One80: Testimonies of Transformation
Be inspired by stories of Christian transformation from around the world--and next door! Hear miraculous coming-to-Jesus stories from all walks of life and be amazed at how God writes a story in all of us. One80 is a production of OneWay Ministries.
One80: Testimonies of Transformation
94: Porn: Affair of the Heart, Timothy Reigle
Timothy was a lazy, phony Christian, cheating husband, absent father and porn addict. Timothy said yes to Jesus at a young age but walked away from a faith with shallow roots. He searched for meaning in life everywhere but God. He self-medicated and covered up who he really was, until he realized he couldn’t stop his fake life on his own.
“ I know this is wrong. I don't want to do this. I don't want to be hurting myself, hurting my wife, hurting my family, but I couldn't overcome it because of that sin that lived within me. It took repenting and laying those burdens down at the foot of Jesus at the cross.”
God would take him through change with Timothy kicking and screaming all the way. He now uses his own experience to lead other men overcome their addictions, save their marriages, and become better, stronger, Godly men.
Helpful Links:
Timothy’s Book, Men of Grit: Into the Wilderness
Timothy’s Book, Living Porn Free
Help for Men Trapped in Porn Addiction
Focus on the Family sexual brokenness resources
XXXChurch, helps you overcome porn
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Timothy Reigle:I was always convicted of my sin, right? I always knew it was wrong, but I didn't change right? And repentance isn't just understanding you're a sinner, changing. It's I'm sure you know a One80, right? And repentance isn't just understanding you're a sinner, it's changing right, it's a I'm sure you know a 180, right?
Margaret Ereneta:Timothy Reigle grew up in the church as a pastor's kid. Even after saying yes to Jesus, he became enslaved to the sin of porn addiction. Hear how he broke free and what advice he has for others trapped in porn today on One80.
Timothy Reigle:I grew up in a small town called Dixon, Illinois, about an hour west of Chicago, Tiny little farm town, Grew up on a family farm. My dad was a pastor of a church and so I grew up as one of those PK kids. You kind of got to worry about a little bit. But I grew up in a happy, healthy, loving Christian home and I have wonderful parents and I still have a great relationship with my parents and I grew up in the church and went to Christian school and all those sort of things and didn't have any really major issues. But the one thing that we didn't really talk a whole lot about was sex and specifically porn. You know, it was back in the kind of the purity culture era of the late 90s, early 2000s, you know, and you know the big three were, you know, don't drink, don't smoke and don't have sex, Right. Well, when you get a little bit of a rebellious you know teenage hormonal boy, what do you think? The three things you want to do most are right, and so those sorts of things were never really discussed. And so I discovered porn at a young age I was probably 13 or so and to me it was like, well, I always thought this was this evil, horrible thing. It's like this is actually. This is great, you know. It was exciting, it was thrilling for me and I was kind of hooked instantly to that and so it became my go-to. It became not just a habit, it became an addiction.
Timothy Reigle:And as I got older and was dealing things through my teenage years, it continued to escalate and continued to get worse and it became how I dealt with everything. How I dealt with emotions, how I dealt with fears, how I dealt with insecurities Just going through normal things as a teenage boy, right, High school girlfriends, breakups, you know things like that. Everything. I was happy, I ran to porn. I was sad. I ran to porn. I was angry, I ran to porn. It just became how I learned to deal with everything, because I never really learned to deal with those things in a healthy way. It didn't get dealt with and it continued to escalate. So as I got a little bit older into my later teen years, it escalated in both frequency as well as in the type of things I was looking at. It got much more hardcore stuff you know got into you know webcams, and more extreme things like that as I got older. Then I, like I said, I'm a little bit of a rebellious pastor's kid, so I ended up playing in a lot of punk rock, metal bands, things like that, lived kind of the sex, drugs and rock and roll lifestyle for a few years. You know where porn and sexuality is just par for the course. Right, it's part of the experience, it's part of the community. And so I went really deep into that and it just continued to get worse as I got older and got into my late teens and early 20s.
Timothy Reigle:I got married relatively young. I was 21 when I got married and kind of naively thought that that would solve all my problems. Right, Okay, well, I'm married now starting a family. You know these aren't going to be issues anymore. And the opposite happened. It got worse because it wasn't a sexual issue. Right, it was how I learned to cope with everything, how I learned to deal with everything. It was my escape. Learned to cope with everything, how I learned to deal with everything. It was my escape. And when you get married you start having families. I needed that escape more because there was more stress, there was more pressures on me and so I kept going to it more and it got worse and it continued to escalate to the point where my addiction wasn't just porn and masturbation and online things. It went into talking to people online, eventually meeting up with people from online, and I had, you know, multiple affairs and hookups and all kinds of kind of extreme type of things that happened and that continued off and on for the first 10 or so years of my marriage.
