Jon’s Story
Written by Jon
I really like the way Dr. Dan Allender of The Allender Center in Seattle, Washington, emphasizes each person’s story: how valuable and therapeutic each person’s story is and how we each want desperately for someone to hear and validate “our story.”
The more amazing revelation in our stories is how God in his grace is continually intersecting with them until we finally surrender our demand to be in charge, and allow him to redeem and heal it, forever changing its trajectory.
The more amazing revelation in our stories is how God in his grace is continually intersecting with them until we finally surrender our demand to be in charge, and allow him to redeem and heal it, forever changing its trajectory.
My theology professor in college, Dr. Dan Pecota, used to always remind us, “It is God who initiates and we can only respond.” Because of this, our story is one of God unrelentingly and lovingly initiating grace into our lives and the tragedy and triumph of our responses to Him.
Our story is mostly about my struggles with a sexual medication lifestyle (addiction) and God’s grace, mercy, forgiveness and love being repeatedly poured out through Julie, my wife. She—in her typical insightful way—has said, “When God made Jon, He knew he was going to have a very hard time of it, and so He asked himself, ‘What gift can I give my son to help him through it?’ and so He gave me to you.” This has been very true.
My story is one of a very serious, devout Christian kid/young man/adult who always wanted to serve God, live a “good Christian life” and dreamed of “changing the world for Jesus”—if only he could get rid of a “small little problem” with sexual misbehavior.
…if only he could get rid of a “small little problem” with sexual misbehavior.
I dedicated my life to Christ, went forward for an altar call and was baptized at the age of 7. I attended a Christian school, a Spirit-filled church and received the baptism in the Holy Spirit at the age of 13. I wanted to be a missionary, went on several missions trips, led people to Christ and eventually went to Bible College and entered the ministry as a pastor. However, as many of you can relate to, underneath it all was a wounded heart, a distorted view of God and a secret method of medicating the wound that doomed that life path to failure, disgrace and shame.
A young man asked me the other day, “I understand the addiction and I understand the wound…but how did the two get connected?” A great question. For we are all wounded in one way or another and we are each offered and eventually select our own personal choice of medication, compensation, denial or healing for that wound.
I understand the addiction and I understand the wound, but how did the two get connected?
My wound, which is so similar to many of yours, was infused with a message that said, “You are unworthy. You are not good enough. No one really wants you. You are not enough.” Those messages, combined with a distorted view of God, which believed He only really loved me because He had to (the part about “loved the whole world” and everything), poisoned my identity.
I believed I was pretty much on my own, needing to find Him, draw him out, make him notice me and somehow convince him to like me. If He was choosing up teams, He would only select me because I was the last one left. I sometimes wonder if I thought entering pastoral ministry was my ultimate career enhancement because then He would have to like me, seeing all my good effort.
Early in my life I was convinced sex and sexual behavior (even kissing) was bad, even wanting it was bad. It was something guys always wanted but girls (not wanting it) gave grudgingly to get what they really wanted. The terrible twin epiphanies came in college when I discovered that some girls like being sexual and worse, I felt powerful and desired when they would interact with me sexually. And there you have it, the wound finds its medication and the life-long search for it and the addiction that results takes on a life of its own.
Like many of you, I thought marriage would solve everything. But as you also well know, it didn’t—only working to drive it deeper underground into secret, powerful, shameful, destructive pathways. We must have our drug.
I thought marriage would solve everything.
Julie also discovered that my behavior modeled with her prior to marriage wasn’t satiated after our marriage, which led me to several tearful, well-intended confessions, after repeated, ever-deepening occasions of unfaithfulness. Eventually, the secret became public, requiring the official ministerial discipline, revocation of my license and ordination and the loss of our ministry.
