Death to Life podcast
A podcast that tells the stories of people that used to be one way, and now are completely different, and the thing that happened in between was Jesus.
Death to Life podcast
#239 Five Years, First Story, Tyler Morrison
We celebrate five years by returning to the first story that set our tone: Tyler’s journey from approval addiction and hidden porn use to a settled identity rooted in God’s love. The shift from behavior management to new life changes his marriage, his peace, and his idea of repentance.
• why testimonies became our core format
• family faith roots and an early shame script
• porn at eleven and transactional forgiveness
• striving, relapse, and the lie that guilt saves
• Australia, a Hillsong altar call, and a mother’s messages
• marriage begins, lines are crossed, consequences land
• the real addiction is affirmation, not just lust
• Romans 6 identity: dead to sin, alive in Christ
• confession to Morgan, rupture, and a storm walk
• learning love that needs nothing in return
• living at peace without others’ approval
• deconstructing old beliefs and rebuilding trust
• the cost of obedience when reputation is on the line
• cliffhanger: Morgan’s side and the miracle ahead
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Yo, welcome to the Death to Life podcast. My name is Richard Young, and today is kind of a cool day. It is the five-year anniversary of the first episode of Death to Life. And I know I've told this story before, maybe even on here, but it is such a beautiful testimony of how God loves us that I thought I would just tell it again. I had no intention of doing a podcast back in 2020, but my life was radically changed by the gospel in 2019. At the beginning of 2020, many of you remember what happened. Uh, the Chiefs won the Super Bowl. But not just the Chiefs winning the Super Bowl, there was a worldwide pandemic. And if you've heard my episodes, specifically my last one, uh, where I talk about losing my job, then you'll you you know what happened. I ended up, you know, getting on fire for the gospel, preaching it. I ended up losing my job, and I didn't know what to do. And a few people, uh, friends of mine, uh Lauren Fogg and Jennifer Rabarchak, they told me, hey, you should do a podcast. And I was like, I don't even know what what what what that would take, what that would look like, how do I do it? Um, but they encouraged me that I should do one, and I was like, well, I'm just gonna do a podcast because uh everybody has a podcast. I'll do one just about gospel, and I'll just talk about gospel on there, and I'll get my buddy, I'll get my buddy Tyler to talk about the gospel with me on the podcast. And so it um in planning for the podcast, we didn't know what what it was gonna look like, and uh we were at my friend Will and my friend Joyce's wedding down in Orlando, and we were all hanging out at Connor Yonker's house, and uh Jonathan was like, Richard, you should call it from death to life with Richard Young. And I was like, Yeah, we'll do that. So now we had a name, you know, taken from John chapter five, and I didn't know what it was gonna look like, and so I thought, well, for the first episode, we'll we'll just get Tyler to tell his story, his testimony. And then the second episode, well, that would naturally be Morgan's testimony. And these episodes were recorded probably around three, two or three in the morning, uh, Kansas City time. That's where I was recording it, because I had been working at night, and these were you know times that I was off. I was on my night schedule, and so it's two or three in the morning because that's like seven or eight o'clock Hawaii time, where uh Tyler and Morgan were living. And uh we just recorded their two episodes, and man, beautiful episodes. This is Tyler's listen to it and then go back and listen to Morgan's. Uh, and I just thought, well, maybe I'll record with Jadra because I had, you know, shared the gospel with Jadra, and from what I'd seen, her life was changed. And so on those three episodes, we decided to keep on doing testimonies. And yeah, we we have a couple offshoots in here uh from time to time where it's not just a testimony, but for the main for the for the most part, this has been a testimony podcast, and it has gone around the world and people's lives have been changed by listening to it, which blows my mind. It's it's one of the most humbling things when someone says, Oh, I I came to understand my identity in Christ through listening to the Death Alive podcast. So, man, it is yeah, it's the privilege of my life to host this thing and to share these stories. I love it so much. And how long are we gonna be able to keep going, you know, with these episodes? Well, as many of you know that listen to the podcast, there's still a few people out there that that I got to get. And if you're listening and you haven't had an episode, and I've talked to you, you know who you are. You know your time's coming up, you're gonna be on the Death Alive podcast. But uh, there's a few white whales out there left for me to get, and as long as we keep preaching this thing, there's been more and more episodes. And it's I feel like who's the woman that she only has like a little bit of oil, and Elijah goes too, and she just has a little bit of oil every single day. She never runs out. That's kind of how I feel like sometimes I get, and we're down to like we only have one episode, and then we're we're all out, and then one or two people come up, and God shows me, you know, what about this person, what about that person, and we keep having episodes. And uh, so it's been exciting, it's been a wild five years, so much has happened, but it's been so much fun. Uh, if you've listened to every single episode of this, shout outs to you. Uh, I I think I'm gonna make a post on the on the on the Facebook group. How many have listened to every single episode of the Death to Live podcast? And I want you to chime in and what effect it has had on your life. But yeah, this is the first episode. I'm playing it just like it's always been there. You know, the production value has gone up so much since we started, but it's kind of cool to just go back and listen to the OG. So this is Tyler, his story. If you haven't heard it before, listen to it. If you have, listen to it again. It's going to encourage you. Love you guys. Appreciate y'all.
SPEAKER_01:Bye.
SPEAKER_06:This is From Death to Life with Richard Young. And I'm Richard Young. Let's go. I have this quote that I want to read you, and then I want you to vibe off of that and tell me what you think as I I hear about like your background, and it's by this cat named Frederick Buchner, and it's from a book called The Alphabet of Grace. And he says, at its heart, most theology, like most fiction, is essentially autobi autobiography. So I'm gonna read it. At its heart, most theology, like most fiction, is essentially autobiography. So I want to know about your background and what of your autobiography from a young age, just like your roots formulated your theology.
SPEAKER_03:Okay, well, I understand your question. That quote, though, uh was a bunch of words I did not understand, so I'm gonna take them as a sign of disrespect. Um, my autobiography. I mean, the the framework that I usually give to people is that I mean, since I was born, my entire family's been Christian. Um my dad was a pastor in the Seventh Avenue Church, my grandpa was an evangelist. Um so I don't know how many generations back it goes, but going to church every weekend for my entire life. But if I was to categorize myself um in that way, it's like I went to church all the time. I tried really hard. I knew that God existed. I had had some pretty cool things happen in my life that I was like, I mean, it has to be like God's gotta be real. But then it was also like maybe, maybe they could be reasoned away with logic, you know. Um, and that was kind of my life. Went to Christian schools.
SPEAKER_06:Did you even go there with the maybe God didn't even exist?
SPEAKER_03:I did eventually, I did get to a point. Um, I think I definitely challenged it briefly. Um, I never had like a long season in my life where I was like, yeah, God doesn't exist. But there is because I mean, if I'm not gonna question it, um, as a kid, it's like, I mean, I I believe because everybody else says so, but it's pretty green and clean, like, you know, what does everybody else believe? And if so many other people believe something different, then you know what do they believe, right? So um, but yeah, I mean I've got five brothers and sisters. A lot of them still are involved in the Christian church, um, working as teachers in Adventist schools, or um let's see, love basketball. There was a time in my life where I would say that uh basketball was about what 10-15% of my identity.
