Latest / The Lila Rose Show / E74: From Porn Star to Pastor, the Transformation of Joshua Broome

Transcript

E74: From Porn Star to Pastor, the Transformation of Joshua Broome · The Lila Rose Show

• 0:00
  If I'd become the most famous person in that industry, if I
• 0:02
  win enough awards, then I'll feel good about myself.
• 0:05
  After six years and 1000 movies, in 2012 I won Performer of the
• 0:09
  Year. So you're holding this award.
• 0:11
  What thoughts are going through your head?
• 0:12
  I thought I would feel validation, peace, I'd feel joy.
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  But I didn't even go to the award show because I was so
• 0:21
  crushed by not feeling like how I thought it would.
• 0:23
  And at that point, that's when I made a very detailed plan to
• 0:27
  take my life. When I got back home, I slide
• 0:30
  the check across the counter and I'm shaking.
• 0:32
  I'm, you know, moments away from taking my life.
• 0:35
  And she looks at me and says. Hey guys, welcome back to the
• 0:42
  Lila Rose podcast. Today we have on the podcast
• 0:45
  Joshua Broome, who has an incredible and a crazy story.
• 0:49
  He was one of the most successful male pornography
• 0:53
  actors for years, starring in over 1000 films actually, before
• 0:58
  he had an incredible experience that made him change his life
• 1:02
  dramatically. Now, Joshua is a pastor, a
• 1:06
  speaker, an author as well as a husband and a father of four
• 1:10
  kids. His story is incredible and it's
• 1:13
  very, very eye opening. Of course, if you're listening
• 1:15
  to this episode with kids, this has some very mature content, so
• 1:20
  be warned about that. It's not super graphic, but this
• 1:23
  is an extremely serious topic of pornography addiction, the porn
• 1:28
  industry, conversion, depression, and so much more.
• 1:32
  I hope you enjoyed this episode. As always, thank you so much for
• 1:36
  subscribing to the show. I really appreciate it.
• 1:38
  We hit over 100,000 subscribers recently, which is a very
• 1:41
  exciting milestone. I love doing this show.
• 1:44
  I love hearing from you guys. Thank you so much for supporting
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  the Lila Rose Podcast. This podcast is sponsored by
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  That's the code Lila at checkout@goodranchers.com for
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  $15 off your order. Joshua, thanks so much for
• 2:31
  joining the podcast. So glad to be here.
• 2:33
  When I first heard about your story, I was just inspired and I
• 2:38
  thought, who is this person? You know, what is?
• 2:39
  What has God done with this person's life?
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  It's incredible and everyone needs to hear your story and the
• 2:45
  advice I think you have to give. I know many people have heard
• 2:48
  it, but I don't know if all of my listeners have, so thanks for
• 2:50
  joining. Yeah, I'm just so honored to be
• 2:53
  here and thank you for everything that you spend your
• 2:55
  life doing. It's so important.
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  And I just want to honor you and say thank you.
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  Thank you. Well, we're on the same team.
• 3:01
  Yeah, Absolutely. All right, so, you know, for
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  those that haven't heard your story yet, I want to start with
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  the beginning. Long ago, long ago, you know,
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  you'd go on to become one of the most famous adult film, as they
• 3:15
  call it, pornographic male actors.
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  We're going to go to there. And now you are leading a
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  thriving ministry and business and family and changing the
• 3:24
  world with your story and your testimony.
• 3:27
  Where did this all start? What was Joshua like as a child?
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  And let's start from the beginning.
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  Yeah, ironically, it was. It started with my mom choosing
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  life. So my mom had me at 16 and it
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  was there was conflict between her and my father.
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  And I don't know the full story and I don't need to.
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  I know that. I just know that my mom made the
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  right decision. Was he a teen too?
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  Yeah, so they were both 16, yes. And mom, my mom had me when she
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  was 16. And we're in a really small town
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  in South Carolina, like so small.
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  There's one convenience store, one get, one like 1 gas station,
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  one grocery store. And I say that to say, because
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  that was true, as I got older, I would see my father.
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  So I knew him to be my father in my town, but he was never my
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  father in my life. So he never when he would you
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  like see him on the street and he wouldn't acknowledge you or
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  what would that what did that look like?
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  Yeah. So I mean, he, I think there
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  were times, again, I don't really recall them up until
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  maybe like teenage years, but I know there were times where he
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  tried to reach out and either there wasn't like a full
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  commitment on his part or it was just too awkward.
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  But I can really resonate at this point in retrospect saying
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  a young man that was faced with shame as the same way I was
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  faced with confusion and and eventually anger on a daily
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  basis. You know, shame grows in the
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  dark. And I can't imagine the level of
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  shame after five 1015 years of that being true.
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  And him knowing, you know, I'm. I'm in this town of like 2500
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  people. Wow.
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  Yeah. It's like I graduated with like
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  100 people in my class. So he gets married and they have
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  a good life. From the outside looking in, you
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  know, they've like got, you know, the home, the family.
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  He has another son, daughter and then they're living.
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  In the same town in the same town and you're ring raised by a
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  single mom. Yeah, So we lived in my
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  grandmother's house until I was about 7.
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  My mom got married to a horrible man that abused her, and there
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  were drugs in her home, but that ended very quickly.
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  But the only thing that I'd experienced was not having a
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  father. And a really short example of
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  the most extreme top toxic example that you could possibly
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  imagine. And then, you know, we, we go
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  back to just trying to figure things out on our own.
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  So I'm seeing him live this life that looks very prosperous and
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  we're living this life of life. But I, I, I almost, I say that
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  in retrospect because my mom was so amazing that I would have
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  never known that we were struggling.
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  I only know that because, well, what I know now, because, you
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  know, I, I had, you know, the opportunity to go to basketball
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  camp. I had the opportunity to do
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  acting classes. I did all the things that I know
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  cost money. And somehow she figured out a
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  way. So.
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  Did you feel rejected by your dad being in the same town as
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  him growing up and he has another family, another son,
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  everything? Absolutely.
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  I mean, I would say most people in general, specifically men are
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  high achievers. Most people who operate at a
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  high capacity, achievement is something that drives them.
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  And it's a good quality to have get, you know, if you're seeing
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  yourself in the right light. But if you're seeking
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  achievement for affirmation so that it covers up a, you know,
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  preconceived inadequacy that you have in your heart, that's
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  actually from a wound, you're trying so hard to do things so
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  you can feel things, and that never works out.
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  What did you do with those as a kid?
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  What did you do with those feelings of inadequacy and
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  rejection from your father? So I became a perfectionist
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  where I wanted to be the best in school.
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  So I didn't want to make a 99, I want to make 100.
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  I didn't want to make the basketball team.
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  I want to be the best person with the basketball team.
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  I'm I had to be the best. And it was, you know, it was a
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  good work ethic, and that's a healthy thing.
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  And you know, excellence honors God, but I wanted to be
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  excellent and I had a good work ethic because I was striving for
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  affirmation. So I needed to be affirmed.
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  And I thought if I achieved, I would receive those things.
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  So it was coming from a healthy place.
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  Even though it was it was yielding a good result.
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  It was coming from a dark place. So did you.
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  You were. Were you feeling like I want to
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  prove myself to my dad, That I'm a man?
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  Oh, certainly I. And without him.
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  When I also like I felt inadequate.
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  So I almost wanted to prove myself to myself and prove
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  myself to him and to the world because I was really wrestling
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  with, well, here's this man that's married and he's got two
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  other kids and they're happy. What's wrong with me?
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  So I took that and I placed it upon myself.
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  So I'm like, if, if there's something inadequate in me, the
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  achiever in me, I have to overcome it.
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  And the way that I was trying to overcome was doing more.
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  Did you ever meet your half siblings?
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  Yeah, I met. Was that like as a kid?
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  It was just a few times. I remember there were like a few
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  awkward times where I found myself, like I went to his house
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  and it was like, it was always like really strange.
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  I don't want to spoil a story, but, you know, even even now, I
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  think when there's a long enough gap, it, it just becomes
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  awkward. You like, you don't like you
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  there. There can be reconciliation and
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  restoration to to relationships, but in my case, it was always
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  I've, I felt like he just pretended nothing had happened
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  and he just wanted everything to define some kind of level of
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  normalcy. So the way he did that was just
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  to treat me as if I was, you know, my brother.
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  And it was. What was true is I'd been in the
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  same room as him less than 10 times in my life.
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  He knew nothing about me, and I knew nothing about him.
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  Like, I knew things that he enjoyed because he portrayed
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  them in his home, but I wouldn't have known those things because
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  I knew him deeply. So when you're sorting this
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  stuff out as a high school student at this point, talk to
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  me about the next steps that led you to in Los Angeles.
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  Yeah, so. You're a small town boy.
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  Yeah, so I'm so back in the day, I'm going through a mall and
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  they're doing, they're doing like a model search and someone
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  comes up to me and ask me like, would you be interested in
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  modeling? And my, my interest was more so
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  acting, but I knew that that kind of man, there, there was a
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  lot of symmetry, a lot of, you know, stuff going like side by
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  side with that. So I, I started doing that a
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  little bit and I actually had more success modeling than I had
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  acting, which was somewhat frustrating.
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  But it's like, this is what I want to do.
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  But this is, this is close enough.
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  But I started doing that around like 1314.
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  And that was my new affirmation of choice.
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  That was my new dopamine hit of choice where I would get the
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  audition or, you know, I wanted my, my comp card or my reel to,
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  to be better than other people's if I didn't get a call back, I
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  felt so defeated. So that was my new, you know,
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  drug of choice. But that behavior continued.
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  And then when I was around 13 years old, I was exposed to
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  pornography. It was a magazine and I saw it
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  and I felt confused. And for me, I'd never seen a
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  husband, wife relationship modeled at all.
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  And not not in a healthy way. I'd never experienced having a
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  father. I never saw anyone, you know,
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  fathering. So this was the first real
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  expression of intimacy between a man and a woman that I'd ever
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  seen. So, you know, that's that's why
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  it's so dangerous. If, if your mind is conformed by
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  the world and you're educated by screens and and pictures that
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  don't display the, the trueness of what intimacy is actually
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  supposed to be, you only know what you know.
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  So what, what I, what I saw, I started to, to replicate and I
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  became very promiscuous with, with girls, like as a teenager
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  and I continued in college and then I go to college to study
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  theatre and play basketball, but really just to do things I
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  didn't. I wasn't pursuing an education.
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  I was, I was taking classes in, in theatre because I thought it
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  would help me become an actor, which is true.
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  But it's like I didn't want to be educated.
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  I didn't want to get a degree. I was just going through the
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  motions. And that led me, you know, to,
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  to make a pretty easy decision like, well, if I'm in closer
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  proximity to the industry I want to be in, then it would make
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  sense. So.
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  And did you have your stepdad at this time?
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  Was your your mother? You said remarried?
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  So this was yeah. So this was just from like 7:00
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  until like 12. So it ended pretty quickly.
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  So he was never, he was never an authoritative like figure in my
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  life, never spoken to my life. Like the only unfortunately the
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  the memories that I have of him is him on meth, like ciphering
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  gas out of a out of our car in the middle of the night and
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  hurting my mom and her trying to cover up bruises.
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  Like that's all I remember about him.
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  But I mean, I think that that almost like reintegrated like
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  negative thought processes about me because my my primary value
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  as a kid was I took care of my mom and now I couldn't even
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  protect my mom. So that was really hard.
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  And that's something honestly I still struggle with today.
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  Like feeling like I need to protect my family, I need to
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  protect my mom. If, if something, you know, if
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  just people that I care about. That's a fear that I struggle
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  with, not being able to protect the people that I care about
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  most. When you were a kid, did you
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  ever and you were seeing your mom go through that?
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  Did you ever say anything to her?
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  Did you guys ever have a conversation?
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  What was that like? It was just very deflective.
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  She didn't want to deal with it. She didn't want it to impact me.
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  And that's just that was my mom's behavioral patterns as a
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  whole with like we have financial problems.
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  She would just cover it up or, or work harder or or do more.
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  She was always someone, you know, like if she, if she was
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  going through something and she really needed help, she would
• 14:13
  help others to almost distract herself from that.
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  She's an incredible person, like loves people, but I think almost
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  like the the gift that she has to serve people well, Miss
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  misappropriated, you can use that to cover up things that are
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  going on in your own life. So what during the process, you
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  know, you see porn for the first time.
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  Yeah. And then you said you become
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  promiscuous. You end up going to college,
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  kind of going through the motions, and then you want to go
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  where that. Yeah, go where the industry is.
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  What was your relationship like with your mom during that time?
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  It was OK, not great. So my SO the, the most beautiful
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  thing will really, in my opinion, the only beautiful
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  thing that came out of her marriage was my brother Michael.
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  And so he was going into his senior year and as I was moving
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  out there, he was, you know, well, actually was maybe a
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  sophomore, but he was in high school and, you know, trying,
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  trying to be a good Big Brother to him.
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  And I felt, you know, conflicted about that, but not not a lot of
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  conversation with my mom about the things I was doing.
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  I would just do them very reactive.
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  So I just like there wasn't like, hey, mom, I'm thinking,
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  you know what, what you would expect someone to do is like,
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  hey, here's some options on the table.
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  I had talked with representation.
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  I've signed with an agent. She's already got some stuff
• 15:42
  lined up for me. I've already talked with someone
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  that, you know, I've got a place to live.
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  I should have shared those things with her.
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  I didn't. I just kind of called her up out
• 15:50
  of the blue, like, hey, I dropped out of college.
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  I'm moving to LA. How old are you?
• 15:54
  I was about to be 22. All right, so you get to LA and
• 15:57
  your goal is acting, You're doing modeling.
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  OK, How does this turn into entering into the porn industry?
• 16:05
  Yeah, so I. There are big, there's a there,
• 16:08
  you know, for some maybe that's not a big difference because you
• 16:11
  can do kind of, you know, soft core stuff and even in
• 16:15
  Hollywood, but it's also a big, it is a different industry.
• 16:18
  Yeah, so I've been that. That was almost how I
• 16:20
  transitioned into it because I was, I was saying yes to some
• 16:23
  stuff. I'm with HBO that was not far
• 16:27
  from porn. And then I had done some
• 16:30
  photography that was like, not nude, but as close as it could
• 16:35
  possibly be. How does that feel doing that
• 16:38
  stuff like? Honestly, it it, it's, it felt
• 16:43
  like my conscious like progressively justified it, so
• 16:49
  it wasn't that big of a deal. And to be honest, because the
• 16:52
  way that I was living, I, yeah, I like very promiscuous with,
• 16:58
  with girls. Like not, you know, I just, I
• 17:02
  didn't think about that. So because I was accustomed to,
• 17:05
  to living that way when I was being, you know, asked if I was
• 17:09
  OK with doing these things, I was like, sure, because these
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  are things I'm already doing in my private life anyway.
• 17:16
  So kind of the segue was I was saying yes to things that were
• 17:21
  somewhat shade, you know, shady. And I was, you know, to kind of,
• 17:28
  you know, mitigate my income just like most people.
• 17:31
  It's like I was working at this place where they don't take
• 17:34
  resumes. You take headshots to this
• 17:36
  restaurant and in Middle West Hollywood, Saddle Ranch chop
• 17:40
  outs, there's like a mechanical bowl in the middle of the place.
• 17:44
  And just one of those places, it's like a restaurant until
• 17:46
  it's not. And then it's a crazy bar.
• 17:49
  But I was working there and three girls walked in and pretty
• 17:52
  much they were, they were asked me, hey, do you want to be an
• 17:56
  actor? And I was like, sure.
• 17:59
  You know, like, well, we're, we're talking about pornography.
• 18:01
  And I was like, what? Did you feel offended or
• 18:07
  flattered? Both I felt, I felt offended
• 18:10
  because like my, my reasonable part of my conscience was like,
• 18:16
  if you do that, you're going to burn, you know, so many bridges.
