Testimony: From Pornography Addiction to Redemption God uses our pain and our past to help others. Joy Skarka Skarka has struggled with promiscuity, pornography, masturbation, and sexual shame. She will share her story, and talk about the freedom we have in Christ.
Thank you Northwest Bible Church Recovery Ministry for having me! Here is their website for more info: https://www.northwestbible.org
As my now husband and I were dating, we felt shame for our sexual desires. We chose to avoid sex before marriage, but longed for “oneness.” No one told us this was normal, healthy even, and that God created us as sexual beings. The fact that we desired sex revealed that we were two healthy humans. Instead of praising God for our heathy bodies, we felt embarrassed for desiring something off limits.
Enter sexual shame into our relationship.
This was not the first time I experienced shame. I felt the need to hide my sexual desires as a young single woman. I felt shame after going too far with my high school boyfriend, and after my dad found a hickey on my neck, and after experiencing sexual abuse.
Many things can make us experience sexual shame. We feel sexual shame when… (more…)
Every 98 seconds, an American experiences sexual assault. Raped my freshman year of college, I joined the 321,500 victims (age 12 or older) who experience rape and sexual assault each year in the United States. As a victim of sexual abuse, I joined the many women who spoke out in the #MeToo movement.
After last October, when the #MeToo movement went viral, I posted on Facebook and Twitter. It felt empowering to think—others struggle too. This wasn’t the first time I posted online for the whole world to see about my abuse. I’m a blogger who often writes about my abuse. But for the first time, others joined me in speaking out. Friends I had known for years, speaking out for the first time. Friends I could connect with and share how Jesus had healed me from the emotional destruction of sexual abuse. However, #MeToo has created more than cathartic relief. (more…)
With a past filled with sexual abuse, promiscuity, and an unhealthy sex education, I lacked a healthy view of sexuality. The biggest lie that I believed was that I was sexually broken.
My view of sex was far from the truth that God promises in His love letter. I had two distorted and conflicting views of sex:
Five years ago I thought I would never heal from the rape I experienced my freshman year of college. My nights were filled with tears and my days were filled with doubts. Why did this happen? Does God allow rape? (Check out the answer to this question on Bible.com.)
With countless unanswered questions and tears in my eyes, I surrendered my life to Jesus. I still doubted that he could heal me, but I believed I needed a Savior. On my own, I would never find healing. My heart was a wreck and I needed Jesus to give me a new one.
Maybe you, just like me, often wonder, is healing even possible? How do I find healing? Could Jesus really heal me from the pain of sexual abuse? Let me share one important truth with you… (more…)
As a victim of rape, I thought the rape was my fault. I did not fully understand that I was experiencing the result of sin until years later. No matter the reason for the rape, it still wounded me deeply. Because of my hurt and pain, I often wondered why God would allow His children to suffer.
During the months following my abuse, God felt closer than ever before. He never moved. When I cried out in agony, He was by my side. When I prayed with tears streaming down my cheeks, He was there. When I begged Him to take away the pain, He held my hand.
He was there.
Right beside me, holding my hand, and helping me find healing. He was there and He knew this would happen…
Click to read my whole guest post on Bible.org.
I’ve been there. I was a college freshman who was lost searching for what would give me an identity. What would give me hope. What would make me feel loved. As a college student, one desires to fit in and find her place and to meet a guy.
At least, that is what I wanted. (more…)
My time in college was nothing like what I planned. I entered college thinking I was a Christian. I believed in God, but I didn’t know Him. I didn’t know His heart, His character or that He was the only one who could satisfy the longing in my heart to be loved.
Instead, I thought that hole in my heart could only be filled by a guy. (more…)
I’ll never forget how I felt the first time I looked into the mirror after being date raped. I stood there naked, alone and ashamed. I began to question God and his love for me.
(more…)
Last week, I blogged about how powerful our stories are. (Click here to see it!)
Our stories have as much power as Jesus’ death on the cross. If you are a believer in Christ and have a personal relationship with him, God can and will use your story to bring him glory. Your story is an extension of God’s power!
The second reason why your story is powerful is because our God has an eternal perspective. God knows how each event in our lives will be used to impact eternity!
Isaiah 55:8-11: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.”
We have to understand that God is SO much bigger than our tiny little brains.
Our thoughts are smaller than his thoughts. Our plans are smaller than his plans. Think of eternity as a line. It is a line that goes on and on and on forever. We are just one dot on that line, so we only see our dot and a little before and after. But God, the Creator of the line, sees the whole line! He knows how one dot will impact the next.
Last summer, I had the pleasure of going to Miami for 10 weeks on Miami Summer Project with a ministry called Cru.
Before going on project, I prayed that God would bring one other women who had been sexually abused. I desired to use my story to help someone else heal. One day in Miami, I went on a walk with one of my friends. She was upset and said that she didn’t know why she was telling me this, but wanted to tell me her story. She had been raped her freshman year of college. I was the first person she had told.
God planned that both her and I would be in Miami that summer. She felt weird inside because the Holy Spirit was telling her to share her deepest pain with me. We cried and talked together, and I began to understand that God would use my story to glorify himself. That summer I got to help my friend begin a journey of healing, and I continued healing by viewing my life through God’s eternal perspective.
Later that week, I found out that 5 other girls on project had been sexually abused.
I prayed for 1 girl, God gave me 6. Before project, we each focused on our dot and our hurt, but God was focused on how our hurt could help others.
Here is my favorite part of the story! After project, one of the women felt called to share her story with other ladies, specifically the Greek women on her campus. She went to each chapter meeting and shared her story. She shared what she had gone through, how God redeemed her, saved her, and how now is experiencing real love in a relationship with God.
Later that semester, Cru at her college hosted an event called Girls’ Night Out by Marian Jordan. At the event, they witnessed 98 girls pray to give their life to Christ, most of them were women from sororities that my friend shared her story to.
Dear reader, my friend realized that God could take her story and use it to change women’s eternities! He can do the same with yours! Your story is powerful! I challenge you to stop focusing on your dot and focus on the line. Let God use your story to impact others eternities! Love, Joy
Check out: The Power of Your Story (Part 1) and The Power of Your Story (Part 3)
I hope this post has been encouraging! Be sure to add me on social media and share my blog with your friends! Thanks!