SPEAKER_06:It was it was not a sizable, depending on the outcome of the game, how much of your identity it was.
SPEAKER_03:Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. How well I played definitely determined how much of my identity was wrapped up in basketball. Um, music was a lot larger part of my identity, but the largest part of my identity at that point in time, which uh was college, I I remember I was talking to you about this.
SPEAKER_06:Wait, before you go there, before you go there, because I want to get to that. Let's talk about um your your understanding of who God was. Did it ever come into conflict or how did you understand God when you messed up? Because spoiler alert, I know a lot of your story, but our our listeners probably don't. There was this time in your life where you've told me that you were 11 years old and uh you were introduced to pornography.
SPEAKER_03:Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_06:How did that like break that down for me?
SPEAKER_03:I mean, it's just something that's really interesting is that uh there's an innate sense of what's right and what's wrong. And I think everybody's is maybe um different, the things that that we hold to be right or wrong, that we feel guilty about when we do them. Um, and those are maybe based on culture, whatever our parents reacted to, or you know, I don't know, uh the the sphere of influences around us. So being addicted to porn from a young age, and I don't know when it was that I realized that I was like addicted. Uh probably from the jump, I thought that I was because from the jump, from the first time that my eyes saw something, um you know, like graphic nudity or something like that, I remember feeling shame, like guilty about it. And then when I went back to watch it again or like to find something similar, feeling even more guilty, and saying, I'm never gonna do this again. Um, and the fact that I went back after saying I would never from the jump, I was like, I must be an addict, right?
SPEAKER_06:Um You labeled yourself like that that early. Did you understand what addiction was back then?
SPEAKER_03:No, no, no, no. I just was like, I'm addicted, I can't, and I wasn't like dwelling on this, like, oh, I'm an addict to this, but it was just like I can't not, like I try not to, and I keep doing it, you know. Um and as far as like how I related to God, it was very simple. Uh God is good, so He'll forgive me, but I have to ask. Like, I can sin and I can do this, um, but it you know, God is disappointed in me. Um or even disappointed for me because I'm hurting myself.
SPEAKER_06:Um Where do where did you hear that? Where did you get that from?
SPEAKER_03:I don't know. Church. You know, the way that I would read the Bible. Um I mean the thing is is I can't pinpoint it because it was such a broad sweeping understanding within the Christian context that I grew up in. Like I couldn't, I I could have known looking back, I can't pinpoint certain things like that. I just know that that was my understanding that God forgives me if I ask. Um and what's crazy is that I didn't think he would have been able to forgive me if Jesus had not done what he did at the cross. So it's almost like what I thought Jesus accomplished at the cross was he purchased the ability for God to forgive. And without think and I'm thinking about this now because that is absolutely what I thought, but as I'm thinking about it, I'm realizing that um in my mind, God forgave because Jesus died, but not because he wanted to. So if I came to the Father believing in Jesus' death and resurrection and like his sacrifice as a payment for my sins, then God would take Jesus' blood in the place of my sin and forgive me. And it was like this exchange. I would take a little bit of Jesus' sacrifice every time that I would sin, and God would like say, Okay, you're forgiven. So every time I'd sin, I'd have to go and get a little bit more, like pull emotionally from this sacrifice of Jesus in order to be forgiven. As if God won't for like God wouldn't have forgiven me if Jesus hadn't done that.
SPEAKER_06:So, how did that play itself out in your in your day to day or week to week? You said that you didn't want to do it, but you were doing it. And now, as you're getting into high school, now I mean, I imagine 11 years old is like fifth grade or fourth, fifth grade, and then you're moving on to high school, and now you're you're growing up, things are getting different. And then I mean, talk to me about that whole stage where you're kind of just like going back and forth.
SPEAKER_03:Man, it's crazy. So the only things that I felt innately that I was doing that were wrong were sexually related. Um, so I got to high school, I was, you know, doing basketball, music, I was just completely caught up in making friends and living my life. Um, and I was having a blast. I was a good person, I didn't really have enemies except for a few here and there because of basketball or whatever. But even those, I was desperate to win them over. So the only thing in my life that kept me coming back, like feeling guilty or like I needed a savior was sexual things. So pornography was the big one that I couldn't really shake. Um, and then the one that would come up, and it didn't necessarily seem bad until I crossed lines that I hadn't crossed before, was just in relationships with girls. Um, but it was like there was just something thrilling about it. So every once in a while, you know, I'd cross a line with a girl, whether it's physically, because you know how you come up with the bases or whatever. But for the most part, I didn't really think too much about it. What I thought a lot about was impressing my friends with um whatever my achievements were, right?
SPEAKER_06:The tales of your exploits.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, the tales of my exploits, precisely how I described you would regale them with anyway.
SPEAKER_06:So that's super interesting. You were there was an excitement of of being with girls, but then telling your homeboys about it was like another Yeah, and that's that's something that and the reason I'm highlighting that is because throughout my life that was the only thing that I ever thought I had a problem with was sexual sin.
SPEAKER_03:Which is in my autobiography, a crucial um pattern of thinking that I don't have anymore, but that definitely dominated my thinking up until about two years ago.
SPEAKER_06:So it dominated your thinking. You're like, I'm a good dude. I just can't shake this thing. Um did you think that you were going to shake it one day? Did you think it was a possibility? Or like talk to me about that.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I thought it was a possibility. Um, if I worked hard enough. Um, you know, you would hear success stories here and there. Somebody would come to college and be vulnerable about their addiction and how it nearly ruined their marriage, and say, like, so now I've got this blocker on my computer, and da-da-da-da. And you know, the intimacy in my marriage is so much better now, da-da-da. Or somebody would come to high school and you get to be close friends with somebody that's older, maybe in college, a task force worker who would be like, Yeah, man, I get it. Like, this is something that a lot of people struggle with. I've read this book, tried this, da-da-da. And it's like that kind of stuff would happen over and over, and it's like, oh, okay. Like they show you a counter on their phone, and they're like, Look, I've gone 182 days, like, it's just awesome, dude. Like, I'm in it. And as I would see that, I would just be like, okay, I can do that, I'll try that. Absolutely. Um, so I read, you know, every man's battle. I got a 12-step book once to try to work through. In fact, I found it the other day. Um, and you know, I just thought that was yeah, eventually beatable. But um, come to find out a lot of those guys, if I were to touch at pace with them now, are probably still wrestling or have had their their falls and that type of thing. And so there was like that was actually never the cure in and of itself. Um, it was just behavior modification that could help. But there was a verse that there's a thing that Jesus said that rode with me, and I felt like it was inescapable. Um I thought that even if I could keep from watching porn or masturbation or the times that I've really buckled down, um I've actually done better. So if I would actually just buckle down, I could beat this.
