I've been thinking quite a bit lately about writing a book. If feels presumptuous at this point in my life to think that I have something of meaning to say to others, but then again, I know that God has been using my story to help others along the way and there seems to be some clarity of direction for what I would like to write.
A huge part of my coming to God story has been directly tied my struggle with pornography. I would not be a pastor or at the church that I am at today if this area of my life had not spun wildly out of control at a point in my life when I had no where to turn but to the church which was the last place I wanted to go because of my wounds from the church in the past. (I am sure that was a run on but give me a break...I'm new to this whole writing process thing.) This was the first time I met my pastor and good friend Nathan Edwardson on a personal basis. When we met I came in feeling like the elephant in the room wasn't in the corner of the room, it was sitting on my chest, and the wind was knocked out of me. The feelings of guilt, shame, and anger were nearly overwhelming. I had dreading coming to this meeting and anticipated that this man was going to harpoon me for my sin. That was all I had known from the church. You didn't talk about your struggles becasue it was not safe. Plain and simple. If you talked about your struggles, your hurts and hang ups you were put onto the "prayer chain" where everyone then knew about your crap and then kept the women and children away from you because you were dirty or now untrustworthy.
What I found in this man sitting across the table from me caught me off guard and set me on the path back towards God. It is unclear now, years later if this was a conscious effort by Nathan to be really understanding and loving or if God was just totally speaking to me through him at the moment. Probably both. Either way, for the first time in my young life I felt I had actually exposed an area of my life that was out of control to a man who was a few years older than I and I experienced embrace instead of judgement. This changed my life. Maybe this had happened before this point in my life but if it did happen I can't remember when. I am pretty sure I did not have a complete thought until I was like 27 so it very well could have happened before that, but I just wasn't aware of it. The point is that it happened and that I was aware of it.
If I ever actually complete this book, which I intend to do. My desire is to see men become who they are called to be. The topic of pornography and lust is an area that has been taboo to talk about for most christians and has been kept on the periphery of acceptable talk for as long as I can remember. It has been like the "don't ask, don't tell" issue of the church. We all know the problem is epidemic but it seems that most of us are completely unprepared and unable to talk about it. I think this is because as Parents, Pastors, and Youth Workers we have never had this conversation modeled for us. Where do we even start when a young person or even a man come to us to risk sharing that they are addicted to pornography. We have no idea. We have never actually had this taboo conversation ourselves and so we do what everyone does when we don't know what to do....we allow fear and reactive behavior to take over. In our fear of this evil sin we drop into the punitive mindset that we will ground this behaviour out of you. Meanwhile we miss the heart.
I have more but this is a bit of an intro. If this is interesting to you will you please give me some feed back so that I can get better as a writer or so that I can answer any questions you have...I plan on posting sections of what I am writing as I go, so feedback is welcome.
2 comments:
Aaron, I think it takes a lot of courage to come out and write what you wrote and willing to share and expose yourself. Healing happens when we allow God to enter our lives and listen to Him...(I think someone I respect and honor told me that when things got exposed in my life). But each one of our "stories" will help someone come closer to the Lord and be captured by His Love...Keep writing and sharing. I love you my brother.
Because you share your brokeness, your weakness others will see that they also can go to God and let Him love on them even in the midst of their deepest, ugliest thought. It amazes me how He actually wants to go there with us. He wants us to look at our sin together. He wants to show us how He feels about it and how He feels about us. He'll show us why we did such horrible, unthoughful things and speak such kind words to use. I love how He loves us and hates our sin. I love how we can cry out to Him in our pain of shame and guilt, unable to quit ourselves. But He is our help and will always pull us out. In our weakness He is strong and the weakest man who cries out to God is a godly man. And the leader that pours out his heart, even the failures current and past has the greatest influence to encourage others to pour out their heart. You got it bro. And He's got you covered.
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