Founding Pastor's Testimony I do not ever remember not being exposed to pornography.  Some of my earliest memories are of Dad rushing home from the convenience store to eagerly open the latest edition of Playboy magazine.  As a little boy, I wanted to see what Dad was so excited about.  He would hold the magazine up, though, just high enough that I could not see it, and say, "You can't look at these until you are older." While I was still in elementary school, Dad finally gave up on trying to hide his magazines, and he placed them all in an unlocked cabinet that sat on the floor.  When no one was home, I would sneak a magazine to my treehouse, and look at every glossy photo of beautiful naked women.  Later, my stepbrother found a large sack of pornographic magazines at a local pond, and we did not need to "borrow" Dad's magazines anymore, because we had our own.  One day, while showing the soft-core Playboy and Penthouse magazines to a tomboy neighbor girl, she said, "Oh, come to my house, and I'll give you more of those." My stepbrother and I returned with a collection of hard-core pornographic magazines that the girl's adult brother had left behind when he moved out.  As an elementary school student, I was already looking at hard-core pornography. In junior high, that new invention called "cable TV" came out.  My buddies and I would try to watch the scrambled adult channels through the buzzing, fuzzy, shadowy TV screen.  One friend, though, talked his parents into actually purchasing the Playboy channel, and we starting going to his home when his parents were gone to eat popcorn and watch "dirty movies."  In high school, my friends and I were able to gain admittance to a XXX theatre.  Hard-core pornographic movies were shown, with nude dancers on stage between the films.  One of my friends even used the video production knowledge he gained at a technical high school to make his own pornographic movies.  When we were bored, my friends and I drove to the bad part of town to talk with the prostitutes who walked the sidewalks in their shiny boots and short skirts.  I just thank God today that none of us were brave enough to do more than talk! After high school, I attended a military college.  I continued looking at pornography.  My life, at that time, seemed to spiral out of control.  I became an alcoholic, and was constantly in trouble at school.  My relationship with my steady girlfriend became rocky.  Some friends who were Christians told me they worried about me, and that I really needed God in my life.  I became very depressed, and I prayed that God would show me the way out of my miserable, sinful life. On my summer vacation, I took a bus to another state to visit my grandmother.  On Sunday morning, I went with Grandma to an Independent Baptist church she was attending.  I had no religious upbringing at all, but at Grandma's church, I saw love and joy in God's people, and I really wanted what they had.  For the first time in my life, I heard a clear presentation of the Gospel!  I thought about my drunkenness, my fornication, my foul mouth, my addiction to pornography, and God gave me an unbelievable amount of conviction in my heart.  After the Wednesday night service at Grandma's church, I returned to Grandma's house, fell across the bed in the guest bedroom and begged God to save me! When God saved me, He gave me a brand new life!  I truly experienced II Corinthians 5:17, "Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new."  God called me to full-time ministry.  I lost my desire for alcohol.  I lost my foul mouth.  I lost the bad attitude that kept me in trouble all the time at school.  I even called my unsaved girlfriend to end our relationship.  I really felt like I would never sin again. A week or two later, though, while looking through a department store catalog, I found myself gazing at the beautiful ladies in the underwear section.  The desire for other sins was gone, but the desire to look at pornography remained as strong as ever. Over the next eight years, I married, trained for the ministry, and became pastor of an Independent Baptist church.  Pornography did not seem to be a problem, as long as I could avoid traveling and spending nights alone in a motel with cable TV.  Then came another new invention, "the internet."  I had heard about all the bad things on the internet, so I was careful to select an internet provider who offered filtered service for a slight fee.  After my first night of surfing, however (I had to make sure the filter worked, or so I thought), I found that internet filters are not totally effective in blocking out pornography.  Though I was saved, married, and now pastoring a church, after a few days of internet access I was as strongly drawn to pornography as I was in high school.  I really felt like the Apostle Paul, when he said, "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" (Romans 7:24). Understanding how strong a temptation pornography can be, I began searching for the Bible principles that can help men find freedom from pornography.  I looked at websites and study material for every Christian purity ministry I could find.  I was disappointed that many ministries rely on humanistic "philosophy" and the "tradition of men" instead of Bible teachings.  I found one ministry correct in its Bible teachings, but flawed in that its lessons were not clearly organized and no Bible memorization was required at all.  Many ministries charge hundreds of dollars for courses, and most use modern English Bible versions that are corrupt and contain watered-down mistranslations of verses dealing with sexual purity.  Through it all, though, God showed me the Bible principles one needs for freedom from pornography and a lasting purity!  God's word is true: "For sin shall not have dominion over you..." (Romans 6:14). In creating In Purity Ministry, it is my desire to simply show you what God has shown me.  Please click on the link to "Bible Principles," and prayfully consider signing up for my free Bible devotions on purity.  May God bless you in your desire to "...be...an example of the believers...in purity" (I Timothy 4:12).