SPEAKER_06:What about tell me about when you really buckled down and then it it fell apart.
SPEAKER_03:Buckling down, trying really hard, having good success, and then it falls apart. It's like, okay, well, screw it. Let me binge super hard and then I'll get after it again. So honestly, and sometimes it might be like a weekend, but sometimes binging super hard isn't quite the uh disgusting um thing that you might think it is. For me, what was actually scariest is that I got so tired of carrying guilt and shame when on the outside, if I measured myself against other people, I was a much better person. So I felt like it wasn't fair for me to carry so much guilt. So my darkest times in high school or college were the times that I and this is dark in hindsight, they were the times that I decided I was sick of feeling guilty, and so I was just like be a good person, you know, do your best, have fun, and so I would kind of those were the seasons that you were actually around, and uh would encourage me by saying, Stop being an idiot.
SPEAKER_06:Um Yeah, what were you doing? What were you doing? Just with girls?
SPEAKER_03:Is that you were just yeah, that was always like my main thing. Like for some reason, you know, drugs, alcohol, substances were never very appealing to me. But there were certain things that like just having no respect at all for women. Um and and you know, since then I think I've like gone down the list and and apologized to a lot of people. Um because in those moments I was just tired of feeling guilty about this one area. So I was just like, eventually, eventually, I'll need to get things together and grow up. And I know God'll forgive me and like we'll be good. I just hope that He'll keep me alive till then, you know, because if I die in the middle, I'm screwed, you know. That was kind of my whole thought process.
SPEAKER_06:That's dark.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, and and the reason I say it's dark in hindsight, but not in the moment, is because in the moment you're not thinking about it. In the moment, all you're thinking is, I'm tired of being guilty, and I'm just gonna numb it. Like I'm gonna push it enough back that it's not on the forefront of my mind anymore, so I can live superficially out here and just pretend like this doesn't exist.
SPEAKER_06:It's too heavy a burden.
SPEAKER_03:It is, and numbing it would work, but I really, you know, I prided myself on being a good person, like this keeps coming back up. So I would be like, no, Jesus said lust. So then I would get back after it, and I would be like, I am going to beat this, like, and so then I would try hard and I'd try hard. And then it was a heavier burden, but I was like, it's the burden that we carry as Christians. Like, that's just the that is just the Christian life. And I would like, like, almost without anybody, well, maybe even like sharing it with people, like, this is the rest. Like, hey man, good on you for wrestling. Like, I don't even try anymore. And I'd be like, heck yeah, good on me for trying. You know what I mean? Like, and I would like hoist this thing up and I'd feel all good about it, 100% pride. And I'd feel good about the fact that I was struggling as a Christian because that's what that's what Jesus said would happen. You're gonna struggle. Proverbs 24, 16 was like a keystone verse for me that the righteous man falls seven times and gets up again. And I missed the point of that verse because I thought that the point of the verse was like, hey man, Christians fall, but you gotta get back up. So, like I was just focused on like, hey, I'm the one that keeps falling. I'm I'm a good Christian because I keep getting up. Like, oh, seven times I've done it a hundred and seven times. Like, I'll keep getting up. And so it was this whole mindset of just struggle, struggle, struggle, struggle, struggle. Um, and I missed the point of the verse, which is saying that I'm righteous.
SPEAKER_06:I think I remember having a conversation with you, and I was just like, bro, we're different because we ain't gonna stop, bro. That's why we're different, because we're never giving up.
SPEAKER_03:And I remember that.
SPEAKER_06:I think like it sounds good, but I know where my heart was, and I think I we were kind of in the same place, but uh it wasn't it. Like what we were saying was not it. So you get to college, um and like your first few years. Tell me about like what was shaping your your theology, your first few years. I know you were doing music all over the world. I mean, talk to me about that.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, so that was actually there's a couple of big moments in my life that shaped my relationship with God. Um early, early on, I think I was eight or nine years old, I got an autoimmune disease that I didn't realize at the time. I knew it was serious and I was miserable for months. Um, had to drop out of school for a few months, um, and nearly died. Uh I remember some elders from the church came and did the whole thing the Bible says, where they like pray over you and lay hands on you and anointing me and anointed me with oil. And uh it was miraculous the way that I was healed. Um, I'll just summarize that story like that. And many, many people would say things like, God has a special plan for you. And so I I believed it. Um my theology around that sentence has changed. Um, because now I believe God has a plan for everybody. Um, and I think that the way that I am now today is because I've believed, like people spoke that over me from a young age, and I believed it from a young age. If we spoke that over young people, every single young person from a young age, like God has a special plan for them, like He's gonna do amazing and huge things through them, then I think that they too would have that in the back of their mind growing up the same way that I did. Um, because it definitely shaped my purpose. There was never a doubt in my life that God had a plan for me, that he was going to use me. And so it was uh it was this thing.
SPEAKER_06:You had you had that confidence when I first met you.
SPEAKER_03:That God was gonna use me like that.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah, you just didn't know what, but you had so much confidence. It was um it was kind of rare to see this guy just like, well, you're super outgoing, but then super confident that, yeah, there's something for me. I don't know what it is. Trying to figure it out, maybe it's this, maybe it's this, but it was all really good. You carried that.
SPEAKER_03:And it was all good, like on paper, it's all good, it's all great things, it's all selfless on paper. But my motive was so pride. It was so like, yeah, I am special. And like God had like certain things that happened that I'd look back on and be like, oh, God's totally affirming this. And it would puff me up to think that I was called out different from other Christians. Um and so this is the way that I see like God taking the mess of my life and actually still using it to prepare me for now the way that I live now. Um, but yeah, that was a big key moment. Another key moment was you mentioned me, you know, doing music all over the world. It was in Australia. I went to Australia in 2012 for the whole year. This group had come, done a concert at our college in 2011. Um randomly I ended up auditioning and joining them to play keys and and do male vocals with this Christian group in Australia. So in 2012, I went down and the whole year. I mean, we did, I don't remember, I'd have to ask them, but like 300 plus shows, concerts, schools, churches, that kind of thing. And early on is one of those moments, those really dark seasons. As I was leaving Lincoln, Nebraska in late 2011. I remember it was like a last hurrah. I kind of felt like I was giving my life to God. And so if I was gonna like wild out, that was my chance. And there was a lot of residual. Um, that even when I got down there, I was like, oh, this was rough, dude. Have I I've told you this story.
SPEAKER_06:You emailed me from down there, bro. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:I do. We should find that email.
SPEAKER_06:I still got it.
SPEAKER_03:You should pull it up.
SPEAKER_06:Um tell that story, bro. Tell that story, or just go into that whole thing.
