Prolific Christian pastor, worship leader details how God saved him from pornography addiction

Famed pastor and worship leader Cory Asbury revealed his past struggle with pornography addiction and how God saved him from his sexual sin.

What are the details?

In a recent book excerpt published in Relevant magazine, Asbury, pastor at Radiant Church in Kalamazoo, Michigan, said that he had a deep pornography addiction that didn't stop when he got married, and didn't even stop when he became a practicing pastor.

"I was in a genuine Romans 7 quandary: the things I didn't want to do, I did; but the things I wanted to do, I couldn't do (vv. 14-20)," he wrote. "I found myself completely and utterly stuck."

Asbury pointed out that the shame of his "habitual sin" only became worse after he married, and made him feel more and more ashamed of his character.

“Getting married doesn't magically fix all the problems in your life, especially the ones entrenched through years of habitual sin," he said. “The shame I felt from my struggle with pornography before marriage was nothing compared to what I experienced after. On top of hurting God's heart with my sin, I now mourned breaking my wife's heart as well — a double-whammy of heartache. This burden was too much to bear."

Asbury said that he would often consider himself the "most repulsive human," and viewed himself as a fraud despite his calling from God.

"'How could you do this?'" he recalled himself saying. "'Again?! You're the most repulsive human on the planet. God is disgusted with you.'"

The worship leader said that this cycle of sin and misplaced repentance would last to rule his life for "years."

What about the comparison to David?

He said he began to liken himself to David, and used his affair with Bathsheba to counterbalance his own sin.

"Then I got hold of the life of David. I resonated with his story big-time," Asbury wrote. "If [David] could still be called a worshiper and a man after God's heart, surely I could as well. While pornography wasn't rampant in David's day the way it is in ours, the root problem, lust, still caused him to stumble into sexual sin a time or two."

Asbury said that he admired the way that David was able to throw himself "wholly on the mercy of God," knowing that the Lord wouldn't judge and condemn, but forgive, free, and heal.

“David didn't let his failure define him; He allowed his Father to do that," Asbury wrote. "And as we know, the words bestowed upon David were enviable: a man with a heart like God's. David severed the head of the giant of shame in one decisive blow by boldly running to the throne of grace even though he knew he deserved the gallows of death."

Asbury offered up sage advice when it comes to Christians changing their hearts and lives.

"My best suggestion to you is, don't wait until you're that desperate because it probably means that something tough has happened to get you there," he wrote. "Right now, right where you are, start talking to God about this."

(H/T: Faithwire)