first time is suffering before when they're imagining stuff, and then the second time when a bad thing actually happens, right? And a lot of times what we tell ourselves that other people are going to think about us when we come open ourselves up, it's not true, you know? Most of our faith community is probably going to be open to talking to us. I mean, we might not be prepared to hear what they have to say, right? But that doesn't mean that it's not what we need. And especially if we're trusting God that He's working through His church, we got to trust that He's going to send us the word that we need, you know? And that's been true in my life. Yeah, so, I mean, thank God, like I said, over two years now, me and Carla are still together. She chose to give me another chance and another opportunity. And it hasn't been easy. You know, we did, I did therapy by myself every single week for a whole year, and just really diving into, like, knowing everything about me. So, as far as, like, these, I don't know if you've done any, like, personality tests, there's this one called an Enneagram, which is pretty interesting. Like, I have yet to find it fail. But basically, one of the strong, my strongest personality is I'm a people pleaser. That just added to everything that was going on before and why I couldn't come out, and why I walked the way that I did and spoke the way that I did and dressed the way that I did, because I wanted people to think that, hey, he's a good guy, you know? He's one of the good ones, right? So, that's why when Carla said that I didn't get mad, I mean, it struck my ego, and like, she didn't even know what she did, you know? Because, again, I wanted not just to be that for her, but now to others in our faith community, hey, he's the husband that doesn't get mad, you know? And so, how does that work for me, and how does it work against me, is something that I really needed to understand. And, yeah, like, part of the reason why I wanted to come on here with you, Joel, on your show, where you, and thank you for doing this, you know? Because you give voice to people who share stories that need to be heard by somebody else, right? Part of it was that when I came out to the church, we didn't get a phone call from anybody, not a phone call to see how my wife is doing, not the phone calls to see how the kids are doing, you know? I came out with my sin because I needed to, right? But I didn't know that in such a conservative church, like, the doors were just going to be shut behind us, you know? And it sucked feeling like I was alone, even if it wasn't for too long, because, to be honest, I never felt God's presence for not in a long time, like I did after that. Because it seems like, you know, he did the little push of, like, okay, you're not going to tell your wife, well, here, let me tell her. But now, I did the confession to everybody else that I needed to, you know? As a matter of fact, one of the reasons why I share it with you is because something that I would never do before, you know, be this open about all of this. Because I would freak out about how are you going to see me? You might not like me, you know? Maybe we could be friends if we were to be close or whatever. All this stuff, right? All the people that are going to listen, like, oh my goodness, right? What are they going to think of me and my family, blah, blah, blah. Now, I'm 100% secure in the Lord. I'm his child, right? He's shown me his love. He's shown me his mercy. My wife is a testimony in my life, in my presence, that he loves me, that he has mercy. That's why I was wearing the hat because it says mercy. And that's the only identity that I need, you know? But it felt very lonely from your faith community, from those who you thought that they were going to be there somehow, whatever. Even today, like two years later, the reason why I'm there still, Joel, to be honest, is I don't want to have been such a coward for such a long time. I didn't want to run away from any of the consequences that my sin was going to produce. The consequences are still present, you know? What we don't need is people, especially if they call themselves Christians, coming and executing their own punishment on you, right? Trust me, the consequences of our own sin are punishment enough, right? Because we still have to deal with that. Yeah, I mean, that's why I'm here because I want to let people know that if they're in a hole, that they've created themselves, whatever led them there, right? God is just an arm's reach away to get you out of there. But we got to do the reaching now, right? His arm's extended, and it says it all through Scripture, right? With an arm extended, He delivered His people. He's always delivered His people that way. His arm is always extended. It's us that need to reach out. And it's painful. It sucks. But with the Lord, I mean, everything's bearable, right? And He teaches you so much through this that you're going to be way better at the other end. You just got to believe. You got to trust. So, you know, Scripture talks about faith, and we all talk about faith. And this concept of faith is really a tricky one because many people say that they believe, right? But the one verse that pops into my mind is James 2, 19, where it says that even demons believe, right? And they tremble before His presence. Sometimes we don't do that, right? We don't have that type of reverence. But I mean, they were angels. They were around Him. They know who He is, how He is, right? More than we do. So, obviously, they believe. So, what's the difference? The difference was that they trusted the wrong person, right? Doesn't mean that they don't believe God exists. They believe He exists. Just where's our trust? And the moment that we start trusting God and believing His Word, things start changing, you know? And I like to think that we can be the biggest miracle in our life the way that God can transform us. So good. Yeah. We just have to trust in the process. That's so good. Here's Ron. I've got a couple of questions kind of before we wrap things up. And they're definitely for our listeners that they feel trapped. They feel like they won't be able to get out of this addiction that they've got. What is the first step, the first step to take after listening to this episode? I want to get out of porn. I don't want to be a hypocrite. What's my first step? I believe it's following Proverbs 20, 13, where we got to confess, and then we got to start looking our way out, right? In the Hebrew, it basically says to get on another path, right? To leave the path that you're on. And if we remember, I think, I don't remember the exact word in Hebrew. It starts with the T. But the word for repentance in Hebrew, the definition is also to return to God's path. I feel like Proverbs is telling us is that we need to confess, and then we got to repent. And by repenting is changing the path that we're on, right? And sometimes we think that it has to be overnight, right? Where, why can't this be gone tomorrow? Probably not, right? Unless you go through something that I went through, which I don't wish on anybody, right? But if you're not there yet, and God willing, you don't get there, it's as easy as starting new habits that get you away from that habit, right? And one of