A Sobering Encounter

Editor’s note: At Quest Community Church in Lexington, Kentucky, you will see that room is being made for more. From the auditorium and building in Lexington to the new campus in Frankfort, exciting changes are taking place—and ADF is part of it all. Below is one of hundreds of testimonies of a life dramatically changed through the ministry of Quest.

I grew up feeling alone and isolated. At the age of ten, I found some magazines that sparked an addiction that began to rule my life—even at that early age. I went to church, but because of a rumor that was started when I was 12, I was asked to leave. So I decided to be done with God. By high school, to mask the loneliness I felt, I got into a string of relationships and my addictions worsened. My sense of isolation became even more overwhelming, and I turned to alcohol.

I got married in college but my husband didn’t fill the emptiness I felt inside, so I divorced him. As my pain continued, I tried to force people to like me by being overtly sexual. I soon began manipulating them to get what I wanted.

A Dark Journey

By the time I was 20, I entered the world of adult entertainment. I met another man, who was married, and began an affair with him. He eventually left his wife, and we were married. By this time, my addictions had grown to alcohol, pornography, and cocaine. Because of the emptiness in my heart that neither the addictions nor my husband could fill, I turned to other men and began to have a series of affairs. I became pregnant twice and had two abortions so my husband wouldn’t find out.

By the age of 24, I had destroyed my marriage and asked my husband for a divorce. I fled to Mexico City and continued to feed my addictions. All the things I thought would give me comfort didn’t, and I spiraled out of control. After being in Mexico for a year, I found myself early one morning on the side of the road after having been raped and thrown out of a car. 

Hope Renewed

That week a friend of mine called and arranged for me to attend a twelve-step program, and I got sober from drugs and alcohol. I’ve been clean for the past 12 ½ years.

With my new sobriety, I tried to become the perfect person, but I believed that God couldn’t love someone like me—that I had gone too far. I had this ache in my heart and didn’t understand what was missing. I thought a change of location could help me, so in 2002 I moved back to Kentucky. A friend asked me to go to church with him, and I thought that was the craziest idea I had ever heard. Finally, he was able to convince me to go because the pastor’s message was going to be about the movie, The Lord of the Rings. I thought, “I want to see how they do this,” so I went.

New Life in Christ

I was surprised. I was used to this idea of hellfire and brimstone, hymns and condemnation, and that if I started going to church I would have to stop wearing makeup and start wearing dresses with little flower prints on them. Instead, I saw people around me that loved each other and cared about getting to know me. As I looked around Quest Community Church, I realized that these people had something I didn’t. They all had a peace and a joy that I had never known.

I asked lots of questions about who this Jesus was, and whether He could really love me despite what I had done. As it turns out, He does. On April 27, 2003, after six months of questioning, I finally got a picture of grace. All I needed to do was to receive Him and His forgiveness and ask Him to lead my life. He made me pure again, and He didn’t stop there. He made me a brand new person. He is restoring and redeeming parts of my life that I had no idea could be healed.

Evil Redeemed

A couple of years into my new life with Jesus, I knew there needed to be a place where other women could find healing from relational and sexual addictions. So I was given the privilege of beginning a ministry at Quest called No Stones. We started our first group at the beginning of 2006. Since then, it has grown to six groups, and nearly 100 women have been released from bondage. I never dreamed that God could redeem my past in such a way that it would help other women find freedom, but He’s really doing it, and I stand amazed!

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