It looks like I have it easy. I have a good family, have plenty of money, I go to church every week, I have good friends. But they don’t know what is really going on inside me. My life took a wrong turn A long time ago when I first decided to look up something bad on the internet.
It was third grade and the teachers left me in her class room alone to heat up my corndog while the rest of the class went to lunch. I saw her computer siting open and seized the opportunity. I googled “boob”. I saw pictures and I liked it and I knew it was wrong. Next I did it at home. Then when I got my first ipod I could do it almost anywhere. I was looking at all kinds of porn. Then as if the lust wasn’t enough I discovered masturbation. Wanna guess how? Watching a porn video. So now I could feel like I was having sex with the girlss in the videos. All the while, knowing all this was wrong, I continued to do it. Sometimes I would look up things about guys naked because I wanted to see if I was growing normally. This was not a good decision. Eventually I got bored with the porn and wanted more. I’ve learned that even sin gets bored and look for ways to become more exciting. I remembered looking up the guys and figured I could look up guys masturbating videos so I could learn some more exciting methods. Another bad Idea. This led to more of a porn addiction and morphed into something even worse: a gay porn addiction. Every day when I got home from school I would go “take a shower” and masturbate watching videos on my iPod until I got a phone and used it. I loved it until it was over and then I would cry and pray and ask forgiveness. But what would I do the next day? Do it all over again. To gay porn, because the straight porn was old hat. Soon I started looking at guys in a sexual way even some of my friends. I hated it so much but I knew I’d done it to myself. By the time I turned fifteen i had enough but by this time, an addiction is and addiction and you can’t just stop. I really repented on December 10th 2014. It lasted a week before I lost track of the praying and reading and everything and was back to my old self. Then late January I had enough. After the nights shower I went to bed and closed the door and started my usual forgive me prayer. It went on for hours of crying and listening to gospel music and reading psalms until I just started yelling at god. I hated him for letting me get this way. For leaving me alone through these struggles. For not answering me after I pray sometimes until the early morning hours. I told him I wished he’d kill me so I could go to hell because I thought even hell would be better than what I was going through on earth. I had to put on my mask every morning and looking like the perfect Christian kid even though I was private about my faith because I hadn’t been baptized. But I still didn’t feel god. I didn’t think he was there. I was shaking with anger. I said some terrible things to god and finally I just told him I was going to sleep, it was past midnight by now, and that if he really cared about me he wouldn’t make me wake up. I told him to kill me and send me to hell. I tried to sleep but I couldn’t. I started feeling bad for what id done. I still hadn’t gotten any answers but i had moved past the anger and was now just sad and guilty. I sat up in my bed and just cried until I looked onto my nightstand and saw my bible sitting there. I don’t know why but I grabbed it and just flipped to random pages and something caught my eye. For some reason it opened to job 40. In previous chapters job had been angry at god similarly to the way I was and what Caught my eye was gods response. ” I am the LORD All-Powerful, but you have argued that I am wrong. Now you must answer me.” Here I had just screamed at God for not answering me and not being with me. And here he goes, giving me an answer. And harsh one at that. I just broke down crying and continued reading and thanking him and apologizing. I loved God more right then than any moment in my entire life. I stayed awake for almost another hour reading, and praying, and studying. I ended up meditating on Jeremiah 29:13- “you will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” I was struggling to find God and being angry at him because I couldn’t and he says “listen to me and answer me now” and when I do he tells me to “seek him with all my heart”. That sounds great but how do I do that. Then I figured, you can’t seek God with all your heart if your heart is stained with sin and lusts. I needed to purify my heart to find God. I ended going to sleep peacefully that night. One of the worst nights of my life, turned into the greatest by the grace of God.
I wish I could say I’ve been a great Christian ever since but I’m still trying to break my addiction and still on my journey to purify my heart. But now I know even at my lowest points, even if I can’t feel him, God is always there.
Tyler
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