• 18:21
  And like, yeah, I knew in in my heart like, this is not a good
• 18:26
  thing. But at the same time I felt
• 18:30
  flattered because they asked and there was this part of my
• 18:34
  identity that I was wrestling with.
• 18:36
  It's like, am I ever good? Am I good enough to ever like
• 18:40
  truly make it? And then I thought, well, I
• 18:43
  don't know. And I was already living this
• 18:46
  way. So the only thing difference was
• 18:47
  there was a camera in a check. So I said yes, thinking that
• 18:53
  what big deal? Like it wouldn't be a big deal.
• 18:56
  And this was before like, yeah, media is media was very
• 19:00
  different. Like this is like 2006.
• 19:02
  So this is like pre Facebook or right at the big.
• 19:05
  This is when. This is when Myspace is like
• 19:09
  edits, so this is. So there's no only fans, there's
• 19:13
  no TikTok, there's no Instagram. So in a sense there was a little
• 19:17
  bit more maybe feeling of anonymity around, hey, I can do
• 19:21
  some maybe porn scenes, but that doesn't mean my whole social
• 19:25
  network immediately will know it unless they're like looking at
• 19:27
  pornography. Was that kind of the sense?
• 19:29
  It was my thought, but I was very wrong.
• 19:31
  It's like I did 1. I did one film and it went
• 19:34
  somewhat viral and. What was that like the lead up
• 19:37
  to that? So you're talking to these girls
• 19:39
  in a bar to agree to do it? Are they involved in porn too?
• 19:42
  Yeah. So they were headhunters.
• 19:43
  OK, so they go to restaurants and find aspiring models and
• 19:48
  actors and just pick them up for porn.
• 19:50
  Yeah, they're, they're pretty. So the way they do that is like,
• 19:52
  hey, we would love to introduce you to our agent.
• 19:56
  And it's interesting that, you know, I, I think that it's such
• 20:01
  an interesting thing to look at because.
• 20:03
  Like the coercion that happens within language, like if if you
• 20:07
  call something something different than what it is and
• 20:09
  there's a layer of like familiarity to it, it could lead
• 20:13
  to compromise where if you call things what they were, you would
• 20:17
  you would be shocked by them. Why?
• 20:18
  What did they call it? Well, they were just, I mean,
• 20:20
  just saying that, well, for them, they were using familiar
• 20:23
  language and that, hey, we're going to introduce you to our
• 20:26
  agent. And just the fact that it's
• 20:28
  called the adult film industry, it's like, is that acting like
• 20:32
  an adult? Certainly not, you know.
• 20:34
  And there are these, like, actual films that require
• 20:37
  writing and art and, you know, yeah, beautiful production in
• 20:40
  the same way other films do. Right.
• 20:42
  But so, but that's how he, he kind of got me though, because
• 20:48
  so I, I go to this, this office and I was thinking, OK, this is
• 20:52
  going to be like this sketchy situation.
• 20:54
  I'm going to like go to like a Motel 6 and there's going to be
• 20:57
  a guy like picking lint out of his belly button or something
• 20:59
  like super weird. I'm just going to get out of
• 21:01
  there. But it was in Studio City and it
• 21:05
  was adjacent to like where Universal Studios is.
• 21:08
  And is this in this big beautiful business complex.
• 21:12
  And I walk in and there's this English guy sitting there and he
• 21:15
  had like a big double Windsor tie and he asked me 3 questions.
• 21:20
  He said, what are you doing in LA?
• 21:26
  No, what do you say? Oh, how did you grow up?
• 21:30
  What are you doing in LA and what do you hope to accomplish?
• 21:33
  And I said, well, pretty much it was just me and my mom and.
• 21:37
  And he's thinking bingo. Sure.
• 21:39
  Like he's he's he's asking for, you know, ammunition to
• 21:43
  manipulate with. So yeah, like broken home.
• 21:48
  What what are, you know, why are you in LA?
• 21:50
  It's like I want to do acting and modelling and what you have
• 21:53
  to accomplish. Well, if I would just say be
• 21:56
  very careful if you find yourself saying when I said I
• 22:00
  want to be famous because being famous is not a goal to obtain.
• 22:07
  It's actually a a really clear indication there's something
• 22:10
  broken in you that you feel like if enough people knew my name,
• 22:15
  if I make enough money, if I did enough XY and ZI would feel
• 22:20
  validated because I currently don't.
• 22:23
  So that's what that's saying it, but that's what I said.
• 22:26
  I want to be famous. He was like, great.
• 22:29
  He's like, I could, I could make you really well known in this
• 22:33
  industry. And because you have an acting
• 22:35
  background, the industry is actually actually shifting in
• 22:39
  their parroting movies and a lot of people are putting a lot of
• 22:43
  money into production. And you can be the lead in all
• 22:46
  these films. So it would be so advantageous
• 22:49
  for you that you have acting experience and that's a passion
• 22:52
  of yours because we could leverage that to make sure
• 22:55
  you're the guy. And that the sad part was none
• 23:00
  of those things were lies. All those things came to
• 23:02
  fruition, but just not how you would think.
• 23:08
  So I said, I said, OK, I'll do one thinking that what you're
• 23:12
  saying is OK, but I'm going to do one.
• 23:14
  I'll try it out. What harm could it do to me
• 23:17
  personally? And then honestly, the the way
• 23:21
  that I was living, he was like, well, the first thing we do is
• 23:25
  there's a specific lab that everyone goes to because we want
• 23:30
  to get, you know, consistent data points.
• 23:32
  So everyone does full panel STD and aids tests from the same
• 23:36
  place. So that make that we make sure
• 23:38
  that everyone's safe. So I was like, I probably could
• 23:41
  use to do that. I've been living Perry, you
• 23:44
  know, you know, unclean life. So.
• 23:47
  Thanks for the free test. Yeah, Yeah.
• 23:49
  I mean, that's pretty much what I was thinking Like, OK, great.
• 23:51
  And I and I do the test and everything comes back fine and
• 23:54
  he sets up the scene and I get there.
• 23:56
  And from the time that I got there, it, it was so much
• 24:00
  different than what I thought because I thought, you know,
• 24:03
  back back at this time, it's like, you know, I didn't know
• 24:05
  anything about a camera other than like a handheld, like
• 24:08
  little, you know, $100 Canon. And I, I walk on the set and
• 24:13
  there's a receptionist and said, fill this out.
• 24:16
  This is how you get paid. And I saw it, you know, filled
• 24:18
  out like AW2W4, whatever, and then filled out this contract
• 24:23
  and I signed my name a bunch of times, but I didn't read it.
• 24:26
  You know, I was nervous. Like I wouldn't think.
• 24:29
  I was like, OK, I'm going to have sex with someone and
• 24:31
  they're going to pay. You know what it said that.
• 24:33
  Contract now I do. What did I say?
• 24:36
  Well, ultimately you're signing away all.
• 24:38
  So you're, you're signing an independent contractor contract
• 24:41
  and also you're signing away all rights to any images, sound
• 24:46
  bites or video. In addition to that, the last
• 24:49
  signature was that they can sell that content parsed as many
• 24:54
  times as they want to as many third parties as possible.
• 24:56
  And it doesn't have a limit. So meaning that I've done 1000
• 25:01
  movies, I'd, I'd 1000 movies in six years.
• 25:05
  And it's, it's been parsed into 100,000 pieces of, of content
• 25:09
  sold to, you know, there's, you know, there's dubbed versions
• 25:14
  that are in different countries that are, that are played in
• 25:17
  hotels. My, my likeness is on, you know,
• 25:21
  not not as much anymore, but my likeness was on sex toys, my,
• 25:25
  you know, posters, dating websites, fake profiles and all
• 25:31
  the stuff was everywhere because there was this level of, well,
• 25:34
  even though it was my face, it was tied to a fictitious name.
• 25:38
  And that in itself should point to the level of shame in that
• 25:42
  industry because the first thing you do, he said that I would
• 25:44
  make your name famous. Yet the first thing I did was
• 25:46
  surrendered my name and choose another one.
• 25:50
  So that in itself, if you you know, to the person saying I
• 25:54
  love what I do, why is the first thing you do is you change your
• 25:58
  name that points directly to shame.
• 26:01
  All right, so you guys, I'm very picky about my skin care.
• 26:03
  I always have been. I tried a lot of products, high
• 26:07
  end products, low end products, all different kinds of products
• 26:10
  over the years. And it's been very hard for mine
• 26:12
  to find a line that I like multiple products and I'll keep
• 26:14
  using. And that's why I'm so excited to
• 26:16
  share about Mimi Skin care. Mimi Skin Care first caught my
• 26:19
  eye because it's a beautiful brand.
• 26:20
  They've got great sourcing of their ingredients, but they're
• 26:23
  also a pro-life, pro family company.
• 26:25
  So when I tried their product for the first time, I was
• 26:27
  surprised to discover that I love using Mimi Skin Care.
• 26:30
  I love with their moisturizer, which I use every night.
• 26:32
  I love using their vitamin C scrub.
• 26:34
  I love using their sunscreen. They have all kinds of other
• 26:36
  products. I think you're going to love
• 26:37
  Mimi Skin Care. Give them a try.
• 26:39
  It's nimiskincare.com. That's Nimi Mimi skincare.com,
• 26:45
  and for the holidays, you can use the code Lila at checkout
• 26:48
  for 15% off your order. That's Mimi skincare.com.
• 26:52
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• 26:54
  Try some amazing product and use the code Lila at checkout for
• 26:57
  15% off your order. That's Mimi skincare.com.
• 27:01
  How much did they pay you for that first suit shoot?
• 27:03
  Like $500. 500 bucks and they got everything unlimited use of
• 27:08
  your entire body you so when you got there and there's I'm
• 27:13
  guessing another female on set. Did you like in get?
• 27:16
  I mean, was that awkward? Did you engage?
• 27:18
  It wasn't awkward because we didn't.
• 27:20
  Well, it was awkward because we didn't engage.
• 27:22
  So I get there. She was taking like photos.
• 27:26
  She was doing like a striptease or whatever, but I get there and
• 27:30
  you know, it's, it's like a traditional set.
• 27:32
  Like I walk by and then there's like a makeup room and there's
• 27:35
  there's girls and makeup chairs. You know, there's a bunch of
• 27:37
  bags in there. It's just like, you know, felt
• 27:39
  like, you know, a, a model shoot or almost like a runway show
• 27:42
  because like it was just super crazy.
• 27:45
  But then you as I continue walking, APA comes up to me.
• 27:48
  It's like, Hey, I understand this is your first time.
• 27:51
  Here's a Viagra puts it in my hand.
• 27:53
  If you've never taken it before, I would bite it in half, but
• 27:55
  you've touched it. It's in your hand.
• 27:56
  It's yours. I'd never taken that before.
• 28:00
  I didn't know what to do. And then he's like, we're going
• 28:02
  to need you in about 30 minutes. And the only thing that I'd seen
• 28:06
  or anything I knew about the girl was that her IDs matched.
• 28:09
  Because like the first thing you do, you, they scan your IDs and
• 28:13
  you see her IDs and you have to sign that you saw that her IDs
• 28:16
  match her test, her STD test. So other than that, that was my
• 28:21
  only knowledge of who the person was.
• 28:24
  And then I go in the bathroom and like looking at myself and
• 28:28
  I'm like, what have I done? And it's almost like the way
• 28:31
  that they set me up or not set me up.
• 28:34
  But the the way that it transpired was they picked me up
• 28:37
  in a town car and they brought me to this undisclosed location.
• 28:42
  And to leave out of had to be like, you know, a kid that went
• 28:46
  to a sleepover that wanted to leave.
• 28:49
  I would have to call him like, Hey, I changed my mind.
• 28:51
  I want to, I want to come back home.
• 28:53
  And so I felt shame about that. I wanted to do that, but I
• 28:56
  didn't. And then I'm in the bathroom
• 28:58
  like, what am I going to do? And so I just popped the entire
• 29:02
  pill, chugged a bottle of water and walk into this like sea of
• 29:07
  lights. And you know, there was, it
• 29:09
  wasn't me holding a camera. It was like camera A, camera B,
• 29:12
  camera C. There was someone shooting BTS.
• 29:14
  There was a boom mic around my head.
• 29:16
  There was someone holding AC light underneath me.
• 29:19
  And it was the most awkward, I'm dehumanizing thing that I could
• 29:22
  possibly think of. I felt disgusting afterwards.
• 29:26
  I, I, I remember so clearly that there was like Lube and all kind
• 29:31
  of stuff like on the, on my legs, like in my leg here.
• 29:35
  And then like in the bathroom in the shower, like they had like
• 29:39
  a, like hand soap in the shower to take a shower.
• 29:43
  And I remember like trying to take a shower.
• 29:45
  And I remember just that ride home, like looking at that check
• 29:49
  feeling so disgusting and just feeling like, like the
• 29:54
  interaction I had with the girl. It was, it was so far from
• 29:59
  anything that was intimate. Because I mean that literally
• 30:01
  the director is telling you exactly what to do, how long to
• 30:04
  do it, when to stop, when to start.
• 30:08
  You're you're, you're doing it for the camera not to feel good.
• 30:12
  So that's awkward. And then there's so much
• 30:17
  disconnect with this person that like, if you're making eye
• 30:21
  contact, it's because he, the director is telling you to.
• 30:26
  But more often than not, it's the girls looking at the camera
• 30:30
  to simulate the girl looking at whoever's watching it.
• 30:35
  So it's like you're you're just doing an act.
• 30:38
  It's like a you guys are like dolls.
• 30:41
  Yeah, absolutely. Sex toys.
• 30:42
  You like toys for somebody else? Yeah, so that ends feel
• 30:46
  disgusting. I was like, I'll never do that
• 30:49
  again. And then the the scene gets a
• 30:52
  lot of traction and my agent finds out.
• 30:56
  It's like, hey, I really like you.
• 31:00
  I think you're an incredible person, but we can't be
• 31:02
  associated with your likeness. You're fired.
• 31:05
  Wow. And then did you think that
• 31:06
  would happen? No.
• 31:08
  Was that a blow? I mean that that was everything.
• 31:11
  That's why I was there. I mean, I loved, loved what I
• 31:15
  did, loved it. I love, I love, like everything
• 31:19
  about the arts. I love it.
• 31:21
  Then all of a sudden you're telling me I can't do the thing
• 31:23
  I love most and the thing that I've been pouring my energy
• 31:26
  into, the thing that my mom made so many sacrifices to now I feel
• 31:30
  like, gosh, my mom's going to be so mad.
• 31:31
  And then the worst thing possible happens.
• 31:33
  She finds out from someone. See, you know, living in a small
• 31:37
  town, like something like that circling around, it's going to
• 31:39
  find its way, you know, to my mom pretty quickly.
• 31:42
  And then I have this really awkward conversation with my
• 31:44
  mom, her saying, hey, you know, using all three of my names.
• 31:48
  Joshua, Luke Broom. Are you doing porno movies?
• 31:54
  Because someone told me at work that they had seen you, you on
• 31:59
  the Internet doing the stuff. Is this true?
• 32:01
  And I was humiliated. And it's so easy for, you know,
• 32:06
  people to, regardless of what situation you're in, like
• 32:09
  whatever, like crossroads you're in, if you believe a lie to be
• 32:14
  true, it's true to you. And you create a worldview
• 32:17
  through that lie. And I truly believed I was now
• 32:21
  bad because I had done bad and because what I was pursuing I
• 32:26
  could no longer do. The only option was to continue
• 32:30
  doing that. So.
• 32:34
  What did she say to you when you said yeah, that that I did.
• 32:37
  I did do that, Mom. So I love you, but you're so
• 32:40
  much better than that. How'd that make you feel?
