I grew up in a family that loved God the best way they saw how to. At a young age, I sang in worship teams, led youth group devotions and got into some preaching as I got older in the missionary field. But my life was also full of sexual sin. It began after an incestual sexual awakening at age 6 and continued at age 9 when I developed a secret addiction to pornography and self-gratification. This progressed into a secret life of soliciting prostitutes at age 22 while I was still trying to “serve God” in some manner within church.

Going further into sin then I ever thought I would go as a “Christian”, I began having suicidal thoughts that scared me enough to finally seek out help. I found PLM through a family member who had read At the Altar of Sexual Idolatry by Pastor Steve Gallagher. I came to the Residential Program in February of 2022.

I went into the program with no knowledge of what repentance was or looked like in a person’s life. I had no discipline in my life. I did whatever I wanted to make me feel good. After my first Sunday chapel service, I was sitting with this heavy sense of anger and couldn’t get rid of it. As I was sitting, the Lord showed me a vision of my face that was completely covered with this thick, grotesque callous. The Holy Spirit began to reveal that this is what my pride looked like to Him. God was opposing me in my pride and rebellion against Him right there in the chapel. Not knowing what to do with this confrontation, I went to the cross out on the ridge and started to surrender desires and repent for things that I knew were idols in my heart.

During my second month in the program, I was sitting on the ridge on a clear starry, moonlit night, and I remember looking up at the sky with this immense yet gentle sense that God truly loved me. He opened my understanding to know that I didn’t have to DO anything to be loved by God, He loved me because He loved me. I spent the rest of my program learning what it meant to do mercy for others through prayer and deed, and learning to submit to spiritual authority.

Since then, I have been learning to apply what I was shown in the program as I was led to stay in Kentucky and do life with a group of guys and a church body in Dry Ridge for the past 3+ years. It hasn’t been a perfect walk of purity since the program but my love for Jesus has grown and He’s grown my willingness to lay down my will and desires to see His will fulfilled and how that is the best thing for everyone, me included.