SPEAKER_03:Man, so I was just like really in it and messaging lots of girls all at once, and like, you know, just in it for myself. Um, what can they do for me? Make me feel good. Um, and so telling them about my music and like how I'm doing this thing, and it's so cool, and um, you know, just anything to puff myself up. The conversations got a little dirty, they got a little grimy. Um, so here's the thing. When I left America, I actually got rid of my phone because I wasn't gonna have a phone in Australia. I got an iPod touch. They were brand new, like fourth generation. And I was just gonna use it with Wi-Fi, use Facebook Messenger. So that's what I was doing. I was Facebook messaging all these girls back in America because I didn't know any girls in Australia yet. And so I was just messaging all these girls on Facebook. Well, I had an iPhone and they were fairly new back then, and so I gave it to my mom. I was like, Yeah, mom, here, use my iPhone. You can see where this is going. I did not log out of Facebook Messenger, but I deleted everything else off my phone. And so I'm messaging all these girls from my first like month there, and my mom's getting all of the messages.
SPEAKER_06:And this is like a situation comedy. Like, this is a nightmare.
SPEAKER_03:Dude, I like still cringe to think about it. But my poor mom, dude, like she's so sweet, had no idea. Like, she's I had such a solid front. When we're talking percentages of identity, like 98% of my identity was on the front. Like everybody knows that it's this 2% back here that was very, very different from that 98%. And my mom, I mean, it's my mom. She gave birth to me. She literally created me in her body. She knows me, right? And she's seeing this stuff that these words that she literally can't even imagine coming out of my mouth because I've hidden them so well from her, that side of me. And she's shocked, so she doesn't know what to do, which is why it took her so long to finally reach out. In the middle of that, we ended up going to Hillsong Church down there in Sydney. And I remember the pastor did a call, and he just was like, Hey, like, I can't remember all the different things. If you've never given your life to God, this is a chance to do it. Or if you've given your life to God, but you've drifted away, um, and it's been a long time, you want to come back, then this is a chance. And I remember hearing both of those, and I was like, nah, man, I'm good. Like, like I haven't drifted away. I'm just like waiting to go all in because I gotta, I've gotta get my life together first. And all of a sudden, I don't even remember what the third option was because then all of a sudden, I what I know now is like the voice of the Holy Spirit just smacked me and was like, why do you think you need to get things together to come to me? You come to me, I get things together for you. Um, and I was just like, Yeah, a hundred percent. And I realized in that moment how stupid what I was like subconsciously believing was. And I was like, okay, like I'm in, I'm all in, I'm yours. Like, sorry, my bad. And that night after that, my mom messaged me and was like, so I'm getting all these things. And I was like, listen, I'm so glad that you waited until now to say something because otherwise, my whole like this moment of repentance for me, of like realizing that God loves me and isn't waiting for me to get things together to come to Him, I would have done it out of guilt from you catching me. And so I'm so glad that you waited because this happened to me tonight. And, you know, so there were these glimpses my parents had into this secret life of mine, but they always thought like I was so sorry, and I was like so bent on just being good that they were like, Oh, he got it together now. So they had no idea that even after that, I still wrestled a bunch. Had a great year in Australia, um, grew a ton spiritually, culturally, um, musically, professionally, uh, with my family down there, and came back to college, got my degree in religious education, was gonna be a chaplain.
SPEAKER_06:That was a huge time in your life because also you had started dating this girl, right?
SPEAKER_03:Hmm. Yep. Yeah, so came back from Australia about six months later, started dating this girl, Morgan. Saw her in line registration day, and I was like, oh my gosh.
SPEAKER_01:Why?
SPEAKER_03:And I I sent you a text because you were recruiting. I was like, Richard might know who this person is because I knew she was new. And I told everybody, cutest girl of all time, transferred to Union College, and we had a class together. And after our first class, it was a three-hour class, we just had a blast. And I was like, I'm in. This this is my life.
SPEAKER_06:Like, that might be my wife.
SPEAKER_03:That might be. And then by I think six, eight weeks later, I was like, Yeah, I'm marrying her. Wow, no doubt. Yeah, so then we started dating. Uh, six months later, she went to Africa for a year as a missionary, student missionary. Um, that was my senior year. So then she came back in time for my graduation, and then I started working for the college as a recruiter. Um, and she still had two years left. So we were dating for a year, got engaged at the end of that year, and uh, we had some ups and downs. Uh, she came back from Africa, it was really rough. Um, I told her about my addiction to porn.
SPEAKER_06:And how'd that go?
SPEAKER_03:Awful, absolutely terrible. Um, she was like, I was just a mess. I was sobbing, I felt so guilty, all this stuff.
SPEAKER_06:And then you still going through it while dating her?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. Which is why I ended up telling her. Um, this was before we were engaged, and she was very understanding, and then the next day called me and she was like, listen, my empathy flared up, but I'm super hurt, super angry. So then for uh a few days she didn't talk to me, and then we got back on track. I was still struggling, and I thought that she knew that I was still struggling, but I did not see uh porn as a reason not to get married. Uh, and the reason was I knew a lot of people that were many, many years into their marriages that I knew were addicted to porn or still watching porn and they had kids and they seemed like happy families. So I was like, listen, I'm gonna do my best. I still had this pride that was like, I'm a better person than most other people. So this isn't a reason not to get married. I'll just keep fighting it. Um also I kind of thought Morgan knew that I was still struggling with it. Um, because I would say things like, you know, I still she would say, Oh, this person did this, that, this person's boyfriend's addicted to porn. I was like, listen, I get the struggle. Like, I still struggled. Thinking that she knew that means that I still partook of the activities of the night.
SPEAKER_06:It turns out narrator, Tyler was not correct in his assumption.
SPEAKER_03:Those words did not mean what Morton thought they did. Um, so yeah, we got married. A year later, I crossed the line that I never thought that I would cross. And that was marriage going well though? I would, I mean, yeah.
SPEAKER_06:It's not like your marriage was struggling. You were just still struggling with this thing.
SPEAKER_03:Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, yeah, I thought marriage was good as long as you just uh as long as you're just nice to each other. And we were nice to each other. We were pretty good at sweeping things under the rug, I'd say. But at the end of that year, yeah. Um I hit a rock bottom, and it was the worst.
SPEAKER_06:Do you want to go into that or say as much as you're willing to share about that and where that took you?
SPEAKER_03:So, I mean, these are I was still working as a recruiter. No, no, no, I wasn't. Um, I had actually switched jobs. I was basically my first life outside of a Christian, an Adventist Christian bubble, um, working as a technical recruiter and recruiting software engineers um and similar careers. So my life was very different. Um come to the end of the a year of marriage. Um, and I'm still addicted to porn because, and the reason I say that is I didn't want to be partaking of those activities of the night, and I still do them, like I couldn't, I couldn't not. So as good as I thought I was doing, um I was still inadequate and I needed to try harder, but I still never thought that I was hurting anybody other than myself, and it wasn't until I crossed the line that I knew was hurting Morgan, my wife, um that I realized and I was willing to admit that I still had a very deep problem. And when I crossed that line, uh you know, basically Snapchat with somebody other than Morgan, right? When I crossed that line, I just guilt overwhelmed me like I had never felt before. I could barely look her in the eyes. And in that moment, when I realized that I was about to throw away everything, like I followed this path in my mind that I was on because I thought that I controlled it. I thought that my addiction, my sexual sin, my problem was contained into this virtual lust bubble that if I was lucky, oh, this is actually a good analogy. Like this bubble that housed inside it my only problem, which was porn. So a digital lust issue. And that was the only problem that I thought that I had. And what's crazy, I just learned about this scuba diving bubbles. The farther up a bubble goes in water, the air expands and it becomes a much larger bubble, right?