• 32:44
  Terrible because I let my mom down and I knew that she was
• 32:48
  right. So at that point, you're faced
• 32:52
  with you got fired from your agent.
• 32:54
  It's like the doors are closing on the stuff that you came there
• 32:57
  to do. What was there a door, though?
• 33:00
  It sounds like the film, the porn film was a success.
• 33:03
  Yeah. So he then what happened?
• 33:05
  So the the agent calls me, he's like, I would love to sign you
• 33:07
  to a contract. I'd love to represent you.
• 33:10
  And like I was saying, it's like, well, the easiest thing to
• 33:14
  do is to continue to compromise. If you're living in compromise,
• 33:18
  the easiest thing to do is to continue to compromise.
• 33:21
  So I believe that that was the my only choice, even though that
• 33:25
  it, that absolutely wasn't true. I was 22 years old.
• 33:28
  I could have done anything, you know, but I decided, OK, I'm
• 33:33
  going to do this, but with the same mentality that I've had
• 33:36
  about everything in my life. Well, if I'm going to do it, I'm
• 33:40
  going to become the best. And I'm like, well, if I make
• 33:43
  enough money, you know, growing up, gosh, I hate to even say how
• 33:48
  I grew up in poverty because, yeah, I was with compassion in
• 33:52
  El Salvador seeing the people with dirt floors and no indoor
• 33:56
  plumbing, and they're making like $300 a a month selling
• 34:01
  papoozas on the corner. So I would hate to say that I
• 34:04
  grew up in poverty, but to me, from a Western context, it was
• 34:08
  poverty. So I believed if I made enough
• 34:12
  money, I would feel differently about myself and I and I, I love
• 34:17
  numbers, I love statistics. So I tracked well.
• 34:20
  Once I make $1,000,000 I'll be happy.
• 34:24
  Did you also think that I can help my mom like this little
• 34:29
  baby be a way to make it up to her?
• 34:30
  I'll have money to buy her something, help her out.
• 34:35
  Yeah, I should have. I should have thought that way,
• 34:36
  but I didn't. I've never even thought that.
• 34:43
  I think that. I was so self absorbed and so
• 34:46
  ashamed at the same time. I I just, I thought that OK my
• 34:50
  my relationship with her is fragmented in a way that it
• 34:55
  would never be the same. Did you want to have a family at
• 34:58
  that time? I mean, you're entering full
• 35:01
  like hardcore into hardcore porn.
• 35:02
  I mean, that's where you're heading.
• 35:04
  Did you have any kind of vision of like, I mean, you grew up
• 35:07
  without any models of marriage, healthy marriage, you, you know,
• 35:10
  single mother, she marries an abusive guy, divorces him later.
• 35:15
  Did you ever have a vision of beyond having wealth, maybe
• 35:19
  having a family one day or was that not even in the equation
• 35:21
  for. You, It was funny as I thought
• 35:23
  more about being a dad than I did about being a husband
• 35:26
  because I wanted to become the thing I never had.
• 35:29
  So I don't even know like how practically how I was thinking
• 35:32
  about that. I just knew that I wanted to
• 35:34
  become a father because I wanted to, to give the thing I never
• 35:37
  received. But I don't know.
• 35:42
  I mean, I, I longed for companionship.
• 35:44
  I, I, I long for relationship, but I, I don't think it like
• 35:49
  marriage was something that I was longing for, but I like
• 35:52
  being like, he asked me like, what are some of the things, if
• 35:55
  you asked me, I was 20 years old, Like, what are some of the
• 35:58
  things that are most important to you that you hope to
• 36:00
  accomplish? And I would have most certainly
• 36:03
  said become a father. But like, as I was in that
• 36:07
  industry, like, OK, if I make enough money, I'll feel a
• 36:10
  certain way. It didn't work.
• 36:12
  If I become the most famous person in that industry, if I
• 36:14
  win enough awards, then I'll feel good about myself.
• 36:17
  And, you know, after six years and 1000 movies, I've made, you
• 36:22
  know, over $1,000,000. I've won 18 different awards.
• 36:25
  And in 2012, I won performer of the year.
• 36:28
  And that's like the highest award that you can win.
• 36:31
  And I thought if I won that award because I'd been nominated
• 36:33
  for it four times, and this is the fourth I was nominated for,
• 36:36
  and I didn't win it three years prior, but I won it in 2012.
• 36:40
  And I thought for some reason, if I won that award, I would
• 36:45
  feel validated in a way that was deep enough that would make the
• 36:50
  feeling of the same way I felt like when I saw my dad, that I
• 36:55
  felt all the time. I thought for some reason that
• 36:57
  would go away and it actually made it worse.
• 37:02
  After you won that award, yeah. What was that like?
• 37:04
  So you'd up until this point, you've done several 100 films.
• 37:08
  Yeah. Over 1000.
• 37:08
  You've done over 1000 at the point of the award.
• 37:11
  Is it an award ceremony? You go up and you.
• 37:13
  Yeah, I mean, it was on like it was on Showtime, you know, it
• 37:17
  was like an award show at the Blasio, like in in Vegas.
• 37:21
  But I thought if, if you, if I won that I would feel
• 37:28
  validation, I'd feel peace, I'd feel joy.
• 37:33
  But it it wasn't like like instantly when it didn't make me
• 37:39
  feel like I thought it would. Anxiety was amplified,
• 37:43
  depression was deepened, and I quickly started thinking about
• 37:47
  taking my life. So you're holding this award,
• 37:50
  You go maybe back to your hotel room after the party and what,
• 37:53
  what, what thoughts are going through your head?
• 37:54
  What's wild is, is I found out prior to that I was going to win
• 38:01
  the award because there was like a sponsorship and I was going
• 38:04
  to, I was supposed to like go to this place in the celebration
• 38:07
  afterwards and all this stuff. I didn't even go, I didn't even
• 38:11
  go to the award show because I was so crushed by it not feeling
• 38:17
  like how I thought it would and like I was already someone that
• 38:22
  isolated myself. Like I, I wasn't into like
• 38:25
  partying or drugs or drinking unless I was being like, I
• 38:28
  didn't go anywhere unless I was being paid to be there.
• 38:32
  Like if I was being paid to be in Vegas at a club to, to do
• 38:35
  AVIP experience or something like that, I would go.
• 38:38
  If there was a signing that I was being paid to, to be there,
• 38:40
  I would go. But I would never choose to go
• 38:44
  out or do anything. I secluded myself and isolated
• 38:47
  myself more and more and more. And at that point, I started
• 38:52
  thinking about taking my life. And I'd done, I'd done a film in
• 38:57
  Atlanta and I was flying back and I, and that's when I made a
• 39:01
  very detailed plan to take my life when I got back home.
• 39:06
  During this time, I want to talk to that moment of you getting
• 39:09
  home after making that detailed plan.
• 39:11
  But zooming back over those six years, yeah, you said you didn't
• 39:14
  have a lot of social life. You basically worked a ton.
• 39:18
  I mean you're doing 150 plus films a year sounds like.
• 39:21
  Yeah, so I mean I'm. Doing crazy, yeah.
• 39:23
  Yeah. So working it pretty much, you
• 39:25
  know, because in the industry, like it kind of shuts down
• 39:30
  December and January because you're, you know, just the way
• 39:34
  you know, taxes are still real and like in that industry.
• 39:37
  So you're trying to do all this stuff prior to December.
• 39:40
  And then there's the awards show in January.
• 39:43
  So there's, there's prep to that.
• 39:44
  So really that's in a 10 month period of working 20 days a
• 39:48
  month where it was crazy because like in rest, like really
• 39:53
  thinking back like looking someone in in the eye in a
• 39:57
  normal interaction, like shaking their hand was terrifying to me.
• 40:04
  But I could have sex with anyone anywhere in front of.
• 40:07
  Hundreds of people because that had become so arbitrary to me
• 40:11
  and so like monotonous that it was just what I did.
• 40:16
  It was, it was just really sad how like displaced reality had
• 40:24
  become. Did you have any friends during
• 40:26
  that time? Well, in the industry, and I
• 40:28
  mean, I think like something that attributed to the level of
• 40:32
  mental and emotional trauma that I experienced is, you know, I'm
• 40:37
  still this jealous guy because I grew up, you know, with a single
• 40:41
  mom. So I felt like I needed to
• 40:42
  protect her. So I was if, if someone was
• 40:44
  talking to her, she was going to a date with someone, I was very
• 40:47
  protective. My mom tells the story of when I
• 40:50
  was like 9 where like a guy was talking to her in a grocery
• 40:53
  store and try to throw like a can of corn at him or something.
• 40:56
  It's like, stay away from my mom, but having that same
• 41:00
  mentality. I was a jealous boyfriend, you
• 41:03
  know, when it, when I was in a relationship.
• 41:05
  So now you're in the porn industry.
• 41:07
  Your friend group is the people in the industry because that's
• 41:10
  who you're around the most. And you're, you're, you're
• 41:13
  living in a way that is so different than the way that
• 41:17
  reality functions. You can't even really relate to
• 41:20
  people. So you're friends with people in
• 41:23
  the industry and you're probably dating people if you're dating
• 41:27
  people in the industry. So I remember we were at dinner
• 41:31
  and I was with the girl I was dating.
• 41:34
  And a friend of mine was with the girl he was dating.
• 41:36
  And I had worked with her that week and he had worked with my
• 41:41
  girlfriend that day. And we're sitting there
• 41:44
  literally saying out loud to to other people that we were in a
• 41:48
  monogamous relationship while we were having sex with people for
• 41:52
  a living. But at the same time, our friend
• 41:54
  group, we were suppressing reality to the point where we're
• 41:57
  not even acknowledging the fact that he had had sex with a
• 42:00
  person that I'm saying is my, you know, my companion might,
• 42:04
  might, you know, my girlfriend. So suppressing that reality for
• 42:09
  me, feeling jealous, but having to press those feelings down, it
• 42:14
  was it was bad. It was really bad for my mental
• 42:21
  health. So I think that contributed to
• 42:24
  the level of depression. And unfortunately that
• 42:28
  contributes to everyone in the industry because you're
• 42:31
  suppressing reality. You're saying I love what I do
• 42:34
  at the same time you're believing, well, I'll never do
• 42:37
  the thing I actually long to do. The passion that I have is is
• 42:41
  slowly dying inside because you have people in the industry
• 42:45
  saying no one's going to date you, you're never going to be
• 42:47
  able to do this. Like normal people won't date
• 42:49
  you. Yeah, like you, you so and it's
• 42:52
  almost like directors and producers, they would say those
• 42:54
  things because if you if, if they're telling you those things
• 42:58
  that you're already thinking, it's going to be so much easier
• 43:02
  to get you to continue to compromise.
• 43:04
  So, I mean, I've been out of the industry for 11 years and there
• 43:09
  were, there's been 30 people that I know that I've spent time
• 43:13
  with. I know their real names.
• 43:15
  I know where they're from. I know you know certain things
• 43:17
  about their life that have committed suicide.
• 43:22
  And it's not like the the industry is.
• 43:24
  I knew it, it wasn't a big industry.
• 43:27
  You're talking a few 100 people. So 30 people believed, well,
• 43:31
  this is always going to be on the Internet.
• 43:33
  This is always going to be who I am.
• 43:36
  There's no light at the end of the tunnel.
• 43:38
  So either the pain became so much that they took their life
• 43:41
  or they medicated with some type of drugs to numb the pain to the
• 43:45
  point where they overdosed. So 30 people, and that's there's
• 43:49
  far more people than that that have done that.
• 43:52
  There's just 30 people that I know personally and literally
• 43:55
  every roommate that I ever had dead.
• 43:59
  And here you are alive. Yeah.
• 44:03
  That girlfriend from that, that, you know, dinner or that lunch
• 44:07
  you had where you're acting out this monogamous relationship
• 44:10
  when you're all sleeping together on camera for money,
• 44:14
  you know, how did, how did it end with relationships like that
• 44:17
  in the pornography industry? I think it's really it's really
• 44:22
  common for you for or just people in general.
• 44:25
  Like if your normal environment is chaos, you become comfortable
• 44:31
  with chaos. So more often than not, the way
• 44:35
  that a relationship would end would be I would do something or
• 44:39
  just decide like, OK, like this needs to be over because I, I
• 44:44
  can't feel emotionally attached to you.
• 44:48
  This can't go any deeper than that.
• 44:50
  So even though we would talk about the, the, the fantasy of a
• 44:55
  normal life and a fantasy of a marriage, but it was more like
• 45:00
  something you would dream about that something that it could
• 45:02
  actually be. And I think because reality,
• 45:07
  because that reality wasn't attainable in my mind.
• 45:12
  Like if we got married, there's no way that someone, like
• 45:16
  someone could have sex with my wife like that.
• 45:18
  That was just like, it was just too much.
• 45:19
  Yeah. There were people in the
• 45:20
  industry that were married and they were both in the industry.
• 45:23
  And that was just what they did. It was just work.
• 45:27
  How do you think they sustained that?
• 45:29
  I, I did the Whatever podcast a few months ago with a number of
• 45:33
  other guests and there was a couple there that were basically
• 45:35
  a pornography, pornography actors.
• 45:39
  And they say they're married, they say they care about each
• 45:43
  other, and they literally do pornography, sometimes together,
• 45:48
  sometimes apart. I mean, I think like, what's
• 45:51
  your, what's your definition of marriage?
• 45:53
  You know, I, I think it, it goes to that.
• 45:55
  Like what, Like how do you see reality in what, what is, you
• 46:00
  know, the line in the sand? Like where, where do you, like,
• 46:04
  where is your moral reasoning coming from?
• 46:06
  What is the confines of marriage mean to you?
• 46:08
  Like you're, you live in the same house.
• 46:11
  Like, is that what you mean? Like there's, there's a, there's
• 46:13
  a ring on each other's hands. You have the last name, but are
• 46:17
  you committed to a life of sacrifice for one another that's
• 46:20
  bigger than yourself? They claimed it was emotion, it
• 46:23
  was that they kept their emotions for each other somehow
• 46:27
  and they separated. They severed emotion from
• 46:29
  physical, even though your emotions are you physically feel
• 46:32
  them. But that sex, sex acts can be
• 46:36
  done with anyone, doesn't really matter as long as they get paid
• 46:38
  for it. But their emotions were of love,
• 46:42
  were feelings of attraction, I guess, or restricted for each
• 46:45
  other. That's how they described it.
• 46:47
  Well, I, I would say again, you know, if if you believe a lie to
• 46:50
  be true, it becomes true to you and anything can become normal
• 46:53
  to you. I mean, I it, it's, it's really
• 46:57
  sad the way that you know, you like God has wired each of us to
• 47:03
  desire intimacy, but with him. And when we replace something
• 47:10
  that's that's meant for us to interact with, with a
• 47:13
  counterfeit, we might feel something, but it's going to be
• 47:17
  so less than we're going to need more and more and more of it.
• 47:20
  And eventually it's going to pollute the way that we think
• 47:22
  it's going to pollute the way that we live.
• 47:24
  And even though we can say that something is true, we can't be
• 47:28
  slaves to our feelings because our feelings are not dependable.
• 47:31
  There's no measure for our feelings.
• 47:33
  We might feel one way that one day we might feel another the
• 47:36
  next. That's not a commitment because
• 47:39
  the commitment is I'm going to show up and do something that
• 47:43
  I'm committed to regardless of how I feel.
• 47:47
  She talked about Lena was the name of the the woman or the the
• 47:50
  wife. And she talked about how she had
• 47:52
  to numb herself to accept her husband, her husband, you know,
• 47:56
  sleeping with other women in front of her basically.
• 47:59
  And you know, there was also, I think there was, there was
• 48:02
  doubt, but I can see what you're describing so well, this sort of
• 48:06
  invincibility of unreality, like I'm going to just pretend,
• 48:10
  pretend, pretend, pretend so hard.
