“What’s the one piece of advice you would give
to someone struggling with porn addiction?”
David Kyle Foster is the director of Mastering Life Ministries and host of Pure Passion TV.
Connect with David:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/purepassiontv
Twitter: @PurePassionTV
David’s Books:
Love Hunger: A Harrowing Journey from Sexual Addiction to True Fulfillment
Check out all the “One Thing” video interviews here.
Transcript
Steve: Hey guys! Stephen here with Belt of Truth Ministries. I’m on the call with Dr. David Kyle Foster. He’s the director of Mastering Life Ministries and the host of Pure Passion TV. David, thanks for joining us. What’s the one piece of advice that you would give to somebody struggling with porn addiction?
David: Well the thing that set me free powerfully was learning how to be intimate with God. When I first got saved, I had been a sex addict for over 20 years; out of control, just totally out of control. When I got saved, I knew that there was no way that I was going to fix this. I was doing things I didn’t even want to be doing at that point. And I remember going to a pastor and saying “I just got saved but I’ve been sleeping with 2 and 3 people a night for over 10 years and you’re going to tell me to stop and I’m here to tell you I can’t just stop. I don’t know. It’s overtaken me.” And he said “well it’s kind of good that you realized that you can’t do it. Let’s let Jesus do it for you.” I just gotten save. Nobody told me what God couldn’t do yet, and so I just believed. “Okay, if God wants this to happen, that’d be great.” So I went with it and I pray to God to set me free from the power that I was under. Let’s put it that way. I was out of control. And in fact, when I committed to not going back to those behaviors – the pornography, the sexual immorality, acting out on multiple levels – and I believe that God would come in and enable me, empower me not to do it. It happened. It happened. The temptations weren’t taken away, at all; worst that it happened. But the power to coerce me to act against my will was removed by God himself and I knew right then and there that God had to be my partner in this because he had the power that I did not have. I was filled with what the Bible calls idolatry. I was just fixing on these images as some sort of hope for being completed or covering up the pain of my life, and I knew that God had to teach me a new way to deal with the issues behind my idolatry. And so I knelt before my bed every night and I pray to the Lord and I said “Lord, I can’t drive down Hollywood Boulevard without stopping at the porn store.” That was my first prayer. And he said to me “don’t drive down Hollywood Boulevard.” And I thought “of course, why didn’t I think of that?” So it’s really rudimentary at first, the guidance that the Lord gave me about fleeing immorality when I hadn’t yet learned how to resist it with his power. And so it’s rudimentary at the beginning, telling me how to guard my life. And then he set me off to seminary so that I could renew my mind with the word of God. That was so, so important because beyond that one moment of faith, I had no faith really. I was actually angry at God, and a lot of addicts are angry at God. They’ve had a tragic life or they’ve had some traumas or something in their life, and they don’t think God really likes them, and so they don’t like God. That’s often behind the rebellion that’s going on, this anger at God, this disappointment with God, this sense that God doesn’t really like me or love me or that I’m sort of a defect or I cross some line of sin and he will never come get me from these things that I’ve been doing – all of which are lies, I soon discovered. So the healing process for me was very much a matter of getting into an intimate relationship with the father and letting him open up the doors that I had shut in my own belief system, discovering God as he really is, as opposed to who I thought he was. Let me give you an example of that. I was committing a sin one night, masturbation, and the Lord spoke to me right in the middle and it kind of shocked me because I thought went out the room when you did stuff like that, but he spoke to me and said “David, if you’ll turn to me right now, I’ll love you and embrace you and forgive you. And I thought “no, that can’t be God” and I continued on. The second I was finished, the Lord spoke to me again with the same open, loving, grace-filled words. “David, if you turn to me right now, I will love you and I will forgive you and I will embrace you” and I thought “wow Lord, I just told you to get lost. I just chose my pitiful little pleasure over the God of the universe, and you’re standing there with the same love as before, as though I hadn’t done that?” And I said to myself “God, if that’s what you’re really like, I want to follow you.” And in that moment of grace, this application of grace, I went from following God because I was supposed to, to following him because I wanted to, because he was so much more beautiful than the pitiful pleasures I had been choosing, and I saw God from a whole different perspective as someone who is for me in every angle. And so I would pursue him every night. I would sing love songs to him. I would lay out my question of the night for him. Most of the time, I got no answers. I got to be honest. But when I did get answers, it was when I was ready to do what the answer required, such as not driving down Hollywood Boulevard or whatever the answer might be at any given moment. And then the power of God poured out on my behalf. I was singing love songs to the Lord, one night, old Villard worship music, and I was having a wonderful time, and the Lord interrupted me and he said “David, do you believe 2 Corinthians 3:18?” which essentially says “as we gaze upon the glory of the Lord, we are transformed into his image.” I said “yes Lord. I believe the Bible’s the inherent infallible authoritative word of God.” Feeling very proud of myself, and he said “no, you don’t.” And I thought “okay, I must not because he knows everything.” So how don’t I? And he said “why don’t you worship me again, and this time assume that it’s literally happening. Assume that as you’re gazing upon my glory in the spirit, I am literally transforming you into my image. I said “okay, I’ll do that.” And so I began assuming it was actually true, as I worshipped him.” And then he began to show me that the things I was worshipping him for were the very things that he was transforming into me. When I was worshiping for purity, I was receiving purity. When I was worshipping him for wisdom, I was receiving wisdom. This revolutionized my thinking because I thought I believed, when in fact in many cases I hadn’t. And so I as I delved more deeply into an intimacy with the father, he began showing me things like this that were major keys in unlocking power for me to keep me from falling. It says in Jude 24, “he will keep us from falling.” So as long as we keep this dependence on God, letting him provide the power and then we cooperate with his direction, and just concentrate on falling in love with him, concentrate on developing an intimate relationship with him, and then he’ll lead you the rest of the way. That’s the most important thing I’ve ever learned.
Steve: Yeah. I think that’s great. That’s spot on. Thanks for sharing that. Tell people where they can find out more about your ministry and what you’re doing online.
David: Sure. The ministry is at purepassion.us and we have a TV show, it’s been on the air for 8 years, and so we have over 200 episodes all on our website that you can watch for me, and we have them divided up by topics, so if you want to go to male sex addiction or you can go to female sex addiction, pornography, or whatever the topic you’re interested in, and you can watch testimonies of dozens and dozens of people who have been set free from an addiction to pornography, and experts such as Dr. Stephen Arterburn and Jonathan Dorothy and others, who we have interviewed for the show. That’s the great resource that we have. I’ve also written two books, the first one Sexual Healing. It’s been out a long time now but it’s like the book of my life and it covers all the major areas of sexual brokenness, and it shows how they are similar in how they’re caused, and therefore how they’re similar in how God sets us free from them. And then this last year I published my autobiography, and it tells a story of me becoming a major sex addict and being out in Hollywood as [09:39] and a lot of very interesting things happen to me, and then I get saved. And the second half of the book talks about all the most important things God has ever shown me in my life. It’s called Love Hunger and it’s online anywhere books are sold as well.
Steve: Great. We’ll be sure to link to those in the show notes. Thanks again for your time. I really appreciate all you’re doing and good luck with your ministry. Thanks again, David.
David: Thank you, very much.,
Steve: See ya.
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