Timothy Reigle:And I did all of the right things right. I got caught several times and I kind of talked my way out of it, lied my way out of it. You know, things got better for a little bit, but that always go back to it. And I did all the things you're supposed to do. I went to counseling, I talked to my pastor, I did all the Bible studies, I read all the books, I went to retreat weekends. You know, I did all these things that you're supposed to do and they would help for a while, but I'd always end up going back to it. I could never fully defeat this and at one point my wife and I separated for almost a year. At this point we had moved to Pennsylvania, where I live now, and she had actually gone back to stay with her family in Illinois for almost a year. But, praise the Lord, we were able to get back together after that, and so it just continued to spiral out of control over all these years and it never really got better. It would get okay for a while, then I'd go back to it. Then okay for a while, then I'd go back to it, and it was just this vicious cycle for years, for years.
Timothy Reigle:You talk about what my life was like growing up and how faith played in my life. There was never really a time that I didn't. I always knew this was wrong. I always knew it was sinful. There was never a period where I tried to justify it. Really, I may have played some mental gymnastics with myself, but I always knew it was wrong. I was always convicted of it. I wanted to do the right thing. I just I couldn't. I didn't know how you know, and I didn't have the tools and the things to deal with it in a healthy way to really help me get through it. So I would have considered myself a Christian all through this time and I was going to church all through this time and I'd never denied my faith or anything like that. I certainly wasn't living it right. I wasn't repentant of my action, but I never, I always was convicted of the sin that it was.
Timothy Reigle:You mentioned the rock bottom.
Timothy Reigle:I don't know if I ever totally hit a true rock bottom. I mean that's kind of hard to define. My wife and I were actually able to get back together and work through those things, but kind of the turning point for me, which kind of call my rock bottom, was the last time I got caught, which was almost seven years ago now. Was I got caught? Not by my wife? But I got caught by my two best friends at the time and they had been guys that had been with me through it all. They were my accountability partners. They were aware of my struggles. They helped me and encouraged me and prayed with me. We were very close.
Timothy Reigle:Our families would go on vacation together and all these sort of things, and so when they found out it kind of blew everything up, kind of exposed me, and those two friends kind of completely abandoned me, like walked away from me. They're like Tim, you've lied to us just as much as you've lied to everybody else. We're done and for whatever reason, God used that to finally get through to me. Reason, God used that to finally get through to me, which, in hindsight, looking at it now, it breaks my heart that it wasn't all the pain I'd caused my wife and the damage I'd done to my marriage and to my family, to my kids, For whatever reason, that didn't wake me up. But losing these two buddies that I go out for a beer with and hang out and watch a football game with, and whatever, Losing those friendships was what woke me up to this, and I don't know why, but that was what God used to speak to me, for whatever reason.
Timothy Reigle:And so after that I did get real help and the most important thing that I had is I had a relationship with a pastor, friend of mine, who really came in and mentored me and he called me out on my sin, rightfully so, called me to repentance, but he did so with love. You know he didn't just come and, you know, beat me over the head with the Bible and tell me what, how much of a filthy pervert I was and all those things he said. What you're doing is wrong and you need to repent, you need to stop. He didn't sugarcoat it or justify it or excuse anything. He said you're not too broken, Tim, God loves you, God forgives you and we're going to walk through this together and I'm going to get you through this. And that's what really made the difference for me.
Timothy Reigle:And he helped me to understand that it wasn't like I had this uncontrollable sexual appetite, that I was just just had no self-control or no discipline or anything like that. He helped me understand that what I was dealing with was an emotional issue, not necessarily a sexual issue, and so I was using porn to escape, to cope. There was things that had happened in my life that I was using porn to run away from run away from those pains, those fears, those insecurities, and I was using it to try to fill a void in my life. I was using it to try to fill a God-sized hole in my life, really. And he helped me to understand that and that's what really made the difference. It wasn't just trying harder or having the right habits or the right routines or even just praying harder. That was certainly a huge part of it was praying really hard. But I had to understand and heal this wound. And that's something that I say all the time now is that porn addiction isn't something you quit, it's something you heal, it's a heart issue, right, it's not a sexual issue. It's not a discipline or a willpower issue All those things are involved with it but at its core it's a heart issue, and that's what made the difference for me.