• 48:12
  And in in addition to that, I mean thinking about, I mean
• 48:15
  thinking about putting myself back in those shoes.
• 48:18
  If you don't say that, then what?
• 48:26
  Then you're then your reality is I'm stuck in this place I can't
• 48:29
  get out of and I believe that I can't get out like this.
• 48:34
  This is I either have to say I'm OK with this happening or what.
• 48:39
  Despair. What you're talking about is if
• 48:41
  they don't live in that unreality, they'll just what
• 48:44
  will they do? What's?
• 48:44
  Overwhelming and and then so you're you're wrestling with a
• 48:48
  belief that this that there's nothing else I can do.
• 48:52
  Like once you do that, there's nothing else you can do.
• 48:54
  And you believe that your identity is tied to you sell
• 48:59
  your body for sex. That's who you are.
• 49:01
  It's not what you do, it's who you are.
• 49:04
  And when your identity is attached to your behavior, you,
• 49:09
  you believe, well, if this is not true, well, I can't do
• 49:13
  anything else because I'm not valuable in any other capacity.
• 49:17
  So what am I supposed to do? I have to risk.
• 49:20
  I have to suppress reality because the, you know, what's on
• 49:24
  the other side of that coin is what death?
• 49:30
  There's literally nothing else I can do.
• 49:32
  So I have to say I love my job. I'm OK with her doing that.
• 49:37
  And like your point, it's like she had to numb herself.
• 49:39
  She she wasn't OK with it. She admitted it kind of
• 49:42
  accidentally almost in the podcast, which didn't really get
• 49:46
  a lot of focus from the conversation because it went so
• 49:49
  many directions so quickly. But it was so remarkable to me,
• 49:53
  You know, it's like a moment of self revelation of yeah, I had
• 49:56
  to just, I had to get numb for it.
• 49:58
  But I love doing it like you love doing it.
• 50:00
  But get a numb. Get a numb yourself.
• 50:02
  And it's like you're, it's, I mean, you're, you are a walking
• 50:05
  contradictory. You know, you're, you're a
• 50:07
  walking contradiction. And it would hurt so bad to
• 50:12
  admit that. It's almost like when you commit
• 50:14
  to a lie for so long, it's like it's going to cost me so much to
• 50:18
  acknowledge that I'm living a lie that I'm willing to, even
• 50:23
  though I know this is not true. I have to keep moving forward
• 50:27
  because what's my other option? Wow, the holidays are almost
• 50:34
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• 50:37
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• 50:40
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• 50:43
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• 50:45
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  That's seven weeks coffee.com, and you can use the code Lila
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  for 10% off your order. So it's six years.
• 51:31
  It's over 1000 films. Was there a progression of the
• 51:35
  kind of content that you were involved in and the kinds of
• 51:39
  things that your agent and the people around you wanted you to
• 51:42
  do? Was it getting more and more
• 51:43
  hardcore? Did it go places that were
• 51:46
  increasingly uncomfortable for you?
• 51:48
  Yeah, so like specifically like girls.
• 51:52
  Girls have a no list. These are things that I don't
• 51:56
  want to do, so they don't do them.
• 51:59
  And sometimes people I don't want to work with, but often
• 52:02
  it's like if you date someone for a while and ends poorly,
• 52:05
  it's like I don't want to work with that person because that
• 52:07
  would be awkward, but which is another conversation in itself.
• 52:11
  But but girls will have a no list and they'll, you know, have
• 52:18
  have some time in the industry and then things will slow down
• 52:21
  for them. And then their agent will go to
• 52:24
  the, you know, the main studios and say, hey, how much will you
• 52:29
  give to see this person do that? And then the agent will go back
• 52:33
  and say to the girl out of nowhere, this studio is offering
• 52:38
  $50,000 for you to do the thing that you said you didn't want to
• 52:41
  do. And I know you don't want to do
• 52:42
  it, but if you do it, you'll be relevant.
• 52:44
  And they do it. And then the thing they said
• 52:47
  they would never do is something they do with normalcy because
• 52:51
  once they do it, it's just something they do.
• 52:54
  And once all those things are done, they lose their value.
• 52:58
  And then that's why there's so much turnover specifically with
• 53:01
  girls in the industry. But for me, it wasn't pressure
• 53:05
  from my agent to do things for me because my mom was abused and
• 53:12
  I saw that growing up. I, I refuse to do anything that
• 53:16
  was, was violent. You know, there's, there's
• 53:19
  certain like studios that shoot things where it's like very
• 53:23
  aggressive. Basically there's, there's,
• 53:26
  there's a few studios in San Francisco that do like bondage
• 53:30
  stuff where like you're tying girls up and beating and, and
• 53:33
  all this stuff. So I, I never did anything like
• 53:35
  that because it was just, it was too traumatic for me.
• 53:38
  And just, I honestly, I just thought it was wrong.
• 53:41
  But as I was in the industry, I would say yes to things like,
• 53:46
  well, you know, if I'm going to bartend, you know, with my shirt
• 53:51
  off or walk around in my underwear at a party and I would
• 53:55
  get paid a few $1000 for that. And that was something that I
• 53:58
  was doing. And, and escorting is something
• 54:00
  that is pretty common in the industry.
• 54:02
  And you know, for, for girls and guys, someone would, you know,
• 54:08
  link up with your agent and your agent would, you know, you would
• 54:11
  be on this, this hidden website and people could essentially buy
• 54:17
  a, a date with you, but it wasn't a date at all.
• 54:19
  It was, but they were paying for sex.
• 54:21
  And that person would take a test and you would get a check.
• 54:24
  So there was, it wasn't much different than you know what you
• 54:27
  were accustomed to it, you know, in, in that industry you become
• 54:31
  accustomed to, well, as long as you're getting paid for it, it's
• 54:34
  justifiable regardless of who it's with or where it is.
• 54:38
  And I found myself in a place where I'd say yes, I'd said yes
• 54:43
  to being in and being in a place in Europe.
• 54:48
  And I was there to, to bartend. And I wasn't really giving clear
• 54:54
  instructions what I was going to do.
• 54:56
  I just knew it was, you know, I, I was there to, you know, to, to
• 55:01
  look good with my shirt off and, and to serve people and kind of
• 55:03
  be, you know, eye candy or whatever.
• 55:06
  But I was given drinks and drugs and ended up essentially being
• 55:14
  raped. And I was, I was, I was
• 55:19
  cognizant of what was going on, but I didn't feel like I was in
• 55:22
  control of what was happening. Who was raping you?
• 55:26
  So we're two men, two men that, you know, are, you know,
• 55:33
  powerful people that have a lot of money that, that, that are
• 55:39
  documented of doing this often for over a 20 year period.
• 55:46
  And when that happened, I felt like it was my fault because I'd
• 55:53
  put myself in that space and I tried to not because when, when
• 55:58
  I engaged in anything sexual, I never really thought about it
• 56:02
  afterwards. Like really, after the first
• 56:04
  time I did that, sex became something that it was just
• 56:07
  something I did and I didn't really attach any feelings to
• 56:10
  it. But this was different so I felt
• 56:15
  OK. Because it wasn't part of the
• 56:16
  contract. Right.
• 56:18
  I mean, even and, and it was like, and it was, it was weird
• 56:22
  the way I thought about it because like, well, it was, it
• 56:25
  was more money than usual. Like it was, you know, it was
• 56:29
  like in the neighborhood of like $50,000.
• 56:32
  So I was thinking, OK, well it because it was more money than
• 56:39
  normal, it should be more justifiable, which is not right
• 56:43
  thinking, you know, but. Meaning you're like, they, they
• 56:46
  overpaid me for bartending and the fact that they drugged me
• 56:49
  and raped me. I it's hard for you to feel like
• 56:54
  it was. It's morally justifiable for you
• 56:56
  to be upset about that simply because you got a big Chuck even
• 57:00
  though you never agreed to that. Right.
• 57:01
  And then honestly, I mean, that's, that's kind of who I was
• 57:05
  because, you know, I that my value is tied to old people pay
• 57:09
  me for sex to either watch me have sex or to have sex with
• 57:14
  people. And the reality is that like
• 57:19
  you're not attracted to the person that you're doing the
• 57:23
  scenes with. I mean, every once in a while
• 57:25
  they'll they'll, you know, be someone that you know, you would
• 57:28
  be interested in or have some kind of like small connection
• 57:31
  with. But that's best case scenario,
• 57:34
  99% of the time it's not someone that you're connected with
• 57:40
  there. It's not someone that you would
• 57:41
  find attractive. That's not someone that you
• 57:42
  would approach the to be in a relationship with.
• 57:46
  So there's this like, you know this, there's separation from
• 57:51
  what is happening. And I don't know, I think that
• 57:56
  that's the way I tried to justify it, but it definitely
• 57:59
  made me feel like it made me feel a way that I couldn't
• 58:02
  really reconcile. It kind of broke the unreality
• 58:06
  you were living in. It sounds like something had
• 58:08
  happened that wasn't on your terms.
• 58:10
  You're raped by two guys and you couldn't really defend yourself
• 58:15
  from them. Like you were at this thing.
• 58:17
  You were drugged. What happened after that?
• 58:21
  Well, unfortunately I went back, they invited me back and then
• 58:26
  even though I didn't really want that to happen again, I, I guess
• 58:34
  I was just OK with it in some way.
• 58:36
  I don't really, I don't even really know like I'm, I've like
• 58:41
  walked through like some of this like with a counselor and just
• 58:46
  it's almost like I can't put my finger on like what made me
• 58:50
  justify going back. Do you think it was like a
• 58:54
  tendency to self harm or humiliation?
• 58:57
  You're already at such a low point.
• 58:59
  You'd given up, you'd lost the things that you had first hoped
• 59:02
  for. You're now really stuck in the
• 59:04
  porn industry and that was maybe humiliating.
• 59:07
  And it's like you're, you're still almost going back for more
• 59:10
  humiliation. I mean, I, I think that would
• 59:13
  probably can be true. It was, you know, it was
• 59:17
  definitely a dark place to be. And so, and then I started to
• 59:21
  get to a place where, you know, I'm just not doing OK mentally.
• 59:27
  And then I'm wrestling with like, OK, I'm, I'm doing 2025
• 59:34
  scenes a month. Been doing that for six years.
• 59:39
  And it was just weighing on me and I hated it.
• 59:44
  I hated doing it, but at the same time I got a lot of
• 59:48
  affirmation because I was good at it and made good money and
• 59:55
  people knew who I was. Well, then they knew that
• 59:58
  version of me. And I was just like, I can't, I
• 1:00:03
  can't do this anymore. And then I was just kind of
• 1:00:05
  like, OK, what what else can I do?
• 1:00:09
  So well, nothing outside of selling myself for sex.
• 1:00:11
  And you know this, this is like. 2011, 2012, you know, in, in the
• 1:00:18
  industry pretty much the entire time I was in the industry,
• 1:00:22
  there's, you know, there's a straight side of the industry
• 1:00:24
  and then there's the gay side of the industry.
• 1:00:26
  And really exclusively this is for men.
• 1:00:30
  Like there's, there's a lot of bleed over that happens.
• 1:00:33
  Like there's, you know, the the same like straight companies
• 1:00:37
  shoot lesbian porn, you know, like, you know, the girl on girl
• 1:00:40
  stuff. But there's something like that
• 1:00:43
  was extraordinarily taboo about the gay industry.
• 1:00:47
  When you when when I say gay industry explicitly, you're
• 1:00:50
  you're saying men because that's not even considered the gay
• 1:00:54
  industry. Not not then anyway.
• 1:00:59
  So often you know, anyone that was in the industry that was a
• 1:01:02
  good looking guy that was popular, all the studios were
• 1:01:05
  offering them like name your price, name your price.
• 1:01:08
  And I thought, well, I don't necessarily want to do that, but
• 1:01:13
  I can't continue doing this. And I went through my emails and
• 1:01:17
  I saw like a lot of big numbers and I thought, well, how bad
• 1:01:22
  could it be? And then if I'm doing that, I'm
• 1:01:24
  only going to have to do like 1 scene a month or two scenes a
• 1:01:27
  month and that'll be so much better than like 20 or 25 scenes
• 1:01:30
  a month. And I make a decision to start
• 1:01:34
  doing that. And it was so interesting.
• 1:01:37
  Like everyone that knew me was like really shocked because I
• 1:01:41
  didn't tell anyone that I was going to do it.
• 1:01:43
  I just, I just responded back to an e-mail and I did it.
• 1:01:49
  And I just won performer of the year as, you know, a straight
• 1:01:54
  performer and I, you know, been in the industry for six years.
• 1:01:57
  And I wasn't like I was the guy. And then when I did that, like
• 1:02:03
  my friends were hurt. We're like, dude, what are you
• 1:02:07
  doing? Are you gay?
• 1:02:10
  No, but why are you doing that? I didn't really have an answer.
• 1:02:15
  So all of a sudden that the little bit of a community I had
• 1:02:19
  gone because it's a completely different industry.
• 1:02:21
  And they're hurt because they're you're leaving business deals
• 1:02:24
  with them. Well, no, like my friends.
• 1:02:25
  Like dude, why would you do that?
• 1:02:29
  That what were they judging you for?
• 1:02:31
  That was. Not judging me just like I mean
• 1:02:33
  just imagine like someone like out of the blue I do something
• 1:02:37
  that was so contradictory of of who you knew them to be.
• 1:02:44
  So they did. They feel kind of betrayed, like
• 1:02:47
  you hadn't let them in on. Yeah, like why did you like art?
• 1:02:49
  Like why would you do that? Because like a a lot of the guys
• 1:02:53
  in the industry that were in the industry, like they were coming
• 1:02:56
  to me like, you know, how do you like, how do you become more
• 1:02:59
  successful in the industry? How do you like create the
• 1:03:01
  relationships that you have? Because all the companies that,
• 1:03:06
  you know, that would only hire like certain people, you know, I
• 1:03:09
  was one of those people. So a lot of like the younger
• 1:03:12
  guys, they were getting in the industry.
• 1:03:13
  It's like, how do I, you know, will you mentor me?
• 1:03:15
  Like how, how do I become, you know, like you?
• 1:03:18
  And then you're, you're, you see this person do something that is
• 1:03:22
  not, you know, doesn't line up with like who you know them to
• 1:03:26
  be. And really they're like so
• 1:03:28
  segmented that like immediately, because I didn't hang out with
• 1:03:32
  people, but I saw people on set because I was on set every day.
• 1:03:36
  So these were people I was around all the time.
• 1:03:38
  Then all of a sudden I just didn't see these people anymore.
• 1:03:41
  So you, you lost that community you're doing now, gay.
• 1:03:46
  You're entering the gay porn industry because you don't want
• 1:03:49
  to be doing pornography anymore. But it would seem like your only
• 1:03:52
  option, right? And what happens next?
• 1:03:56
  I do a few scenes and then I'm, I filmed the scene in Atlanta
• 1:04:02
  and I'm on my way back home and I'm on that plane and I'm like,
• 1:04:08
  I make a very detailed plan to take enough pills to where I
• 1:04:12
  would die. And I, I remember I was sitting
• 1:04:17
  in my apartment and I stacked the pills on the table and I was
• 1:04:21
  like, OK, I take a lot of vitamins every day, so I know I
• 1:04:24
  can take a lot of pills at once. So like, here's these three
• 1:04:26
  clumps of pill. The these three clumps of pills
• 1:04:30
  and I know that like I could probably swallow this many at
• 1:04:32
  once and it's like, it's enough where like I'm not going to
• 1:04:35
  chicken out. And I, I just remember I had
• 1:04:39
  this like giant payroll check like in my pocket and it would
• 1:04:42
  just feel it like it would just so abrasive to me.