SPEAKER_06:Right.
SPEAKER_03:So now my bubble that I thought was just this teeny tiny little thing, not affecting anybody but myself, was rising to the surface. And I was realizing there's a whole lot more inside it than just this digital lust problem. Because now all of a sudden, within it was digital infidelity, like involving someone else. And then as it grew, as it rose and it got bigger and bigger, I saw that it was going to, I could just see where this was going. And it was coming to the surface. And if Morgan got to look at what was in it, she was gonna leave me. And then if everybody else got to look at what was in it, then I'd lose my reputation as a good person. Because now I'm not just like, you know, 95 or 98% of all dudes in the world addicted to porn. Now I'm like that other person that actually cheats on their incredible, like their incredible wives, their beautiful wives that love them. And the ones that do it all while talking about how much God loves you, and da da da, because that's what I've been. This person who had a ministry and a daily devotional and all this stuff. And it terrified me the fact that one, my sins actually would hurt other people, and two, that I'd be found out for them. And in this really, really actually dark place, I remembered um a friend of mine now, Jonathan Leonardo, on a podcast with my friend Molly, and it was probably similar to this, just shorter. And he was just talking about how God set him free. Like he was free, free, free. And he just kept saying it over and over and it was just playing in my mind on Reapy. I didn't know him. I knew his name, and I'd heard him on this podcast, but I didn't know him. And I was just like, I need that. So I found him on Facebook, sent him a message. We had a he was like, Yeah, let's talk.
SPEAKER_06:How long after, how long after like you you make this, you cross the line, how long until you start talking to somebody about it?
SPEAKER_03:Two weeks, maybe three weeks.
SPEAKER_06:So you're just being eaten alive for those two or three weeks. Okay.
SPEAKER_03:Well, actually, I was able to the it happened twice. Um, and the first time I was like, oh, I'm never gonna do that again. That was so far outside my character, not a chance. And I thought it could just be my little secret, and I would never tell anybody, and it would be all good. And then it was two weeks after that that it happened again. And when it happened again, I was like, This is who I am, maybe. Yeah, I I felt hopeless. I am absolutely spiraling out of control. If the incredible guilt from the first time wasn't enough to keep me from doing it a second time, I'm a monster. And I blamed porn. I was like, porn is the reason, and I've spiraled out of control, and I'm beyond saving. I knew that I was saved in Christ, but when it came to my behavior, I thought that I was beyond saving.
SPEAKER_06:Did you um that lie that says guilt is gonna actually change you? Like you came head-to-head, face to face with that lie.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, and this is a part of the story I've never told anybody before. That's that it happened twice. And that the reason why it had to happen twice was because I really truly, because the guilt was at a level that I never felt, and the level of guilt that I felt after the first time, I truly believed it was enough to keep me from ever doing it again.
SPEAKER_06:Narrator voice. It was not true. He did do it again.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. And when it happened again, I came head to head. The bubble was at its biggest, it was near the surface, and I was like, I I was desperate. And at that point, I was at a crossroads where it was either this one last ditch attempt from this guy that I heard on a podcast at staying in Christianity, or screw it. Like, there's no difference between me and a good atheist. We're both doing our best to be good people.
SPEAKER_01:Wow.
SPEAKER_03:Um, God has not changed my life one bit, and I can't handle this. And that was where I was. So this phone call with this guy was my last chance. Like, basically, in my mind, it was my last hope.
SPEAKER_06:Christianity didn't have the answers that you thought it had.
SPEAKER_03:It did they did not.
SPEAKER_06:Wow. Um, in this conversation, my whole life changed.
SPEAKER_03:Literally, I hung up the phone, I called Morgan, I was like, I haven't loved you the way that I should have been, and I'm sorry, but and I couldn't find words. She was like, uh okay. So I was like, I just, I just, I, I, I just, I'm well, what did he say?
SPEAKER_06:Because um, yeah, this sounds like the moment you went from death to life with reaching. I'm sorry. Yeah, what happened in this conversation?
SPEAKER_03:A hundred percent. So we start talking, he's like, So what's going on, dude? Um, I tell him, I'm like teasing it, you know, I'm addicted to this and this and this. I was real comfortable talking about addiction to porn. I I can't remember, I think I told him, yeah, I told him about all of it. And he was like, okay, so tell me more about this. And we just kind of similar to what we just did, went back on autobiographical view of my life, bird's eye view, I just went down the line. And as we were going, one of the first things he said was, your addiction isn't to lust. There's a lot of lines you would have crossed a long time ago if that was truly your big problem. But as we looked at all these stories, you and I have kind of already uncovered it too. There was this desperate need for people to affirm me and see me a certain way. And it was the win. It was the win of people seeing me the way that I wanted them to. So with girls, them seeing me as desirable, of them, you know, doing and behaving in the way that I wanted them to, gave me a feeling of victory uh in sports. It wasn't so much winning games as much as it was my coaches selecting me to be a captain or saying that I was a leader. Even the people prophesying over me saying that God has a special plan for you, planted a seed in my heart of that's right. I'm special. And so, even true words that God sees me as special, which is true for everybody, my heart took and twisted and manipulated into feeding this desire to be above or respected or seen differently, and like this victory, like this win.
SPEAKER_06:And is that because you didn't feel like you were any of those things?
SPEAKER_03:Or you just it's it was because I was so hungry for those things.
SPEAKER_06:But why were you so hungry? Were you starving?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I didn't believe I didn't believe that I was those things without them coming in. Right? So, and this is this is where every I think a good analogy that people use is like they'll they'll say the thing like, Oh, there's a God-shaped hole in your heart that only he can fill, right? Especially in this context, we use a word thirsty. If somebody's real thirsty, we all know the connotations, right? I was real thirsty for affirmation. And I was good enough at the things that I would do to get enough affirmation to feel good almost all the time. That's what turned out being my deep, deep addiction. This is why all of my attempts to stop my addiction to porn never worked. Because it was like taking an apple off of an apple tree, taping an orange onto the orange tree, and saying, Okay, now produce oranges. Like you can't cut the fruit off and expect the tree to change. And at my root, I was believing lies about myself that I needed people's affirmation to be okay. And as long as I was living this lie that says, hey, it's human nature, human nature needs people's affirmation, it needs uh relationships with one another. Um, while I do believe we're created for loving one another, the second that I would buy that lie, and from a young age, that was my whole identity. There was no percentages, it was completely wrapped up in my identity being I need people to make me feel enough. That's who I am. I'm a wooer. I woo people over and I make them feel good about themselves. That's who I am.
