And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast.
[1 Peter 5:10]
Joey Kibble from Take 6 shares how his parents’ divorce allowed the devil to tempt him with pornography. His pornography addiction manifested into his marriage and while touring with Take 6. 1 Peter 5:10 showed him that he could only overcome his addiction with God.
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You know, it’s kind of crazy growing up in a pastoral family. I was heavily impacted I guess when our parents divorced. For a pastor’s family to divorce is an absolute no-no, and so a lot of things got planted into my life personally during that time, that dark period in our lives. One of things that I guess a lot of men might struggle with is pornography, and that’s when that seed was planted into my life personally. I think when my parents divorced, the enemy kind of used that to say, “You won’t do anything greater than what happened to them. They’re human and you’re human, and don’t think that you’re going to overcome this.”
Well, it’s interesting to me that a lot of those seeds didn’t actually explode above the surface until I got into Take 6, and I realized that’s when the whole pornography thing just really exploded in my life. You know, traveling on the road and going back to hotels and not really being accountable to anybody, it’s almost like bacteria that grows in those little corners in places, and that’s how it grew in my life, and I remember starting to feel, “Man, I’m not going to overcome this. This is pretty deeply rooted.”
But another thing that happened was I got married, and I prayed and prayed, “God, don’t let me drag this thing into my marriage.” But, you know, those kind of sins are going to follow you wherever you go, no matter how much you try to put a stop to it, until you turn it over to Jesus Christ. I think when I got into my marriage I started seeing a lot of my fears manifesting themselves. You know, that this marriage is not going to make it, either because I’m not any better than my parents.
And one time when I was just out on the floor just bawling, I was flipping to a chapter when I got up and just flippantly flipping through the chapter, and it was 1 Peter 5:10, and he said to me specifically about my marriage, it basically says, “The God of all grace, after you have suffered for awhile, he’ll establish you, perfect you, strengthen you.”
Four things. And immediately the enemy came in, “That doesn’t apply to you. That’s not even talking about marriage. How can you sit there and think that”–he just nailed me, and kept trying to nail me, and God was like “I’m giving you this promise.” And from that point on I literally had to believe what God said in spite of how I felt, because my depressive side always told me through my feeling, “You’re not going to overcome this. You can’t deal with this, you can’t overcome.”
But God doesn’t work in the realm of feeling. Faith always steps outside of the realm of feeling, and belief is always outside of feeling. So if you really believe that, you can know that he says this and however he decides to work it out, I go to bed every night knowing for a fact, He told me it’s going to be established, perfected, strengthened, settled. I’m going to suffer for awhile. He’s already told me I’m going to make it through. Now I’ve got to believe that thing.
December 3rd, 2007 at 3:30 pm
Joey, thanks for sharing so vulnerably. I think that took a lot of guts!
It’s getting easier for me to talk about my sexuality (as my shame melts away) — but it’s still hard! Your vulnerability inspires me.
Blessings to you as you continue to grow healthier sexually. And may your story inspire other people to face and talk about (with safe people) their sexuality.