• 1:04:44
  And I was, and I was thinking like, OK, this will help me
• 1:04:48
  justify it. And I opened the check and it
• 1:04:54
  said something grotesque, like the directors would always write
• 1:04:58
  something on the memo of the check almost to be demeaning to
• 1:05:02
  people because they know you have to cash that check.
• 1:05:04
  So it would be some kind of grotesque title on the memo of
• 1:05:07
  the check, knowing that you would have to cash it or deposit
• 1:05:10
  it. Why would they do that?
• 1:05:12
  I mean, the, the more that you, you know, mentally, you know,
• 1:05:17
  harm someone and it demeaned them, the more likely they're
• 1:05:21
  going to do. Yeah.
• 1:05:23
  Because it's like, if, if I feel less than, I'm not going to
• 1:05:28
  change anything about myself because I feel like I'm not
• 1:05:30
  going to have the power to do so.
• 1:05:32
  And my, if, if I don't think I'm worth anything, I'm just going
• 1:05:36
  to continue doing what I've always done.
• 1:05:38
  So, but my, my plan was I'm going to, I normally would go to
• 1:05:43
  the Dropbox or the ATM because I didn't want people to see what I
• 1:05:47
  had done. So I did.
• 1:05:48
  I would just put that in the Dropbox.
• 1:05:50
  But this time my OK, I'm going to go to the teller and I'm
• 1:05:54
  going to slide the check across the counter.
• 1:05:55
  And I'm just going to wait for her to say to me what I thought
• 1:05:59
  about myself to be true. And that was going to be my
• 1:06:02
  justification for me to go back and take the pills.
• 1:06:05
  And I slide the check across the counter and I'm shaking.
• 1:06:11
  I'm afraid I'm, you know, moments away from taking my
• 1:06:15
  life. And she looks at me and says,
• 1:06:18
  Joshua, are you OK? Joshua, how can I help you?
• 1:06:23
  And at that point, it had been over a year since I heard my
• 1:06:28
  name because I was going by a stage name.
• 1:06:32
  And I'd slowly like my mom, my brother, my friends through over
• 1:06:38
  time, they were Joshua, I love you, but man, what are you
• 1:06:42
  doing? Because that, that's the beauty
• 1:06:44
  of accountability. You know, if, if, if I'm with,
• 1:06:48
  you know, a friend of mine and they say, hey, you, you were
• 1:06:51
  speaking to your wife like pretty harshly.
• 1:06:53
  That's, that's out of character for you.
• 1:06:55
  Are you doing OK? I, I've got 2 choices.
• 1:06:58
  Either say, you know what, you're right.
• 1:07:00
  I need to apologize to her and I need to figure out what's going
• 1:07:03
  on with me because I'm not feeling right or don't tell me
• 1:07:08
  what to do. And I push you away.
• 1:07:11
  So I was in a place where people who love me was trying to draw
• 1:07:16
  me out of that industry. And I pushed them away.
• 1:07:19
  And I hadn't even heard my name in over a year.
• 1:07:23
  And this person that I believe was prompted by the spirit, just
• 1:07:29
  was aware enough to see what was going on.
• 1:07:32
  And she asked me if I was OK. And that decision LED for me
• 1:07:36
  instead of taking my life. I went home and I called my mom
• 1:07:41
  and I said that I was sorry and I was waiting on her to chew me
• 1:07:45
  out. But instead she said the same
• 1:07:47
  thing she had always been saying I love you, you're better than
• 1:07:51
  that, please just come home. So I did, I literally like I
• 1:07:57
  packed up my things and I called about 50 different people and I
• 1:08:01
  found someone to like sublease my place and I left everything I
• 1:08:05
  had in my apartment and I took my clothes and a few things and
• 1:08:10
  I left LA and I didn't go back for 10 years.
• 1:08:13
  And but while, but while I was gone from the porn industry,
• 1:08:18
  what I brought with me was all my brokenness.
• 1:08:21
  And now I was removed from the affirmation.
• 1:08:24
  I was removed from the pain. But I believed, you know, I
• 1:08:27
  covered up. I had to, I had a tattoo on my
• 1:08:30
  on my shoulder that I covered up.
• 1:08:33
  And I thought if I could cover my tattoo and delete my social
• 1:08:35
  media and shave my head, I could just magically pretend like none
• 1:08:38
  of those things that happened. But because the way the Internet
• 1:08:43
  works, like I had the content still coming out and people
• 1:08:47
  saying, aren't you that guy? Aren't you that guy?
• 1:08:49
  Aren't you that guy? How's one Google search away
• 1:08:53
  from everyone knowing the things that I was trying so desperately
• 1:08:58
  to hide? And I would just lied until I
• 1:09:01
  got found out. And I, that went on for about
• 1:09:03
  two years. I was working in a gym.
• 1:09:06
  I almost got fired because I didn't tell them the truth.
• 1:09:09
  And, you know, I was working, you know, in close proximity
• 1:09:12
  with people doing personal training and stuff like that.
• 1:09:15
  So yeah, they, they needed to know those things because it
• 1:09:19
  could be alarming, you know, but I didn't, I didn't, I wasn't
• 1:09:24
  forthcoming with that. And they found out and I didn't
• 1:09:28
  deserve them to be as kind as they were, but they set some
• 1:09:31
  boundaries and they said, Hey, I don't believe that you are the
• 1:09:36
  person who did those things. So I want to give to you, which
• 1:09:40
  I hope someone would give to me if I was in your shoes.
• 1:09:43
  So, you know, another chance. So I, I worked in that gym and
• 1:09:47
  two years into that same, I was trying to like put enough good
• 1:09:52
  dirt on my bad dirt so I didn't feel dirty.
• 1:09:55
  And, you know, so got every, you know, health and fitness
• 1:10:01
  credential that I could find and got mentorship and got really
• 1:10:05
  good at doing the same thing I was doing in the industry.
• 1:10:08
  I'm going to become the best. I'm going to make money.
• 1:10:10
  I'm going to get, you know, accreditation.
• 1:10:12
  I'm going to get people to tell me I'm good at the things that
• 1:10:14
  I'm doing. And I I loved it because I loved
• 1:10:18
  connecting with people. I loved seeing people do things
• 1:10:21
  that they didn't believe they could do but and walk this girl
• 1:10:26
  one day and she was the prettiest thing I've ever seen.
• 1:10:29
  And I asked her all a date and she shot me down and I fell in
• 1:10:34
  love because she rejected me. But but I was persistent and she
• 1:10:41
  agreed to go on a run with me. And I, I was waiting on her to,
• 1:10:46
  to get there. And I just felt like in my
• 1:10:48
  conscious, like almost my mom and I think maybe like the Holy
• 1:10:53
  Spirit is starting to work on me, but I just felt like, don't,
• 1:10:57
  don't you dare lie to that girl. And, and so the way that I took
• 1:11:02
  that is OK. I'm going to save myself and her
• 1:11:06
  from a lot of agony because what would happen would be is I would
• 1:11:09
  store a relationship with someone and then they would find
• 1:11:12
  out and that would kind of blow up in my face.
• 1:11:14
  So I'm like, I'm just going to tell her up front and then she's
• 1:11:18
  not going to do anything to do with me.
• 1:11:19
  And then, you know, and when she gets there and I'm like, hey,
• 1:11:26
  before we start our running, I just want to tell you something.
• 1:11:29
  And to be honest, like I'd never really been honest with anyone
• 1:11:33
  like that. So it's almost like I passed out
• 1:11:37
  and I told her like every bad thing I've ever done for like 5
• 1:11:40
  minutes. And she was obviously very taken
• 1:11:43
  back by that. And then after she processed for
• 1:11:47
  seemed like a long time, she looked at me and said, well, are
• 1:11:51
  you still doing those things that you said Said no.
• 1:11:55
  She's like, whoa, persons not defined by the worst thing
• 1:11:58
  they've ever done. And now and a person is not
• 1:12:03
  defined by the best thing they'll ever do.
• 1:12:05
  There's an author of life, God. He created you and he determines
• 1:12:10
  who you are. Do you know him?
• 1:12:13
  I was like, sure, sure I do, because I, I, well, I grew up
• 1:12:18
  going to church a little bit and I thought to be a Christian
• 1:12:21
  meant that you acknowledged that God was real and he created
• 1:12:24
  everything. But that's where it stopped.
• 1:12:26
  And honestly, for me, I had no idea who I was.
• 1:12:31
  So I'd become very good at becoming the person across, you
• 1:12:35
  know, whoever I thought that the person across from me wanted me
• 1:12:37
  to be. I caught a first date mask where
• 1:12:40
  I'm going to become whoever I think you want me to be so that
• 1:12:43
  you like me because I have no idea who I am.
• 1:12:46
  And that, yeah, that that that's the point.
• 1:12:49
  Industry in a in a nutshell. It's like you, you, you pretend.
• 1:12:52
  You pretend or you try to try your best to act out these
• 1:12:59
  fictitious representations of intimacy.
• 1:13:04
  And you, you're a person that you know, you're, you're
• 1:13:08
  pretending to be someone you're not.
• 1:13:09
  And you're even going by a fake name and you're often you're
• 1:13:12
  playing a fake role and and there's so many layers of
• 1:13:15
  counterfeit that you don't even know who you are.
• 1:13:18
  And, you know, to, to hear her say that is it was pretty
• 1:13:23
  challenging. And then she, you know, pressed
• 1:13:26
  in a little bit, she's like, well, you know, I've been
• 1:13:27
  following Jesus for a long time. My whole family is Christian.
• 1:13:31
  And I'm not perfect by any means, but my relationship with
• 1:13:34
  Jesus is the foundation in in which I live my life.
• 1:13:38
  Do you like tacos? Yeah.
• 1:13:41
  And she when she asked me like, what kind of food do I like?
• 1:13:44
  Do I have any like long, short, long term, short term goals and
• 1:13:47
  just like cared about me and I was taken back by the way that
• 1:13:52
  she responded to me. You know, think about how like
• 1:13:55
  Colossians 46 talks about like your speech, being gracious and
• 1:13:58
  seizing the salt, how you might, how you might know how you ought
• 1:14:01
  to answer each person. And it was the way that she
• 1:14:04
  responded to what I said, where she extended grace, but also she
• 1:14:08
  told me the truth. And that's what love looks like.
• 1:14:11
  But I'm just so captivated by her and curious about what
• 1:14:16
  allowed her to respond like that and often and then also like her
• 1:14:20
  looking what I thought my entire life to be true in the face and
• 1:14:23
  tell me telling me that it wasn't.
• 1:14:26
  I believed that I was bad because I did bad things.
• 1:14:31
  I thought I was. I believed I was bad because I
• 1:14:33
  did bad things. And I believed that I was, you
• 1:14:37
  know, inadequate because of the relationship I had with my
• 1:14:42
  father, so that those are those things that I thought that'd be
• 1:14:47
  true. And she looked me in the face.
• 1:14:48
  And those things don't define who you are.
• 1:14:53
  So we text for about a week, and then we end up in church.
• 1:14:57
  And I don't, you know, I didn't think that I deserved her or
• 1:15:03
  should have been there, but I was there mostly because I
• 1:15:07
  wanted to peer around her. And this pastor gets up and he
• 1:15:10
  starts preaching this this sermon out of Second Samuel,
• 1:15:14
  Chapter 9. He's talking about this dynamic
• 1:15:16
  between Jonathan and David. And historically, when a new
• 1:15:20
  Kingdom was established, the previous Kingdom was completely
• 1:15:23
  wiped out because they didn't want him to think they had
• 1:15:25
  access to this new Kingdom. And, you know, this dynamic
• 1:15:30
  between Jonathan and David was different.
• 1:15:32
  They were dear friends and David asks, is there is there anyone
• 1:15:35
  remaining out of the lineage of Saul?
• 1:15:37
  And there was there was my Feblesheth and my Feblesheth new
• 1:15:41
  history. So he was expecting death.
• 1:15:44
  And David sends his guard to go find my Feblesheth and brings
• 1:15:48
  him into his Kingdom and gives him a seat at his table and even
• 1:15:51
  restores his land and and my Feblesheth is pretty taken back
• 1:15:54
  by this even like refers to himself as a a dead dog.
• 1:15:57
  He's like, who am I? You know, to be in the presence
• 1:15:59
  of you. I, I deserve death.
• 1:16:02
  And the pastor kind of pivots from there and he's like, well,
• 1:16:07
  you know what? Romans 323 says that we've,
• 1:16:10
  we've all sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
• 1:16:12
  And Romans 623 says the wages of sin is death.
• 1:16:15
  So guess who's guilty? Everybody.
• 1:16:18
  Guess who's deserving of death? Everybody.
• 1:16:22
  But there's good news that Jesus, being fully God and fully
• 1:16:25
  man, came into this world and he was born of a virgin, lived a
• 1:16:29
  perfect life. He resisted temptation, He never
• 1:16:32
  sinned, and he went to the cross and he died.
• 1:16:35
  He died and he paid the debt for you and for me.
• 1:16:39
  And on the third day he authenticated his identity as
• 1:16:42
  the Son of God, the Messiah, the one who takes away the sins of
• 1:16:45
  the world. And I'm hearing these things and
• 1:16:47
  I knew them to be true and the Holy Spirit just like really
• 1:16:52
  wrestling with me in my heart. But what I what I was struggling
• 1:16:56
  with was why would God a flesh die for me?
• 1:17:03
  My own dad just find me the things that I've done in my
• 1:17:07
  life. Why would God die for me?
• 1:17:11
  And I feel like imperfect timing.
• 1:17:13
  He starts reading out of Hebrews 12.
• 1:17:16
  He talks about how Jesus, it was with joy set before him, He
• 1:17:20
  endured the cross. So he was perfect in every way.
• 1:17:22
  So of course he was obedient to the Father, but he loved me.
• 1:17:36
  And like, I felt that like in my bones, like I felt his love
• 1:17:42
  radiate into and Pierce my heart and I knew it all to be true.
• 1:17:49
  And I relinquished my life of feeling like I wasn't good
• 1:17:54
  enough because God, and as she came into this world and died so
• 1:17:59
  that I could be reconciled to God.
• 1:18:03
  So I, I, I, I surrendered my life and, and I've been
• 1:18:07
  following Jesus since then. And the girl that we went on
• 1:18:11
  that walk, it's her name. Her name is Hope.
• 1:18:13
  And she's my wife. And we've been married for
• 1:18:17
  almost 8 years and we've got four boys and it's just been an
• 1:18:24
  incredible journey. And I just remember why I'm, why
• 1:18:28
  I'm all in my fields. I'll just stay here.
• 1:18:31
  I remember when our first son was born again, I didn't know
• 1:18:34
  how to be a dad. I hadn't been around kids.
• 1:18:38
  I, I didn't, you know, I was anxious and nervous And I
• 1:18:42
  remember he, he was born and like the nurse was like wiping
• 1:18:46
  him off and he's like, I'll slimy and whatnot.
• 1:18:49
  And she said you, you can come and touch him.
• 1:18:53
  And I reached my hand over in his direction.
• 1:18:55
  He grabs my finger and I feel God whisper in my spirit that I
• 1:18:59
  I love you more than that. And how right now you feel like
• 1:19:07
  you've only, you know, been in the presence of this child from
• 1:19:11
  for moments and you would die for him gladly.
• 1:19:16
  It's the same way Jesus feels about you.
• 1:19:22
  And I understood what it meant to be a father through becoming
• 1:19:27
  a son. And we named him Canon because
• 1:19:31
  Canon and Hebrew means measuring stakes.
• 1:19:33
  So it's the measure of God's grace to us.
• 1:19:35
  It's why we chose that name. And it's been quite a ride over
• 1:19:41
  the last, you know, eight years. But, you know, put the same into
• 1:19:44
  the same intentionality that I pursued sin and lived in
• 1:19:49
  brokenness, I pursued Jesus. So three days after I, you know,
• 1:19:53
  gave my life to Christ, I go to this church.