them, so one of them is confession. The reason why confession is so important is because we bring it to light, right? Like you said it, I think it was in the prayer, Joe, that you did with us before we started the podcast, that we're called to be part of the light. That means that we shouldn't be keeping anything in darkness, right? So we bring it to light, God is light, Jesus is light, we expose it, right? And then He empowers us to start making the changes. And one of the things that, the other thing is becoming aware of what's triggering the bad habit. So in other words, for me in the beginning, it was difficult situations, situations that got me anxious, and yeah, just anxious, right? I didn't know how to deal with, that was my escape route, you know? And like I said later, it even got to the point where I was bored, right? So knowing what's causing it is super key, so that you can then know how to deal with it. So I'm in a situation that's making me anxious, right? Before I used to deal with it with porn, now I plan for a better, healthier way to overcome this. One, confronting the situation, which was really hard for me before, now I'm getting better at it. Two, in the beginning for me, it was a physical thing, so I did CrossFit for two years, and physical motion, you know, activity, it's a really good way for our system to be able to also simmer down a little bit and let some of that anxiety out. We get some of that dopamine too with exercise, right? Which we get from these type of addictions, so there's a really big benefit in being able to look for some sort of activity that we enjoy. Wow, that's awesome. I like how you've not just let, you know, sometimes when we ask these questions, you know, what can we do to help it? They just say, run to God, but you've actually given us some practical things. This is what we can actually do to get started. So I really like that, and I'm not saying running to God's not in there. Absolutely do that. That should be on a daily basis. Amen, yeah, so good. Awesome. And the next thing is for our listeners that might have a partner or a spouse that has gone through, I guess, a confession, or that they, even they know that their partner or spouse does this, but they haven't confronted them, or that they know that that person will never admit it, or whatever it is. What are some things that you can do as a spouse to help, you know, steer your loved one in the right direction without creating a big fight or anything like that? Oh man, that's so hard. It's a really hard question. Yeah, yeah, it's hard, you know, from a male's perspective, it's really hard because, well, sorry, from a female's perspective, it's really hard, because naturally we just function very differently, right? Like a car, like we see a car, like a Lamborghini, or one of these fancy super, super cars, or whatever, we could literally, as men, we could start drooling over a piece of metal, right? Women, they can't even fathom how that happens, right? Because they're like, they're more in tune with their emotional side. We're very in tune with the physical side. So it's really hard for them to be able to understand. So one thing I would like for the wives to understand is that there's nothing wrong with you. You are still a super hot mama to us. We still think you're beautiful. It's just a really bad problem that men have. It's crazy because now I think the statistics are going up for women, and the porn industry is also gearing things towards women to get them trapped into this cycle too. But theirs would be like on an emotional start, and men is more like on a physical eyesight kind of start. So different ways of getting the men, right? So it has nothing to do with emotions as far as, like the affair that I had was not emotional, right? It was all physical. It was all physical and to feed my ego. And you never didn't love your wife. You always loved her the whole time. It was an addiction. Or I felt like I did, or I felt like I did. I wasn't showing it, obviously, but that just because there was some maturing that needed to happen and me to be able to confront and speak to her in a healthy way, right? So one is understanding there's nothing wrong with you. And yes, your spouse has a problem, but there's nothing wrong with your husband. So let's not also get on a judge seat and come from that aspect because then you're probably just going to lose him. If he's a believer, he's already feeling really bad about what he's doing, right? He just needs someone to come and understand that sometimes we get ourselves into really bad positions and places and that you're willing to support him to get out, right? And one of the best ways is, honestly, I believe is, so I didn't tell you this, but I'm a life coach because I wanted to keep serving in some sort of way. And I feel like this is one way because it's one thing to have a coach that's never lived it and it's another thing to be able to walk with someone that has gone through the trenches, you know, and that knows what's going on, but to get some help. And whether that's therapy, whether, you know, there's some really cool programs. I don't know if they have them in New Zealand, like there's a lot of churches over here have a Recover, I think it's called, or I think that's the name of the program, but they offer it as, you know, as a program, para-church program. And it's kind of like a 12-step for different things, not just alcohol or drugs or porn, you know, it could be anger issues and all sorts of things. But seeking help, yeah. Man, so good, so good. Here's Rowan, what an awesome journey that you've gone on and I love how God has used your testimony to shape you into a certain person and that you're keeping those skills of being able to be a life coach, being able to continue to disciple people and how open you've been for other men, other women, whoever's listening really need people to be open and confident and knowing that this is where I was and it was nasty, it wasn't good, but this is where I am now and the reason is God. And that's, it's an important, I find that there can be two reactions to, or two responses to having, to being in trouble. And one is, I'm going to I run from my father, the heavenly father, and the other one is I'm going to run to my father. And I'm so afraid and I'm so in trouble and I need my heavenly father. And I love how that's your story. You've been running from him in different aspects, but when push comes to shove, you ran to him like the prodigal son. And I just love that. So yeah, thank you so much for coming on the show. And yeah, hopefully you listeners really enjoyed this episode. I did. It's one that we definitely need to be more open about. And I encourage you all to make sure that you seek discipleship in this area. Seek somebody who's wise, somebody who has your back and will love you unconditionally regardless on how open you're going to be, because that's what we need. So thank you for listening to this episode of The Jesus Magnet. Thanks for listening to this episode of The Jesus Magnet podcast. If you enjoyed this, make sure that you connect with us. Find us on Facebook, on Instagram, and if you want to support us, be a member of our coffee club, Jesus Magnet Coffee Club. See you next time on The Jesus Magnet.