SPEAKER_06:But it was really so you could feel good about yourself.
SPEAKER_03:A hundred percent. And it was this deep dark secret that I didn't know that I had, which is why it was able to be unearthed for so long. I didn't even know it was there. I was so focused on this one fruit that I never saw. And this is what Jesus was saying. Like, anybody who looks lustfully in his heart has already committed adultery. Like, this is what he was getting at. The whole point of what he was saying was like, you're hopeless. Like, you're hopeless. Get to it, realize it. And for some reason I would realize it, but then think, so I need to try harder. And not realizing that the reason Jesus was trying to help people get to this point of recognizing their hopelessness was because he knew that what he was about to do was to die, raise to life, and give them his life, his very spirit to give them life, to bring them from death to life. So hurry up and die already. Hurry up and realize that you're not needing to die, but that you're literally walking dead. Recognize that you are incapable of even having a like a pure heart. You're just incapable. What you need is a new heart, you need a new mind.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah, and that's why I'm going to give you one. That's why this whole thing is not it's not behavior modification. This whole thing is you were dead. And you don't need to modify the behavior of a dead person. That's right. So in this conversation, he kind of unpacks that for you, and you see it for the first time, you're like, yo, my addiction is to uh being enough. Or my my addiction is to affirmation. Mm-hmm. What what did that what did you make of that?
SPEAKER_03:Um, I was like, you're right, a hundred percent. Um, and it was relieving because I felt like, okay, now we know the real obstacle, but now how do we get rid of this? Right. And I started to employ or deploy all of the same old strategies that I used against porn, against this, like in my mind. I was like, okay, and he asked me a simple question: what is your relationship to sin? And I started saying, Well, you know, I just told you, like, I hate it, makes me feel guilty, but I keep coming back to it for some reason. Like, I'm just like addicted. And then he showed me Romans 6. I just read it, says, You have been set free from sin. Verse 7. Verse 11, I think says, So count, consider yourself dead to sin and alive to Christ Jesus. And I was like, But I sin though. And I remember being like, So because you've committed sins in your life, you won't believe what the Bible says about you. And I was just like, like, I didn't know what to say. Like, yeah, I guess my whole life I haven't believed this because I've looked at my life as proof that this isn't true about me. And this is the true crossroads that everyone, I don't care if you were born Christian, you need to get to. Are you willing to look at what he says about you and believe it? Or look at your own life that says that you're disqualified of that being true.
SPEAKER_06:What what happens next, bro?
SPEAKER_03:So, I mean, I just start reading through the Bible, he's just having me read these passages. Um, Colossians 1, Colossians 2, Galatians, um, Romans 8, uh, Ephesians 1, all of these things that say you are righteous to the saints, not the sinners. To or you're holy, you're blameless, you're above reproach. Um, you've been given every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. And I just started noticing the tense, and it's all past tense. And I was like, How? And it just overwhelmed me. Because when I was under this crushing weight of guilt and shame for what I'd done, it was the first time that I actually heard what God said about me. And it was a time I felt like the woman, this is why it's one of my favorite stories in John chapter 8, the adulterous woman. When she's coming and all these accusations are being hurled at her, and she's caught in the act. And when Jesus lifts her face up, he says, I don't condemn you. Go and sin no more. And I was just like, that's exactly how I felt. I was just like, God has just seen me at my lowest and said, I don't condemn you. Not only do I not condemn you, but I call you righteous. I call you holy, I call you blameless. I see you for who I've always created you to be and not for what you've done. And it over, it just it wrecked me. I was just like, I will never be the same. Which is why it makes sense to me that Jesus told this woman, go and sin no more. Like, just the fact that he said, I don't condemn you either, has me like I don't live in these old medieval war times, but loyalty to a king, and you watch these movies, and they're just like ready to run through walls and just die for their king. And him saying, I don't condemn you, had me ready to run through walls and die for him.
SPEAKER_01:Wow.
SPEAKER_03:I'm like, absolutely, I'm yours. Like you, I just was I just couldn't believe how much he loved me. So now it makes sense. First John 4 says, We love because he first loved us. It was the revelation of his love for me that awakened in me this new heart, like the realization of my new heart. It wasn't postured in like I need people's affirmation. My new heart knew that I was loved by God, like knew that I was seen as wholly blameless. And I was just like, okay, this is it.
SPEAKER_06:Was it like how solid was it in there?
SPEAKER_03:That was in. It was in. I was like, yeah, I'm what he says. I'm never gonna be the same. It was I think the implications, like, I was still Morgan didn't know about this. So me, God, Jonathan, this guy I talked to on the phone, were the only ones who knew. And so there wasn't a whole lot of pressure. I was like, okay, let me try this on, right? Like, let me see how this feels, kind of like wading into it to dip my toes in. But I knew that God loved me, and I knew that I was not defined by my addiction. I was like, no, I'm good. Like, I am holy, I am righteous. Therefore, the spirit will break everything. Like, I'm good. I don't, I just knew I was good. Like God was going to actually do all this for me.
SPEAKER_06:And a week later, everything before we get to that, what type of weight was just was there like this weight, this burden just kind of just dropped off?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. Literally. I don't remember the words that I said, but I remember I had a hard time finding words. I've I've never been a crier. I remember in like sixth grade, I crashed my dirt bike and skinned up my forearm. Arms twisted my knee and I cried. My dad packed up the dirt bikes, loaded everything up. I was still crying. Drove us home. I was still crying. I ended up naked in front of the mirror, dirty, bloody. And I looked at myself and saw like my tears, you know, running through the dirt on my face and my eyes all swollen and my lips like nasty, you know, sucked all in. And then um I just looked so pitiful, I decided I would never cry again.
SPEAKER_01:And I didn't, I didn't cry.
SPEAKER_03:Um until my girlfriend, freshman year of high school, broke up with me. And then again, my junior year when my girlfriend and I broke up, and then again, my sophomore year of college when my grandpa died. And aside from that, no tears ever. And so I remember this call with this dude, and people would be like, You didn't even cry at your wedding. I'm like, No, sue me. I I don't know what to tell you. Like, I love my wife. I like uh I don't cry. Um and all of a sudden, as I'm praying with this dude over the phone, I just got emotional and like my eyes got all teary. I call Morgan and I'm all shook. My voice is shaking. She's like, okay. Um and I just I just knew like it was over. Yeah, it was gonna be very, very different. Because I mean, that kind of emotional reaction for me came from something spiritual in me that I couldn't describe.
SPEAKER_06:Wow. So a week later, you're you're you're living high on the hog, you're you're just happy. What happened?