After relocation from Washington to Idaho, I would go long stretches without acting out. Not due to my ability to live in victory, but instead totally due to the mercy and intervention of God—thwarting any of my attempts to find willing partners. It was during this time that pornography stepped in to fill the gap. Long weeks traveling for work and boring hours waiting in the airport helped cultivate this new avenue of medication. There were years of feeling victorious and living a fairly sober life, during which times we were volunteers in ministry at our church and even tried to help other couples with their marriages. But I wasn’t free.
The Scripture says that after Satan left Jesus from tempting Him in the wilderness, “He left Him until an opportune time” (Luke 4:13). As much as God is patient and unrelenting in His love for us, our enemy is unrelenting in his hatred for us, waiting for that “opportune time” to reopen the unhealed wounds and spread his poison in our hearts again.
…our enemy is unrelenting in his hatred for us, waiting for that “opportune time” to reopen the unhealed wounds and spread his poison in our hearts again.
At that moment, we once again reach for the medication offered us. I found myself once again in the pit of despair and blackness created by my unfaithfulness. Only this time I felt there was no hope for me, and I turned my heart away from God and my wife. I could not confess again. I could not admit again, after all these years, after all the confessions and forgiveness before. I could not face my wife again. I knew that if I confessed and she knew what I had done she would leave me. I gave up on any hope of restoration and turned inward into emptiness. Everything was burned over; there was nothing left.
However, Julie knew something was wrong and would not let it go. There were many nights of tears where she begged me to open up to her, but I would not. Then one night, after many months of this, I said to myself, “Why not tell her? It doesn’t matter. It’s over. She’s going to leave you anyway,” and I confessed everything to her. There were events from the past that I had kept secret from her that had to be uncovered as well. It was a long, hard night. Julie was non-emotional as I confirmed what she had already sensed in her heart. I had confessed but was unrepentant.
Then a miracle happened…
Julie did not leave me but loved me. The enemy had convinced me that if she knew the truth about me, she would see me for the monster I knew I was and would despise me the way I despised myself and would crush me, sending me away. I would be empty and alone, like a burned-over forest after a terrible fire. However, God initiated and I responded by opening up to Julie. I saw the love of God for the first time in my life in the eyes of my wife. She knew all and still loved me. I saw the forgiveness of God in my life in the arms of my wife.
I saw the love of God for the first time in my life in the eyes of my wife.
A few days after the original confession, I repented and asked Julie to forgive me and my view of the entire world changed. In a very dramatic way, all that had been gray and dismal became alive and full of color. The sky was bluer, the hills greener and I was alive again. It is hard to describe the actual change that occurs in the physical when the spiritual is resurrected, but it is real and dramatic. You don’t know just how dark your heart has become until you step back into the light, and my heart had been very dark and dead. But now, where there had only been burned over ashes of what had been my life, there sprouted a green stem of God’s resurrection goodness, new life—Regeneration Life.
You don’t know just how dark your heart has become until you step back into the light.
That is what the photo on our homepage depicts. Where we see only death and destruction, God in his goodness and mercy brings new life, a little green sprout of hope.
Since then, I have been on a journey of rediscovering God, not made in my own distorted image, but for who he really is, the lover of my soul. I love the line from the movie The Shack when Papa (God) admits that He is extremely fond of all of us. God is “extremely fond of me.” What a wonderful discovery.
God is “extremely fond of me.”
I am also on a journey of allowing God to take me back into my wounds and to heal me, setting me free. I am no longer having to “white knuckle” my way through life. For when we allow Jesus into our woundedness and allow him to heal us, we no longer have to medicate, compensate or hide. We can be free, “Free Indeed.” I see so much more clearly now what Jesus had been inviting me into all along, but I had been refusing. I had wanted God to build me a stronger cage, but He wanted to set me free. I invite you to listen to my sermon on “surrender” (coming soon) in the sermon section of our website to hear more about it.
Finally, as God continues to initiate, Julie and I respond, making ourselves available to anybody He brings to us to share our story and the message of hope He has given us.
“…for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.”
— Philippians 2:13