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Timothy Reigle:So, since then I've been able to be free from this. Praise the Lord, and my wife and I actually renewed our wedding vows on our 10th anniversary. We're coming up on 17 years here this year. But we renewed our wedding vows, healed and restored our marriage, and our marriage is better than it ever was now. So I've healed the relationship with my kids, the damage that's done there, and turned my life around, repented to the Lord, received His forgiveness and now live my life according to His word. And so that's the journey that I've been on, and now I live my life according to his word. And so that's the journey that I've been on, and I've been blessed since then, not only to have fixed this in my own life, but to help others through it.
Timothy Reigle:You know, I kind of thought, once I got through this, I'd quit watching porn, I'd quit being unfaithful to my wife, I'd healed my marriage, I'd repented, you know, I made myself right with the Lord, fixed all those relationships and I was kind of like, okay, that's great, that's a new chapter in my life, Turn the page, move on. Don't need to broadcast this to the world. What all my dirty secrets were in my sinful life. Well, God had some other plans, as he often does right and so he kept bringing up opportunities for me to share my story, like I'm doing with you now, and to tell other people about it and how he saved me and how he forgave me and how he helped me find freedom. And I was able to mentor some young guys at my church and help them. I was able to start. I started my blog and started writing and being active on social media and kind of sharing my story.
Timothy Reigle:And it was kind of like, every time I opened that door, like a little bit, God kicked it wide open.
Timothy Reigle:So he's like no, I want you to share your story and I truly believe now that he brought me through everything that he did for that purpose. You know and he's now laid that mission on my heart that you know I brought you through the darkness turn around, reach out your hand and help other people out of that same darkness. And so now for the last five plus years, I've been coaching other men, helping them to overcome porn addicts and sexual through that written a couple of books been able to help other men become the godly strong men that they need to be and live more for the Lord and be strong husbands, leaders, fathers in our churches and our communities and live life according to his word. So that's kind of what God brought me through, what God brought me from and where he's brought me to now, and it's been one heck of a journey, brought me through what God brought me from and where he's brought me to now and it's been one heck of a journey.
Margaret Ereneta:If you've listened to One80, you know that many testimonies have an extra step. We call a reckoning, so someone accepts Christ, but then they may fall away from the faith and come back through repentance. With Timothy's story you'll hear his coming to Jesus part and his later repentance, and it's really helpful. You'll hear his coming to Jesus part and his later repentance and it's really helpful how he connects the two for us.
Timothy Reigle:Yeah, I mean, I grew up in the church and I was, I mean, almost literally in the church. I lived next door, I was a pastor's kid, right, and so I came to faith at a young age and I made a profession of faith I believe I was 13, was baptized, but I didn't. I had to believe then and I believe that God saved me and called me and I responded to that at that time. But I didn't fully live it out until all these years later when I had this reckoning and to me, like I said, that moment was when those two friends confronted me. So, yes, I had to go through that process of repentance, of not just saying you know, I believe this, but living how I believe this. I think, all the times you know, where the Gospel of John talks, Jesus uses the word belief you know if you believe and all those type of things. And the actual word that that means isn't just. It isn't just believe, it's also believe and take action. Right, it's believe. And there's a response to that. It's not just understanding a concept that Jesus died for our sins and rose again, it's responding to that as well. And so I had all those years in between where I kind of believed that. But yet it took me a while to respond to that and you know, there was a lot of hurt and pain and things in between. But, like I said, I believe God brought me through that for a purpose and so when I had that moment with those, two friends were losing me. That was kind of the turning point.
Timothy Reigle:And then when I started working with this mentor, this pastor, friend of mine, who really called me to repentance, I was always convicted of my sin. Right, I always knew it was wrong, but I didn't change. And repentance isn't just understanding you're a sinner, it's changing. You know a 180, right. And that takes the work of ourselves, it takes the work of the Lord too. And I use to mention the scripture passages a lot where the Apostle Paul talks in Romans 7, where he says and I'm paraphrasing here roughly but he says I know what the right thing to do is, but I don't do it. I don't want to do this wrong thing, the sinful thing, but I still do it right?
Timothy Reigle:And that's what it felt like for me, where I know this is wrong, I don't want to do this, I don't want to be hurting myself, hurting my wife, hurting my family. But I couldn't overcome it because of that sin that lived within me. And it took repenting and laying those burdens down at the foot of Jesus at the cross to truly do that. And once I surrendered this burden, surrendered this pain, surrendered all these things that were keeping me ensnared in this addiction for so long, once I surrendered those to Christ, that's when I found that healing, that's when I found that repentance and that's when I was able to turn my life around, was when I surrendered those things and gave my life to Him and stopped trying to hold on to this thing and whatever that was.