• 1:19:55
  I'm like, Hey, I've got a story and I, I share it with a pastor
• 1:19:59
  and he says with me and, you know, he introduces me to
• 1:20:03
  another pastor and he starts reading the Bible with me and
• 1:20:06
  teaching me how to read it and. We meet together and he
• 1:20:09
  disciples me for, you know, several hours a week for about 3
• 1:20:13
  years. And then I fall in love with the
• 1:20:16
  Bible because Jesus saved my life.
• 1:20:19
  But the back the Bible in a practical way, like
• 1:20:22
  understanding it and learning it and applying it to my life
• 1:20:25
  changed my life. And I just fell in love with it
• 1:20:28
  to the point where I wanted to know it so that I can share it.
• 1:20:32
  And I go to Liberty, study Christian Ministries and, you
• 1:20:35
  know, get a degree there. And through that process, God's
• 1:20:38
  done some really amazing things. And I've been on staff at a few
• 1:20:42
  churches and been able to preach the gospel literally all over
• 1:20:46
  the world and. What, what is it like?
• 1:20:49
  I mean, that that morning where you're in church with your
• 1:20:52
  crush, who like is you're kind of blown away by the way she
• 1:20:56
  responds to you. You've been honest with her,
• 1:20:59
  unlike you've been honest with anyone before.
• 1:21:02
  And you're hearing the the gospel.
• 1:21:03
  You're hearing the gospel in a way for the first time.
• 1:21:06
  I mean, it sounds like you'd kind of been familiar around it
• 1:21:08
  as a kid. But like, it really speaks to
• 1:21:10
  you. And you know, you know, God
• 1:21:12
  loves you feel it. Like you said, when you left the
• 1:21:15
  church, were you on cloud 9 or were you, or were there also
• 1:21:20
  like, OK, now what do I do with all this life I've lived before?
• 1:21:23
  What what were you experiencing? I just felt free.
• 1:21:28
  I felt free and I felt like it's it's almost it was like for me,
• 1:21:34
  just who I am, whenever I experience something that is
• 1:21:40
  enjoyable or life giving to me, my natural personality is want
• 1:21:44
  to give it away to others. And that's not a coincidence.
• 1:21:46
  Like God has wired us all the disciple, though, So it's like
• 1:21:50
  you've you've been forgiven much so that you can, you know,
• 1:21:52
  display his forgiveness for we're ambassadors, we're
• 1:21:55
  carriers of that word of reconciliation.
• 1:21:57
  So for me, just thinking back, you know, my, my grandma's
• 1:22:03
  buttermilk biscuits, like I could smell them like right now,
• 1:22:06
  you know, and I could just say it's super nostalgic, but I
• 1:22:09
  would always want, I'm like, man, you have to try this.
• 1:22:13
  It's amazing. I want you to have that.
• 1:22:15
  So the first thing that I was thinking was like, gosh, the
• 1:22:19
  weight that I've been carrying my entire life is gone and I
• 1:22:27
  need to tell everyone about this.
• 1:22:30
  Well, and you've been doing that methodically with your ministry,
• 1:22:34
  and I have a media business like you're methodically doing that,
• 1:22:37
  telling everyone not just your story, but the truth about life
• 1:22:41
  and God and marriage and these things.
• 1:22:44
  Did you turn around and start telling your old friends in the
• 1:22:48
  industry? Like did you communicate with
• 1:22:50
  them after? Yeah.
• 1:22:51
  So I mean. After that experience and.
• 1:22:54
  So I think there was like really wise counsel in my life that
• 1:22:58
  prevented me to, to, from doing that too soon because I, there
• 1:23:03
  was a season where it was unhealthy for me to be exposed
• 1:23:07
  to that environment. So I really had to take it.
• 1:23:10
  I was, I went through a season of like really gleaning like
• 1:23:13
  there was a season of like, OK, let's take inventory of
• 1:23:15
  everything in your life. And if it doesn't align with the
• 1:23:19
  way that you're going, at least for a season, let's remove it.
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• 1:24:02
  So did you have, it sounds like you had spiritual pastors who
• 1:24:05
  were mentoring you. Did you also talk to like
• 1:24:07
  therapists? Yeah.
• 1:24:09
  Yeah, I went to therapy. I did.
• 1:24:11
  The whole thing because you're like, it's like a cleansing like
• 1:24:14
  I mean. But for me?
• 1:24:14
  Restoration process A. 100% but for me it it's so beautiful
• 1:24:18
  because like Jesus is Lord over everything even TikTok like like
• 1:24:23
  everything and he redeems all things for his glory.
• 1:24:27
  It's true. So, and he has, if the glory is
• 1:24:30
  greater, he can show his glory even greater through the
• 1:24:32
  greatest of sins and faults. Certainly like that's just his
• 1:24:35
  power is even more beautifully manifested.
• 1:24:38
  Like it's been, it's made perfect in his in your weakness.
• 1:24:41
  Like his perfect power, his perfect strength is made perfect
• 1:24:45
  in your weakness. But like for me, just thinking
• 1:24:49
  about like, I think this is a really beautiful thing to kind
• 1:24:52
  of examine because when someone is without God, they still have
• 1:24:56
  these like attributes, their personalities, their, their,
• 1:25:00
  their giftings. Like most certainly there are
• 1:25:02
  certain things that are unlocked that Galatians 5, you know, 2022
• 1:25:07
  and 23 talk about like the gifts, the Holy Spirit.
• 1:25:09
  But there's certain attributes that you have with your
• 1:25:12
  personality, what you're good at, like logistically where you
• 1:25:15
  are, like your uniqueness. Your talents, I mean, it's it's
• 1:25:19
  crazy because God gives talents freely.
• 1:25:21
  Yeah, we can use them for ill. Yeah.
• 1:25:23
  And you see that in the world, so that you see people in media
• 1:25:27
  and politics and everything else business using talents
• 1:25:30
  incredibly, but ultimately for ill, 100%.
• 1:25:32
  And you had a ton of talent and now it's like, OK.
• 1:25:35
  Yeah, let's. Reshape all this towards yeah,
• 1:25:38
  and all this other potential. In all like in the thing that he
• 1:25:42
  repurposed in my life that was very healthy was that as an
• 1:25:47
  athlete, I knew that constructive criticism allowed
• 1:25:51
  me to get better. As an actor, I knew constructive
• 1:25:55
  criticism allowed me to get better.
• 1:25:57
  As a communicator, I knew that constructive criticism allowed
• 1:26:00
  me to be better. As a follower of Jesus, I knew
• 1:26:04
  that I wanted to. I wanted someone to see what I
• 1:26:08
  had on my back. I wanted to see where am I
• 1:26:10
  walking in such a way that doesn't align with the character
• 1:26:14
  of Christ. Because if my objective is to
• 1:26:16
  imitate Christ and become more like him on a daily basis, I
• 1:26:19
  need people seeing me differently than I see myself
• 1:26:23
  because I can't see myself because I see myself through a
• 1:26:25
  faulty lens sometimes. So that's the beauty of
• 1:26:28
  community. That's the beauty of church.
• 1:26:30
  So with your relationship with Hope, how long from that?
• 1:26:34
  Like, you know, first, second day at church where your whole
• 1:26:37
  life changes. Yeah.
• 1:26:39
  So you walking up to the altar. Yeah.
• 1:26:42
  So what was that journey like? Ironically?
• 1:26:45
  So it was Easter when we went on that walk.
• 1:26:50
  I proposed in October and then we got married the following
• 1:26:54
  July. Amazing.
• 1:26:56
  So within a little over a year and what was the process like?
• 1:26:59
  I think a lot of people listening may be wondering, OK,
• 1:27:02
  you have this extensive other life.
• 1:27:05
  Yeah. In pornography and then before
• 1:27:08
  that, you know, you mentioned you were living in a promiscuous
• 1:27:10
  way. You're now with this Christian
• 1:27:11
  girl, you know who just completely captivates you and
• 1:27:17
  you're wanting to do a full 180. You are you have done a 180 that
• 1:27:21
  God has done something in your heart in your life.
• 1:27:23
  Were there kind of natural struggles that you are having
• 1:27:28
  trauma and attachments. I don't know.
• 1:27:30
  What can you share with folks listening?
• 1:27:32
  Because I think there's a tendency, I think sometimes with
• 1:27:35
  these incredible stories of testimony like yours, where
• 1:27:39
  there's like, it goes from black to white kind of thing, you
• 1:27:42
  know, darkness to light. And then people listening are
• 1:27:45
  like, OK, yeah. But my story is more
• 1:27:46
  complicated, you know, like I chose light from the dark I was
• 1:27:51
  in, and then I fell back into dark.
• 1:27:52
  And then I tried again. And I'm.
• 1:27:54
  I'm mostly in the light, but I fall into dark.
• 1:27:57
  It's like an ongoing and I still wrestle with these thoughts or
• 1:27:59
  these feelings. And yes, of course, Jesus frees
• 1:28:01
  me. He's freed me.
• 1:28:02
  Yeah. Ultimately, yeah.
• 1:28:04
  But in the real life experience of my flesh, I'm.
• 1:28:07
  I have my struggles. Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:28:08
  It's like Saint Paul's thorn in his side that says.
• 1:28:11
  Yes, I Romans, Romans. 7 And he says I'm not too elated.
• 1:28:14
  The Lord allows me, gives me, allows me this thorn in my side
• 1:28:18
  so that I don't become too elated.
• 1:28:20
  Yeah, and just that whole idea around like Christian Liberty,
• 1:28:23
  like Christian liberty is not. I can do whatever I want.
• 1:28:25
  Of course it's I Can I have the power to say no to what I what I
• 1:28:31
  should not do that I might want to do.
• 1:28:35
  But yeah, what were the if you can share like temptations or
• 1:28:38
  struggle, well, I. Mean just the reality of I, you
• 1:28:41
  know, I had had sex with thousands of people prior to
• 1:28:45
  this and now sex wasn't on the table.
• 1:28:47
  It wasn't an option, you know, but I think like, that's the
• 1:28:50
  beauty of Proverbs 2717. Like iron sharpens iron, you
• 1:28:54
  know, as, as, as one man sharpens another.
• 1:28:56
  So it's like her commitment to follow Jesus and, and my
• 1:29:00
  commitment to follow Jesus. They weren't, they were both
• 1:29:04
  independent and collective. So we were independently
• 1:29:08
  committed to following Jesus and we are, we were committed to
• 1:29:12
  collectively following Jesus. So like, we didn't hook up, not
• 1:29:17
  because I didn't want to hook up.
• 1:29:18
  It just wasn't an option. And then like her being honest
• 1:29:22
  with people in front of me was so healing.
• 1:29:25
  Like I remember someone asking her, Hey, you know, I'm, I'm in
• 1:29:31
  a situation where I'm, you know, I've been dating someone, but
• 1:29:34
  they have a very promiscuous past.
• 1:29:37
  Like, how do you not like hold that against them?
• 1:29:39
  How do you not measure yourself against like other people?
• 1:29:42
  Like, how do you do that? She's well, I, I believe God's
• 1:29:45
  word to be true. So if 2nd Corinthians 517 says
• 1:29:48
  that he is a new creation, that old person is gone.
• 1:29:51
  That person was dead and he's alive.
• 1:29:53
  And what I won't do is, you know, Romans 12/2 talks about
• 1:29:57
  it. You're either being conformed by
• 1:29:59
  the world or you're being transformed by the renewing of
• 1:30:01
  your mind. We're we're going through this
• 1:30:02
  metamorphosis when we choose to follow Jesus.
• 1:30:05
  And at the end of that verse 2, it talks about how you can see
• 1:30:09
  what is God's pleasing and perfect will.
• 1:30:12
  So if I see things through that lens, what she was able to say
• 1:30:16
  is I'm not going to allow Satan to determine how I see him.
• 1:30:23
  I'm not going to look at him through the world's lens.
• 1:30:25
  So what he did may be true. And he's still walking through
• 1:30:29
  some of the trauma of that because he's he's, he had a
• 1:30:32
  wound, but now he has a scar. And that scars relatively new.
• 1:30:36
  But I'm not going to project what Satan says about him onto
• 1:30:42
  him. I'm going to project what Jesus
• 1:30:44
  says about him. And her responding in that way,
• 1:30:48
  it was both healing for me and it's strengthened my faith.
• 1:30:52
  So having people in my life like that.
• 1:30:54
  And I had this guy who loved me, but he was like, he loved me
• 1:30:59
  really well. And what love looks like is not
• 1:31:01
  always like hunky Dory sometimes.
• 1:31:03
  Like you need a kick in the butt often.
• 1:31:05
  And that's what I needed. I needed someone that loved me
• 1:31:08
  enough to tell me the truth and I was committed to our
• 1:31:11
  relationship. So every Friday we had what we
• 1:31:15
  called hot conversations, honest, open and transparent,
• 1:31:19
  honest, open and transparent. And he asked me what what's your
• 1:31:22
  thought life like? You know, what are how much time
• 1:31:25
  are you spending in the Bible? Like what are you?
• 1:31:27
  What, what are some of the things you're doing that you
• 1:31:29
  know are not good? And I could say I'm good man, or
• 1:31:34
  I could be honest because I knew when I was honest, I, I took
• 1:31:39
  what was in the dark and I brought it into the light and it
• 1:31:42
  lost power. And that's the beauty of me
• 1:31:44
  telling my story. Because either what is true is
• 1:31:48
  either your story has power over you, but when you put it at the
• 1:31:53
  foot of the cross, it loses its power over you because you don't
• 1:31:56
  own it anymore. It's now a story about Jesus.
• 1:31:58
  And you're and though I think the key that is I've heard this
• 1:32:02
  from other stories and it's true in my life too, is that the
• 1:32:05
  commitment that you had to radical transparency and honesty
• 1:32:08
  like the HOT Yeah. What was that?
• 1:32:12
  Honesty. Open Open Transparent weekly.
• 1:32:16
  Yeah, and we like we. Hold you kind.
• 1:32:18
  Of still do that. I mean, as a married man, you're
• 1:32:20
  still doing that, that combination with God's
• 1:32:24
  unconditional love, with practical stuff.
• 1:32:26
  You isn't you're doing therapy. You're, you know, you're in
• 1:32:28
  mentorship. You're doing, you know,
• 1:32:29
  obviously trying to like live a certain way, this new way, like
• 1:32:34
  that combination like that. I think that should just give
• 1:32:37
  hope to anyone listening. Yeah.
• 1:32:40
  And it wasn't easy. It was hard.
• 1:32:41
  And I did some stupid stuff along the way that my wife was
• 1:32:45
  really gracious about. I had a lot of like, I didn't
• 1:32:47
  have like a mental breakdown, but there were, there were as
• 1:32:50
  God progressively consecrated me, there were things that he
• 1:32:54
  brought to the surface that he knew that I was ready to deal
• 1:32:56
  with that he dealt with. But I mean, that's why like
• 1:33:01
  conviction from the spirit is an opportunity to to have a deeper
• 1:33:05
  healing. But was fidelity?
• 1:33:07
  Was fidelity challenging? It wasn't.
• 1:33:10
  It wasn't because for me, for like, for me, it was like, that
• 1:33:16
  meant death. And honestly, I'd never
• 1:33:19
  experienced love like I'd never experienced.
• 1:33:22
  A lot of people ask me like how, how can you be satisfied with
• 1:33:25
  with, you know, like I'd never experienced love before.
• 1:33:28
  And when you experience the thing that your heart was made
• 1:33:31
  to experience, you're satisfied. So I experienced love for the
• 1:33:36
  first time and it doesn't even hold a candle.
• 1:33:38
  Like lust can't even hold a handle the love because lust,
• 1:33:43
  it's this instantaneous gratification that's, you know,
• 1:33:46
  wired around being spontaneous in a in a selfish way.
• 1:33:50
  It's just like you're just reacting.