SPEAKER_03:Well, there were still some residuals from my old life. One of the weird things in our relationship was that I just was real picky about when I wanted to have sex. And so we were hanging out, and she wanted to have sex, and I was like, my legs are hot. Like it was really lame. I didn't ever want to be naked around her. So a week later, I was with Morgan and I rejected her. And this was a pattern in our marriage.
SPEAKER_01:Rejected her intimacy, intimacy, yeah.
SPEAKER_03:And it had happened enough times, she snapped. She was like, There's something wrong with you. Um, am I not desirable? You know, all these things. And I started hunting for reasons why I would do this. Um, and as I was hunting, I was like, maybe it's you know, this, this, unresolved conflict, all these things that I'd been keeping record of in our first year of marriage. As I looked it up online, I was like, Yeah, this would make sense, you know, one of them being guilt and shame. And I bring up all these things to her, and she's like, Well, what do you have to be guilty about? And I was like, remember, I said like, I thought that she knew every time that I said this. I was like, porn. And the look on her face was luckily, I don't remember it very well, but I'll try to remember it because I just it was the probably saddest moment of my life. I've never hurt anybody the way that I hurt her in that moment. Her face twisted up, she could hardly speak, instantly crying, she couldn't talk except for just to tell me to leave. And I tried to like talk to her, and she was on the edge of like, and I knew she didn't want to, but like making there, we were at the beach, there's people around. Um, so I was like, I'll give her a space. And I started walking, and I walked a couple miles on the beach, called Jonathan. I'm like, last time I talked to him, I'm like, God loves me. I call him, I'm like, this just happened. And uh I mean, God bless that dude. He talked to me for like an hour and a half, two hours. I'm getting sunburned, and just unpacked a lot more stuff, you know, that this leftover patterns of thinking from my old life and how they were affecting my wife in our marriage. I felt encouraged, went back to try to talk to Morgan, and that was not happening. She says, I told you to leave, threw my bag at me, kicked me out. So I'm walking down the street, thunderstorm hits, and I'm just this is this is the like movie moment of the story where all of my sins have now come to light. And I'm walking sunburned. Morgan knows she's slammed me against the wall, threw my bag at me, she's sobbing. Just the pain that I caused her. You see it in movies, you know, these hysterical fights um where somebody hurts somebody else, and it's almost like, man, that's a really good actress. Like you can tell that they really threw themselves into this role, but when it happens in real life, it's traumatic, like it is deep, deep trauma. Um for her, obviously, and it seers into your brain, and to hurt somebody that you love like that, I think that there's never been a time in my life that I've felt more like a failure. And now there's a big difference though, because now I know God loves me. Before I knew God loved me with quotations around it, right? But now I knew God loved me, and I felt like a failure, but I knew this new thing, and it was just really, really, really hard. It's raining on me, I'm sunburned, I'm carrying my duffel bag like three miles or something like that to a Starbucks. And that started, that was the beginning of my new life. So, to summarize it, I went from believing I was the sum of my actions, needing people to affirm me to know that I'm okay, and them actually affirming me to knowing I don't need their affirmation, but that God loves me and He affirms me, calls me righteous, and my wife, the person whose affirmation I wanted most, not just not giving it to me, but saying, No, you're not different, you aren't changed, you are disgusting, you're a liar, and you will never change. You will always be like this. And it was polar opposites. Everybody thinks I'm perfect when deep down I know I'm not, and now I know that God actually calls me perfect, Hebrews 10:14. Like he calls me perfect, I'm whole in him. And my wife says, No, absolutely not. You can fool all them, I'll never be fooled again. So I was faced with the choice believe all the people that I used to need, or believe God. And it was difficult. Oftentimes I couldn't believe in my heart, I had to say it out loud over and over and over, and then peace would just settle in. And I was like, this is it, it just affirmed it over and over and over that God truly did.
SPEAKER_06:Um where did you spend the night that first that first day that you told that to her? Like, what did you do? You walked for you got drenched, you're walking like the incredible Hulk at the end. Yeah, you're just sad. Where where did you go, dude?
SPEAKER_03:It um it was awkward. Her parents came and found me, picked me up and her, and it was so painful that that car ride. And I was just like, listen, I'll go stay with my sister. So I stayed with my sister for four or five days, and I didn't know. Did her parents know?
SPEAKER_06:Did her parents know?
SPEAKER_03:No, they just knew that something happened.
SPEAKER_01:Okay.
SPEAKER_03:Um, but they're you know, good parents, and they're just like, hey, you guys can work this out, whatever it is. Um, but I was just like, I don't know, I don't know why, but I went and I stayed at my sister's for four or five days, and during those four or five days, um was just on this roller coaster of hopelessness and fear of Morgan leaving me and what would happen. And then I would just I'd read the Bible and I'd believe what it says, and I would just be like, I have peace, I have peace. Like I know I found a Bible verse that says that God's peace can't be removed. And I was like, okay, like I'm done not believing your word. So I was just like, I believe that I have peace right now, and I would just pray it and I would believe it, I'd say I believed it all day long because I wasn't working and I was alone. So, like, and I'd be good, and once I was good, then I would try to live my life. I'd watch little Netflix or something, and if fear started creeping back in, right back, literally on my knees, just hardcore at this. Um, and it got settled. But next time I saw Morgan, we were on our plane back to because we were in Florida on a vacation. So I saw her at the airport, sat like five days later. She hadn't talked to me, called me, answered anything anything.
SPEAKER_06:Had you been trying to communicate with her, or you just for sure like that's not gonna work?
SPEAKER_03:No, I bought her a necklace. I wrote her this long letter, like I left it outside their house when they weren't there for her.
SPEAKER_06:Like, yeah, I'm gonna have to find out if she read that mug or if she just torched it.
SPEAKER_03:We actually just found it. She's got it somewhere. We just read it um when we were moving. And it's you you can see my heart, like it's totally different, but even now, there are some things I've grown from since then. Because I mean, I was days old. Like Jesus says be born again. I was like four days old.