Timothy Reigle:But there was something within myself that I just couldn't give up, that I couldn't fully surrender to Christ and that I wanted to hold on to and it's like no, I need this. There's maybe a safety in that or there was a, like I said, kind of a coping type of thing in that, but there was something in that that I couldn't fully surrender to him. And so that process of deliverance, if you will, was when I was finally able to do the work with the Lord, to lay down those burdens, lay down my cross and follow him, as the gospels say right, and so that's what made the difference and what was the turnaround in my life was that moment when I stopped just believing and started believing and responding to the gospel.
Margaret Ereneta:We ended by asking Timothy what advice he would give to men who might be struggling with the same addiction that he was.
Timothy Reigle:My main message to people is I normally have two things that I say. Well, three things. We'll leave it at three things. First is you're not alone. You're not alone. You're not the only one struggling with this. Unfortunately, there's millions of people struggling with this and you're not too broken, you're not too far gone, you're not unforgivable. Second is to don't lose hope. Right, Christ loves you, Christ forgives you, He wants you to repent and find healing and live righteously. You're not so far that He's going to turn his back on you. He never has and he never will and never leave you and forsake you. So there is always hope. You may feel like you're completely trapped and like you'll never get out of this. I get it. I was there for a long time. I thought, oh, this is just my sentence, this is my penance, it's my whatever and I'm never going to get out of this. But I did, and that's how powerful God's grace and forgiveness and his strength is.
Timothy Reigle:The third thing is to find help. You can't do this alone. I tried to do this alone for 15 years and it got me nothing but heartache and pain, and I know so many other men. Yeah, there's a lot of shame attached to it. There's a lot of guilt, there's a lot of embarrassment with it, right, and so it's something they just think that they can just try harder, just pull yourself up by the bootstraps and just walk away from it. Well, it's not, like you know, just breaking a bad habit, like biting your fingernails or something. It's deeper than that and you need help to get through that. It's not something that you can just do alone. You need discipline and willpower. But you need more than that. You need somebody who can guide you, who can mentor you and help you through that. So in a lot of ways, the traditional methods that I went through weren't helpful to that.
Timothy Reigle:I think that there's an issue that the church doesn't talk about nearly enough. It's getting better out of necessity, just because so many men are struggling with this these days, and especially young men or young teens and even preteens are struggling with this, and so some churches are being forced to deal with it out of necessity. But it was a taboo subject for so many years. Like I said in my childhood, it was the purity culture thing and you just didn't talk about it. It was just don't do it, that's a sin. Well, we never understood why don't we do this? What are the consequences of sin? And so that caused a lot of rebellion in my life and I'm sure it did in a lot of other people's lives. You, you know it's not something that you, like I said, can just try harder or just pray harder. It requires those things, but you need to really understand what the root causes are, and so you know, a lot of churches aren't equipped to deal with that.
Timothy Reigle:What I ran into was this shame thing and it was just a you're this filthy, perverted sinner and to get out type of thing right, and we should be calling out sin in our brothers and sisters where we see it right and there's biblical ways of doing that, and I'm not saying we don't do that, but we also need to show them love. You know it's sin. We overcome sin through repentance and through love and helping people through those things. You know we've all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Right, certain sins have worse consequences than other sins on earth, but all sins fall short of God's perfect standard, and so one sin isn't necessarily worse than the other, but we have to help our brothers and sisters through those things and do that with conviction, as we should, but also do that with love and grace and to help them through that.
Timothy Reigle:You know, all the times I was told that I was just this filthy pervert and I have to stop. I needed to hear that because I needed to know that it was wrong, but also that didn't really help me, and so I want to give people the tools and the proper help and guidance and instruction and mentorship and encouragement. You know, sometimes we need that kick in the face, right. We need to get slapped around and say, hey, you know, wake up. Sometimes you just need a hug too and say you know what? I love you, god loves you and we're going to get through this together.
Timothy Reigle:And so that's what I encourage people to do, what I encourage the churches to do, and anybody who's struggling with this, anybody who knows someone that's struggling with this. You know we don't make excuses for this. This is sinful behavior, destructive behavior. I'm I don't want to say lucky, because it wasn't luck, it was God's plan. But most marriages and families don't survive. What mine did right, and I believe mine did because God had a purpose for me and God has a purpose for every person listening to this podcast. So don't give up, keep fighting, find help, find love, find encouragement, find people who will help you through this and help direct you biblically on the path to righteousness and living out God's will.
Margaret Ereneta:Thanks for listening to today's One80. I hope that you can share it with the people that you know, and if any of you need help with this problem, check out our show notes. There's so many ways to get help in there One80 is brought to you by One Way.
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