• 1:33:51
  And it has nothing to do with all the things that Corinthians
• 1:33:57
  talks about in the what that description of love and being
• 1:34:00
  patient, kind, you know, long-suffering, you know,
• 1:34:04
  persevering self-control, like all those things.
• 1:34:07
  Like that's what love is. And when I experienced love for
• 1:34:10
  the first time, it healed me. But also it's like, gosh, I'm so
• 1:34:15
  satisfied by this. Why would I ever want to go back
• 1:34:19
  to this? And that's the that's the beauty
• 1:34:22
  of, you know, just walking with God, staying in the word.
• 1:34:25
  It's like when you become satiated by the word of God,
• 1:34:27
  satisfied spending with the person of God, you don't desire
• 1:34:32
  the things that you used to desire anymore because you see
• 1:34:34
  them for what they are. They're empty.
• 1:34:37
  They lead to brokenness. They for me, like I see that and
• 1:34:42
  I know that it leads to pain and I see this and it's like, gosh,
• 1:34:48
  this is so much better. There's some people listening
• 1:34:52
  who maybe because of the past that they have, they're living
• 1:34:55
  in shame or there's also some people that I've talked to some
• 1:34:59
  of these folks. And there's also a whole kind of
• 1:35:01
  movement online of this sort of idea that if you've fallen,
• 1:35:06
  especially if you're a woman, I think there's sometimes a double
• 1:35:09
  standard of like men are maybe more naturally, you know, driven
• 1:35:13
  towards sex without commitment. This is 1 theory.
• 1:35:17
  You know, I think we are all sexual beings that have
• 1:35:19
  temptations. But you know, so anyways, if a
• 1:35:21
  woman loses her virginity or if a woman is involved in
• 1:35:25
  pornography, in a way it's harder for her to come back from
• 1:35:28
  that then if a man is. Yeah, and I, I think that's
• 1:35:31
  because we don't have a right view of people.
• 1:35:35
  I would say that would point to the same reason that we're,
• 1:35:38
  we're, we're not calling, you know, babies, babies.
• 1:35:41
  We're calling them fetuses because it distracts you from
• 1:35:43
  the reality what is true. And that's why we're calling
• 1:35:46
  pornography adult content. That's why we're not calling
• 1:35:48
  adultery adultery. We're calling it, you know, just
• 1:35:51
  being, being single or, or me, you know, having fun.
• 1:35:55
  So I would say, I gosh, if, if we see people rightly, we will
• 1:36:00
  value them rightly out. If we see love rightly, we will,
• 1:36:04
  we will value love rightly. And just what is true in, in all
• 1:36:08
  of that is that I think Western society in, in just the world in
• 1:36:16
  it, in as a whole, we've made sex an idol.
• 1:36:21
  I mean that that goes back to church history.
• 1:36:22
  When you look at Corinth, you look at Ephesus, it, it's been
• 1:36:25
  true since the beginning of time, but it's because we put
• 1:36:30
  sex on a pedestal and we've worshipped it.
• 1:36:34
  We see it for in, in the way that we do.
• 1:36:37
  I mean, if that makes sense. Yeah, it's it's almost like we
• 1:36:41
  both worship it and then we also degrade it.
• 1:36:44
  Well, yeah. What?
• 1:36:45
  What? Yeah.
• 1:36:46
  Contradiction and what How we live.
• 1:36:48
  Yeah, it's like we. Yeah, well, anything that you
• 1:36:50
  worship outside of God is that's, you know, the Bible
• 1:36:53
  calls that an idol. And when you worship anything
• 1:36:56
  other than God, you see everything else wrongly.
• 1:37:00
  So if I don't see sex for what it is, and if I don't see, you
• 1:37:03
  know, a human being for who they are, that of course I'm going to
• 1:37:07
  see people as products and I'm going to use them.
• 1:37:10
  I'm going to see sex as transactional because I'm owed
• 1:37:13
  sex because it's something I need and I want and a need is
• 1:37:18
  drastically different. So this is really controversial,
• 1:37:21
  I think, for some folks, but I was talking to a young woman
• 1:37:25
  sometime in the last year or so, and she was sharing with me, You
• 1:37:28
  know, that's kind of happens occasionally.
• 1:37:30
  I'm kind of hearing people's stories and she's sharing about
• 1:37:33
  how she was dating this guy who's Christian at least, you
• 1:37:37
  know, and how he, you know, said he lived his life and stuff.
• 1:37:40
  And yeah. And she had had, you know, not a
• 1:37:43
  super promiscuous past, but she had slept before with, you know,
• 1:37:46
  before her own conversion, you know, one or two or three guys.
• 1:37:49
  So she had this in her past. And, you know, he really
• 1:37:52
  wrestled that. He, he really struggled with
• 1:37:54
  that because they're talking about getting married.
• 1:37:56
  And eventually he just couldn't do it.
• 1:37:58
  He was like, I can't do it. I'm sorry.
• 1:38:01
  Although I think part of the pain, the special pain for her
• 1:38:04
  was it wasn't even before. I'm sorry.
• 1:38:05
  It was more like, you know, you're not good enough.
• 1:38:08
  That was the message to her. And I think, you know, I hear
• 1:38:11
  this sometimes and I, I don't think it's wrong for a man or a
• 1:38:15
  woman to hope for, you know, especially if they pursued
• 1:38:17
  virginity themselves to hope for that in a future spouse.
• 1:38:20
  Like it's not a bad desire. But at the same time, you know,
• 1:38:23
  what's your, what's your take on that?
• 1:38:25
  I would say that I would say Christian culture as a whole has
• 1:38:32
  made virginity an idol. And when in God's eyes,
• 1:38:36
  virginity is not something that he he upholds because someone
• 1:38:40
  can be a virgin and be UN unpure and someone can be walking in
• 1:38:44
  purity and have slept with 1000 people.
• 1:38:47
  Purity is about reflection, the posture of your heart.
• 1:38:50
  Purity is about how God sees you based on how you're walking with
• 1:38:55
  him. Because God judges us, you know,
• 1:38:58
  regarding to our heart. If Jesus is saying, Hey, you've
• 1:39:02
  heard it said that, you know, you, you shouldn't commit
• 1:39:05
  adultery. I'm, I'm saying to you, if you
• 1:39:07
  even think about a woman in that way, you've committed adultery.
• 1:39:11
  So that's the standard that Jesus holds.
• 1:39:13
  So if that's the standard, we're looking at the wrong metric
• 1:39:17
  because what we do in the practicality of us not doing
• 1:39:21
  something doesn't make us holy. Like Titus 2 verses 11 through
• 1:39:26
  14 talks about by choosing to say no to ungodliness, that
• 1:39:31
  allows us to see what is, you know, the, the life that, that,
• 1:39:36
  that God has designed us to live, this purity that we can
• 1:39:39
  have this, this desire to do God to do things God's way.
• 1:39:44
  So it's like, it's not me. This.
• 1:39:48
  I think we we focus on more like behavior restriction and and
• 1:39:52
  behavior modification in contrast to like character
• 1:39:54
  development and character developments about your heart.
• 1:39:57
  In the Catholic teaching, you know, I think as I've shared,
• 1:40:01
  I'm Catholic, but there's this incredible it was, it was very
• 1:40:05
  eye opening when I started to understand it that, you know,
• 1:40:08
  someone going and sleeping with someone else, premarital sex or
• 1:40:11
  adultery or any, any sexual act. Including like a sexual act with
• 1:40:17
  yourself, like masturbation are equally are sins are both sins
• 1:40:21
  grave matter both separate you from God.
• 1:40:24
  And it's not like, Oh, it's a little bit less of a sin to
• 1:40:26
  masturbate than it is to go and sleep with someone.
• 1:40:29
  And so that's your point about virginity, though, because I
• 1:40:31
  think, you know, it's it's this technical.
• 1:40:33
  I'm a technical virgin and it's not that the Lord.
• 1:40:35
  I mean, there are consecrated virgins.
• 1:40:37
  You know, I think in in the in the church.
• 1:40:39
  There's something beautiful about consecrating one's life.
• 1:40:42
  But to your point, this distinction, because if
• 1:40:45
  someone's, you know, been sexually violated, been raped,
• 1:40:47
  are they a virgin? Right.
• 1:40:49
  The point that you're making is, and I think it's such an
• 1:40:52
  incredibly important point is that at the end of the day, it's
• 1:40:54
  about what is the, the choice of your heart?
• 1:40:57
  What are you? What are you choosing in your
• 1:40:59
  heart or in your mind? And you can commit sexual sin by
• 1:41:02
  yourself and you can also have, you know, technically not be a
• 1:41:07
  virgin and have not committed a sin because you were violated or
• 1:41:09
  you had an ignorance or, oh, trauma that prevented that from
• 1:41:13
  being a full choice that you that you made.
• 1:41:15
  Yeah, gosh, I just want to like take you with me everywhere I go
• 1:41:20
  because I mean, honestly, there's there's so many large
• 1:41:23
  churches that I speak in. And I mean, if you're listening
• 1:41:27
  to this, I love you. But I disagree with you that
• 1:41:31
  they would say, because the Bible doesn't explicitly say
• 1:41:35
  that masturbation is sin. I would not call it sin, but I
• 1:41:39
  would say, man, we're we're called to take all the
• 1:41:42
  scriptures. You know, there's this concept
• 1:41:44
  perpetuity where they're none of the Bible is beyond our
• 1:41:47
  understanding. We just need to dig the context.
• 1:41:50
  So through contextualization and understanding concepts, we can
• 1:41:54
  see that I'm not wired to have a relationship with my hand that
• 1:41:59
  is contradictory of who I'm called to be.
• 1:42:02
  You know, we're called to exhibit self-control.
• 1:42:04
  The Bible says, you know, you're free to do anything but but not
• 1:42:08
  everything is beneficial. You're you're free to do
• 1:42:10
  anything, but not everything is beneficial.
• 1:42:12
  You're to be mastered by nothing, right?
• 1:42:14
  If I'm not to be mastered by anything, who am I called to be?
• 1:42:17
  Romans 12 I'm called to be a living sacrifice.
• 1:42:20
  You know, Galatians 2. My body is not my own.
• 1:42:24
  My body is a dwelling of the Holy Spirit.
• 1:42:27
  So if that's who I am and sex is supposed to be, you know,
• 1:42:33
  Ephesians 5, it talks about how you know, the, the marriage
• 1:42:36
  between a husband and wife is, is a, you know, a symbol of
• 1:42:39
  Christ in the church. If that's the level of purity
• 1:42:43
  that we're talking about, please tell me how you can justify you
• 1:42:48
  giving into self gratification where it's pleasure and it's
• 1:42:52
  sex, but it's outside of marriage.
• 1:42:54
  How is that not sin? How is that not said?
• 1:42:58
  Of course it is. And we keep lying to ourselves.
• 1:43:02
  And that's why we we stay stuck in brokenness.
• 1:43:05
  That's why, you know, pornography is $100 billion
• 1:43:08
  industry because we've normalized things that we
• 1:43:11
  shouldn't and conversations that we should be having, we don't.
• 1:43:16
  And if you don't have them, guess what?
• 1:43:18
  The world is screaming about them and we're being conformed
• 1:43:21
  by the world. There is a really famous book by
• 1:43:25
  Doctor James Dobson, who I think has done amazing work.
• 1:43:28
  But in this book, it's about boys, this book on boys.
• 1:43:30
  And there's a chapter or passage about masturbation.
• 1:43:35
  And basically he says, don't you know, I agree, you shouldn't
• 1:43:38
  shame your child. You know, you shouldn't, but you
• 1:43:41
  shouldn't also say that they shouldn't feel shamed for it.
• 1:43:44
  And basically he's saying it's not that big of a deal.
• 1:43:47
  And I think that back to the misconception you point to in
• 1:43:50
  some churches, you know, we have these certain lines we draw.
• 1:43:54
  And I think another line we draw about even in marriage is like,
• 1:43:56
  well, anything goes in marriage. And it's like, no, you know,
• 1:44:00
  there's chastity replies in marriage to like, we should
• 1:44:03
  treat our spouse with respect. And I do think too, you know,
• 1:44:06
  again, looking back before the Reformation or even out the
• 1:44:10
  Reformation, there was a a universal rejection of birth
• 1:44:15
  control, even in marriage, because it's saying the sexual
• 1:44:18
  act, the way that you're designed by God, your sexual
• 1:44:21
  parts, yes, for pleasure and a marriage exclusively lifelong
• 1:44:25
  commitment and openness to life. So if you frustrate that
• 1:44:29
  artificially, it's the same, the same issue of just frustrating
• 1:44:33
  God's design. Similarly, masturbation.
• 1:44:36
  But I think these things are very controversial even for some
• 1:44:38
  Christians. Today and they shouldn't be
• 1:44:40
  controversial, but like to your point, what we've done again, I
• 1:44:43
  mean that like the fetus, a human child, you know, a baby, a
• 1:44:48
  fetus euthanasian, you know, and self assisted, you know,
• 1:44:54
  whatever. Physician assisted death or.
• 1:44:56
  Whatever. I mean, like these concepts we
• 1:44:58
  are, we're using euphemisms to deflect what is reality.
• 1:45:06
  You're right, because the reality is like, you can bring
• 1:45:08
  life into the world. Sex does that.
• 1:45:09
  Not every time, yeah, but when you frustrate the potential for
• 1:45:13
  that, yeah. But if you frustrate sex, design
• 1:45:15
  for that, in its moment for that, or you frustrate it's
• 1:45:18
  design for intimacy because it's not in a lifelong marriage where
• 1:45:21
  there's commitment and love and before God and in your
• 1:45:24
  community, then you you're, you're living in an unreality.
• 1:45:28
  And then and so many people struggle with that today.
• 1:45:30
  I mean, and, and, and we have the data that tells us what
• 1:45:35
  happens within a woman's body when there is the potential for
• 1:45:40
  life. And then there's, you know,
• 1:45:41
  contraception. What would like what happens?
• 1:45:43
  We know that. And then because of data, we
• 1:45:46
  know the neuroscience that goes along with what is, what does
• 1:45:49
  pornography do to the brain? Right.
• 1:45:51
  And like we, we know, you know, the data is real and it's I, I
• 1:45:55
  love, you know, I've had the opportunity to, to speak at a
• 1:45:58
  few congressional briefings over the last few years and just,
• 1:46:01
  hey, here's the burden of proof, here's personal testimony and
• 1:46:04
  here's what is actually happening.
• 1:46:07
  And. So, OK, I know we've only got a
• 1:46:13
  little bit of time left, but some key things.
• 1:46:15
  What do you think is porn is proliferating, only fans is
• 1:46:21
  proliferating All of these things, you know now, now it's
• 1:46:25
  like your average high school boy in most schools.
• 1:46:28
  It's like porn. There's not even shame
• 1:46:30
  associated with it. And then many of your average
• 1:46:32
  high school girls like if not playing or college girls playing
• 1:46:36
  around with only fans, it's like showing yourself in a
• 1:46:39
  promiscuous way. It's just so normalized.
• 1:46:42
  It's so normalized. What is the end game solution?
• 1:46:45
  How do we get the to the end game of changing that?
• 1:46:48
  Yeah. I mean, I think we need to like
• 1:46:50
  have real conversations earlier often and just, and just the way
• 1:46:56
  that only fans work is like especially people who are
• 1:47:00
  earning at a high capacity. But here's the reality.
• 1:47:02
  It's it's catfishing 2 point O like there's stock footage and
• 1:47:06
  the person that you think you're messaging with to have those
• 1:47:09
  conversations. It's it's either AI or it's a
• 1:47:12
  person in a basement. You know, it's a, it's a, it's.
• 1:47:15
  A dude in. A basement as a as a sweaty dude
• 1:47:17
  in a basement that is playing. Fortnite 999 a month for yeah
• 1:47:21
  it's crazy. But but that's that's what's
• 1:47:23
  true. But at the same time, we can't
• 1:47:27
  believe that you can do that and it not cost you something.
