Sadly, news reports like this do not surprise many of us anymore. When I hear this I think: “There but for the grace of God go I.”
While I was addicted to porn I told far too many lies. I snuck around to take a look at magazines before the internet came along. I would get out of bed in the middle of the night in hopes of finding something R rated on TV. Then when the World Wide Web came along I became an expert at covering my tracks and hiding what I had been up to.
I thank God I never made advances towards another human being. But the way my head was caught up in lust and filled with those sexual desires, I could easily have crossed that line.
One of the hardest things for me as a full-time minister was that I did not believe I could share my struggles with anyone. I would always say to myself: “But who could I talk with? What will they think of me? I’m supposed to be the guy who is pure and helping other people avoid sin.” I felt like I had no way out. There was nobody I could open up with and since I kept my sin a secret, my problem never went away.
I pray that soon we (the church, the body of Christ, Jesus’ followers) will allow our brothers and sisters to be honest and confess their sins without condemning them. Sin flourishes in the dark. Only the light can kill it. Pastors and preachers and ministers and missionaries need outlets where they can go and find help and not be crucified. We need to recognize that we are all “wounded healers”. None of us is perfect. We all need to grow and work to overcome our sins and worldly desires of various types.
I weep for those who were abused. Abusers are wrong. But if we could help one another, perhaps we could stop these kinds of problems before they happen.
Jesus Is Better 