• 1:47:32
  I think that's been the biggest thing I've seen is this
• 1:47:34
  insistence it doesn't cost me, you know, like back to the
• 1:47:37
  Whatever podcast that I've done a few times recently, which you
• 1:47:40
  should go on, Josh. I actually had a conversation
• 1:47:44
  with. Them OK, you're not sure if what
• 1:47:46
  they're calling, but I mean it's amazing though.
• 1:47:49
  It's an amazing experience of seeing people really wrestling
• 1:47:52
  in lifetime like that's the power of it, the wrongness and
• 1:47:55
  the the willingness for people to be transparent.
• 1:47:56
  Many of them and I think that's so much power to that.
• 1:47:59
  But you know so many people live in the live like this does not I
• 1:48:03
  choose this. It's good money.
• 1:48:05
  This does not really affect me or my future.
• 1:48:07
  I'm going to be a mom and a wife one day.
• 1:48:08
  I'm going to have to make my make my bag or whatever.
• 1:48:11
  I'm going to retire and I'm going to have my family of my
• 1:48:14
  dreams and you can't tell me nothing like.
• 1:48:17
  That, but at the same time, so regardless of who you are, where
• 1:48:23
  you are in your life, what you believe, what is true across the
• 1:48:26
  board, that God loves you and wants a relationship with you,
• 1:48:31
  and what happened, it cost you something to receive the price
• 1:48:35
  that was paid. Jesus laid down his life for
• 1:48:40
  you, and a rational, reasonable response is for you to lay down
• 1:48:44
  your life for him. And what that teaches us is that
• 1:48:48
  anything that's worth anything will always cost something.
• 1:48:52
  And we can't look at something as beautiful as sex that has the
• 1:48:56
  power to create life and think that we can misuse it and at the
• 1:49:02
  same time believe that we can misuse it.
• 1:49:03
  And it not cause pain, not cause trauma, not only to you, it
• 1:49:10
  causes collateral damage. Because if you think you can do
• 1:49:13
  that, the way the Internet works, the way the way how
• 1:49:15
  people are so malicious because broken people like hurt people
• 1:49:19
  will hurt people. That's just true.
• 1:49:21
  So the, the fact that like, you're going to have that
• 1:49:24
  content out there and that's going to be ammunition for
• 1:49:27
  someone to use against you and the people that you love most
• 1:49:31
  because you know, that's, that's happened in my life.
• 1:49:34
  My wife has not deserved, you know, people to send her
• 1:49:37
  pictures of me doing things. My wife has not deserved for
• 1:49:41
  people to send. We, we opened a gym together and
• 1:49:44
  people plaster stuff all over the, you know, our Facebook.
• 1:49:48
  Well, we have their IP addresses, you know.
• 1:49:50
  But are they? Are they are they like the fair
• 1:49:53
  psychical types? Like how dare you there are they
• 1:49:56
  people in the industry who are mad at you?
• 1:49:58
  Like are they just weirdos? Well, when I left the industry,
• 1:50:01
  the industry put out. Well, I'll say two things about
• 1:50:04
  the industry. So when I left the industry,
• 1:50:07
  there were several articles that were written that he left
• 1:50:11
  because he had HIV, because. Do you have HIV?
• 1:50:15
  I don't, but what what was what was crazy is that it was just
• 1:50:21
  hard to reconcile. Well, he's having success.
• 1:50:25
  Like why would he leave? Like they hate that you are
• 1:50:29
  happily married, have kids. Or just even even back then say,
• 1:50:33
  why would you leave? Like outside of dying, like why
• 1:50:36
  would you leave the industry upon your own volition because
• 1:50:39
  you were successful? It's one thing to like not be
• 1:50:42
  able to like make it or to like be successful and then you die
• 1:50:47
  out. But like at, you know, at at
• 1:50:49
  essentially a pinnacle of your career, why would you leave?
• 1:50:53
  Well, you broke their narrative, right?
• 1:50:55
  You broke their narrative that this is good and sustainable and
• 1:50:58
  normal. Yeah, and it's OK.
• 1:51:00
  And I would say at the same time to show like how vile and able
• 1:51:04
  the industry is, 100% of the time, when someone that I loved
• 1:51:09
  would die of suicide or overdose, what the industry
• 1:51:12
  would do is they would make a compilation of all their films
• 1:51:16
  in in honor of them, which is pointing to the pain that led to
• 1:51:22
  them taking their life, and they would monetize off of their
• 1:51:25
  death. Wow, that's so dark.
• 1:51:28
  It's so. Dark and that's their playbook
• 1:51:30
  over and over and over again. Like, you know, don't you think
• 1:51:33
  that there were like stuff made about me, like, you know, making
• 1:51:37
  fun of me because I was in like I've become a Christian and that
• 1:51:41
  I was preaching. It's like I, I get berated about
• 1:51:44
  that all the time, but at the same time I, I don't expect the
• 1:51:49
  world to to do anything but act like the world.
• 1:51:52
  I expect that. But at the same time, there are
• 1:51:55
  Christians that sees some of the things that I'm doing, and
• 1:51:58
  because they're living in secret sin, sometimes they say and do
• 1:52:03
  things that actually hurt not just my witness, but the witness
• 1:52:09
  of the church. How do you respond to that?
• 1:52:13
  In love, you know, I, I, I again move forward.
• 1:52:17
  Yeah. But I mean, what is true is
• 1:52:18
  like, I mean, that's why I talk about the pornography industry
• 1:52:21
  so much, because I think that the gap in like, I would say in
• 1:52:28
  like Western culture has a discipleship problem.
• 1:52:30
  It's so true. I mean, I think one of the
• 1:52:32
  things that has spoken to me so much about our conversation,
• 1:52:35
  Joshua, is that you had this thanks be to God opportunity for
• 1:52:39
  discipleship, this like plug in community opportunity.
• 1:52:43
  You met the love of your life who extended you this grace and
• 1:52:45
  like kind of helps God use her as a this beautiful instrument.
• 1:52:49
  And then you have these people that came on, said you.
• 1:52:51
  And I think so many people today are adrift, especially men, but
• 1:52:54
  men and women looking for men, looking for support, like
• 1:52:58
  they're looking for something. They go to the Internet.
• 1:53:01
  Yeah. They maybe watch YouTube videos,
• 1:53:03
  you know, like they have maybe some family member or some uncle
• 1:53:06
  or somebody. But it people are starving.
• 1:53:09
  Yeah, they don't even know fully what they starve for, but they
• 1:53:11
  really are starving for that community.
• 1:53:14
  Not just a community to hang out with, but to help them grow.
• 1:53:16
  Yeah. Well, it's the thing that God
• 1:53:18
  has designed us to do. Yeah.
• 1:53:20
  And I would say that the discipleship gap that we have,
• 1:53:24
  it's a byproduct of the integrity gap that we have, $100
• 1:53:30
  billion industry, $100 billion industry view, you know, fueled
• 1:53:35
  by viewership. Disney $67 billion last year,
• 1:53:39
  NFL 11 billion, Major League Baseball 10 billion, NBA 10
• 1:53:45
  billion. So 99 billion, Still 1 billion
• 1:53:48
  short of what porn did last year.
• 1:53:49
  Wow, so it so thinking about that, that is how much porn is
• 1:53:56
  being watched and that's how profitable it is. 33% of all the
• 1:53:59
  data transferred on the Internet on a daily basis is porn. 56% of
• 1:54:03
  divorces have something to do with porn.
• 1:54:05
  Either porn is the problem or it led to physical infidelity.
• 1:54:11
  So it's it's destroying us. But people I believe might like.
• 1:54:17
  My greatest hope for next year is I want to see a million
• 1:54:21
  people who identify as followers of Jesus, confess that porn is a
• 1:54:27
  problem to someone, repent, right?
• 1:54:31
  So repentance, logistical terminology, 180° turn.
• 1:54:35
  I'm going to turn away from the thing that I know that's not
• 1:54:37
  good for me. I'm going to move away from it
• 1:54:39
  and towards something better, which is God and community.
• 1:54:43
  So a million people, imagine a million people not living in
• 1:54:48
  secret sin, but pursuing the life that God has for them.
• 1:54:51
  And what that looks like is the gospel actually being shared,
• 1:54:55
  people actually being discipled, families actually being
• 1:54:58
  restored, people actually following Jesus and, you know,
• 1:55:03
  speaking out on issues like why do men not talk about abortion?
• 1:55:07
  Because more often not, they're living in sin.
• 1:55:10
  So the thing that's leading to abortion, there's, there's some
• 1:55:13
  kind of practicality that's that's attached to the spiritual
• 1:55:17
  element that comes with struggling with pornography.
• 1:55:19
  I, I think there's a direct correlation in many of the
• 1:55:22
  issues that we have, like talking about serving the least
• 1:55:26
  and the lowest. Like why would you do the things
• 1:55:29
  that God has called you to do that always cost you something?
• 1:55:32
  When you're spending your equity in a place that is empty and
• 1:55:37
  it's leading to death and shame and guilt will always keep you
• 1:55:40
  stuck. So I think.
• 1:55:41
  And how can you feel like I can be this?
• 1:55:44
  I can walk in God's grace to be a countercultural voice, you
• 1:55:49
  know, like warrior in whatever way my talents have been given
• 1:55:52
  me. But I'm living with this
• 1:55:54
  compromise. When in.
• 1:55:56
  That I keep falling into. Yeah.
• 1:55:57
  I mean, I think there's so there's this this Hebrew word
• 1:56:00
  anava. So Anava is the Hebrew word in
• 1:56:03
  which we get humility from. And it's it's describing this,
• 1:56:08
  this totality of both courage and humility.
• 1:56:13
  And I need courage to step into this God ordained space for me
• 1:56:17
  individually, individually, we each have this God ordained
• 1:56:20
  space where God's gifts and talents aligns with his purpose
• 1:56:24
  for us in our life. And we have to have the humility
• 1:56:27
  not to step out of it, but the courage to step in it.
• 1:56:29
  And the boldest that comes with you walking in the Spirit is I
• 1:56:34
  have to be living in purity. Because if I'm not living in
• 1:56:38
  purity, you know, John 1010 talks about how the enemy wants
• 1:56:41
  to steal, kill and destroy. He's stealing our boldness.
• 1:56:45
  He's killing Our Calling. He's robbing us of the joy that
• 1:56:49
  comes with the procurement that's only found in walking in
• 1:56:52
  alignment with Christ. So there, there's going to be no
• 1:56:55
  boldness without purity, because I think they function hand in
• 1:56:59
  hand. I love that mission.
• 1:57:01
  I get a million people to come clean, change their life.
• 1:57:06
  Yeah, because I mean that's. On pornography, I mean, that's
• 1:57:08
  because men and women are affected today, very young
• 1:57:10
  people are affected today, married people are affected
• 1:57:12
  today. So many what, what else?
• 1:57:15
  I mean, that's a huge, that's a huge goal right there.
• 1:57:17
  And I think you're going to do it and I'd love to help in
• 1:57:19
  whatever way I can. What do you see?
• 1:57:22
  Like your your calling in life, your long term.
• 1:57:25
  What is your long term life goal right now?
• 1:57:28
  Yeah, I would say, you know, I, I love sharing my story, but the
• 1:57:33
  thing that I love most is just preaching the gospel.
• 1:57:37
  So I think God has given me a unique voice and a unique time
• 1:57:39
  to, to, to preach the gospel in a, in a unique way.
• 1:57:43
  And what I'm really seeing is I think, you know, how do you know
• 1:57:48
  there's 5.5 billion people that would say that, you know, they
• 1:57:53
  are not following Jesus or we know that are unreached.
• 1:57:55
  So how did the 2.5 reach the 5.5?
• 1:57:58
  And it's, well, you got to activate the 2.5.
• 1:58:01
  And so for me, I just want to spend my life preaching the
• 1:58:06
  gospel to the church, like equipping the church for the
• 1:58:08
  works of the ministry. And I, I never thought that
• 1:58:11
  would have been the case because I thought I, I, I have a, more
• 1:58:14
  of like an evangelistic gift than necessarily a teaching
• 1:58:17
  gift. But I think like, that is how we
• 1:58:21
  reach the loss. We reached a loss with those who
• 1:58:25
  know. So that that's what I want to do
• 1:58:29
  with my life. Yeah.
• 1:58:29
  So, you know, probably five years ago, I would say I want to
• 1:58:32
  see, like, pornography eradicated, and I do.
• 1:58:35
  But the reality is sexual morality will always exist.
• 1:58:37
  But the thing that I care about most is not, you know, porn
• 1:58:41
  being eradicated is that every single person hears that Jesus
• 1:58:46
  came into this world. He lived the perfect life.
• 1:58:48
  He died so that you could be reconciled to God if you put
• 1:58:51
  your faith in heaven. And it's the world view that
• 1:58:54
  comes with our faith about the dignity of the person, the truth
• 1:58:58
  about sex, the beauty of marriage, you know, the value of
• 1:59:00
  the child in the womb and every child.
• 1:59:03
  That worldview is necessary if we're going to eradicate porn.
• 1:59:06
  You need to help share the good news, you know the capital G
• 1:59:10
  good news of Jesus and then the the whole Kingdom of how he
• 1:59:13
  teaches us to live. Yeah, and I'm just that moral.
• 1:59:15
  That moral plan that brings so much freedom.
• 1:59:17
  Yeah. And I would just say, I mean
• 1:59:21
  into the person that is struggling with guilt and shame,
• 1:59:24
  like guilt and shame were from the enemy.
• 1:59:26
  And regardless of you live the life that I lived, or you've had
• 1:59:30
  an abortion or whatever that might be, whatever the thing
• 1:59:34
  that is that keeps you trapped, it seems unmentionable when you
• 1:59:37
  mention it. It loses his power over you.
• 1:59:40
  And there's healing to be found because the cross is more than
• 1:59:43
  sufficient than whatever it is. And God will not even he will
• 1:59:48
  not only redeem and restore you, He will use your story for his
• 1:59:52
  glory. Because there's someone hurting
• 1:59:53
  in this world that needs to know that there's forgiveness to be
• 1:59:57
  found, There's healing to be found, and there's life to be
• 2:00:00
  lived after the fact that you did the thing that you said you
• 2:00:03
  would never do or the the unmentionable thing that
• 2:00:06
  happened to you. Regardless of what it is,
• 2:00:09
  there's more than enough healing available to you because of who
• 2:00:12
  Jesus is. Amen.
• 2:00:13
  Would you ever thought 15 years ago, in some of the darkest,
• 2:00:17
  darker moments or whatever it was 12 years ago, you'd be where
• 2:00:22
  you are today? Walking in with God, with a
• 2:00:25
  wife, 4 kids, leading what you're leading.
• 2:00:28
  I would say literally the day that I was going to take my
• 2:00:31
  life, I I made a list. I'll never contribute to society
• 2:00:36
  in a way where I can lead because leadership is the thing
• 2:00:39
  I love most. I'll never be a father.
• 2:00:41
  I'll never get married. And you know, I look back, you
• 2:00:44
  know, Ephesians 3, Ephesians 320 and talks about like God stands
• 2:00:48
  ready to do exceedingly, abundantly, more than you could
• 2:00:50
  ever hope or imagine. So I didn't even have the guts
• 2:00:53
  to dream about the life that I have today.
• 2:00:56
  And yeah. It's awesome.
• 2:00:58
  OK, Thank you, Joshua. Amazing.
• 2:01:03
  Thank you so much. Thank you so much for listening
• 2:01:07
  to this episode of the Lila Rose Podcast.
• 2:01:09
  I hope you enjoyed this episode with Joshua Broome.
• 2:01:12
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• 2:01:16
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• 2:01:18
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