SPEAKER_06:Mercy. So you see her for the first time at the airport, like her parents drop her off, and and your sister drops you off.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. And um it was she just texted me. I said, We're we're about halfway. She goes, You're crazy, dog. Yeah, so we got back to Lincoln. Our friends Zach and Israel picked us up. That car ride was awkward. Like she wouldn't touch me, talk to me, but she was laughing with them and stuff. We got home, she wasn't talking to me. I remember that night. Man, I haven't, I haven't tried to remember these details in a while. That first night, you know, she was up doing things, just keeping herself busy, and I'm just like hoping for a chance to talk, something. So I get in bed, she never comes to bed, obviously. I fall asleep, I don't know what time, must have been one or two in the morning, and she busts into the room, turns on the light, and sits down, and just sobbing. And she's just like, How could you? and just starts venting to me. Um and asking me questions and but just sobbing when those questions were satisfied, which they weren't, they weren't satisfied because I remember I was just like, I don't know, like I don't have an answer. There is literally no logical reason, and obviously, that doesn't help. So she, you know, went out, slammed the door. So then she's in the guest room. I'm still wrestling with guilt and stuff, and I'm like, I should be in this room, you know, whatever. And I go in there. She I was literally legitimately afraid because she couldn't breathe. She was crying and and so hurt, she couldn't breathe. And I just had no answers. Like, I couldn't do anything. I knew that I wasn't who I used to be, and I knew that if she would stick around and give me another chance, she would see. And I know everybody says that. So, to all the people who have had people hurt them, just because somebody says that doesn't mean that it's true. Okay, so I get that. Um, but I just so and that's why I didn't feel the need to pressure her because I knew time, like I don't need her to believe me right now. Um, I just hope that was the helplessness of it though, right? Because like it or not, the way that I'd lived my life before had consequences, and I'd been living at her expense, and so now I was reaping that harvest. And even though in the spiritual I didn't need to have guilt and shame control me anymore, I did still hurt somebody. And so, yeah, that was just the we keep talking about like the darkest times of my life. That was the hardest time of my life, but not the darkest, because now I knew that God loved me. And it wasn't this thing on a piece of paper, it was him literally in me, loving on me, and it was the most satisfying and fulfilling relationship I had ever been a part of with him.
SPEAKER_06:And so you start going through the next few months, and then you start understanding like when did you understand the gravity? Like this wasn't gonna be a we're in a fight for two weeks.
SPEAKER_03:The next day. Um, and I come home that night, and Morgan's ring is on the dresser, and she's not there. And so I was like, F. Um, and I could not sleep. I was I felt sick. I think I might have texted you and said, like, bro, please pray for us.
SPEAKER_06:Like this is Yeah, I got a text that said pray for us, and I was like, oh, this dude's going through troubles in his marriage because nobody when your homeboy texts you, pray for me, and he's married, it means some. If it's like if something's happening with a kid, they'll they'll say something about the kid or something like that. But if they don't say anything, it's just like I even mentioned it to Natalie. I was like, yo, Tyrone Morgan might be struggling.
SPEAKER_05:Natalie's like, can't really. Uh so uh, where'd she go?
SPEAKER_03:Um, her sister was in the dorm, so she just went and stayed with her in the dorm. So the next night when I realized she wasn't coming home, I asked Zach and Ezrael if I could come stay with them. And for a couple weeks I stayed there. Then I noticed on locations, uh, thanks to Apple tracking our every move. I knew Morgan was staying at our house again. Um, I asked her if I could move back in. She says I never said you had to move out. You know, just real sassy. I moved back in, slept in the guest room. The next two months, so it was two weeks, me living somewhere else, the next two months. We lived in the same house, but it was awful.
SPEAKER_06:Um when did you move back in? Like I remember being up there the first weekend of September, and I went over to Zach and Azrael's place, and you were there while we were all together, and we had like this season of prayer over your marriage because up until that point, to that first weekend of September, I had no idea what actually had taken place. But when I saw you, you were like, I told Morgan about the porn. But you hadn't wanted to tell me because you knew correctly that I would have been like, Why'd you tell about the porn, man?
SPEAKER_04:That's not something you tell your wife about. That's something like that you gotta figure out. Like you and God figure that stuff out. Why'd you tell about the porn?
SPEAKER_06:And you uh so but you didn't. I I'm sure that's how I would have responded, and that's why you wouldn't have told me, but I'm there, and we all went and we prayed. And we prayed for a miracle for your marriage to be better than it ever had been. Um that just sticks out in my mind because this was the first time I knew about it, and we were up in Lincoln.
SPEAKER_03:That was when I was staying there, right?
SPEAKER_06:I don't I thought you had moved back into the house already, but that's not as important part of the story.
SPEAKER_03:But do you remember what song we listened to together that night?
SPEAKER_06:Was it uh Lauren Dagle?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. And those lyrics hit because you think about my story now, and it says, You say I am strong when uh I'm weak, you say I am love. What are the lyrics? Help me out.
SPEAKER_06:It's pretty much this is what I think about myself, but you're telling me this about myself.
SPEAKER_03:I keep hearing voices telling me that I'm not enough.
SPEAKER_06:Mercy.
SPEAKER_03:Like it's a whole bunch of exactly that. And then, but you say that was powerful.
SPEAKER_06:Shout out to Lauren Daigle for dropping that single at the appropriate time in your life.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, Lauren Daigle, if uh you're listening to this, thank you.
SPEAKER_06:Oh man, that's it.
SPEAKER_03:Thank you, thank you. So the uh that I mean it, and I was I remember because I was just telling you guys, and it was like not really an appropriate time for me to be like trying to teach other people, but this gospel had changed my life, and I realized that like everything that we had believed was like it's not entirely true. We've been missing the main parts. So I'm listening to this and I'm like, guys, like this is but everybody kind of thinks I'm just like, I don't know, what were you thinking when I was like, because I was at peace, I was like happy, I was having fun with my friends. So when I say that this was a super hard time, I want people to understand living together was awful um for Morgan because of what I did to her.
SPEAKER_06:Right. Man, when you I didn't understand what was going on with you, I knew that I was very sad for your marriage, and I was very confused. I've said this to Morgan where I was just like, why, why, why this is not this is not that big of a deal. I mean, it's a big deal, but it's not a big deal. And then I was weirded out about how uh at peace you were. And I don't think you were going into gospel as much. You were confident. But this stuff it seemed like was all starting to make sense in your head. And you were explaining it to us and at the same time explaining it to yourself.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_06:And I the vivid memories of us all in that basement. Zach Israel, you and me, and and you were like I'm good. And I do remember thinking praise the Lord that he's handling this this way. And I hadn't understood the realness or fullness of the gospel myself, but I knew like I was just praising God. Man, this is this is awesome that he's handling this the way he's handling it. So that was But I don't think uh neither Zach nor Azriel or I were really picking up what you were laying down at that point.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I I say that the next six months um were basically summarized like this. Um a theological standpoint, from my relationship with God, there was like it was so let me start over. The next six months from there, basically from August till Christmas, were characterized by two main relationships: my relationship with God and my relationship with Morgan. Within my relationship with God, I had a lot of deconstructing to do because all of my beliefs had led me to nothing because I was living in death. When his spirit brought me into life, I was given a new lens. And reading the Bible, it came alive. Um, so I had to be willing to set aside everything that I thought that I knew for the sake of receiving what I knew now to be truth. And it was like at its core, God loved me, he was not disappointed in me, he called me righteous, I was his son, and as Jesus is, so am I in this world. So if he lives in me, if it's true about him, it's true about me. And that was kind of a core principle that I had to hold against everything else that I believed, right? So that was what was going on for those six months. Not a whole lot of preaching, not a whole lot of speaking. I stopped doing my daily devotional. Like you said, I was kind of like if I was talking about it, I was kind of just explaining it for myself. Um, and that was what those six months were. It was kind of like what I, as far as my relationship with God goes, I feel like what Paul must have felt like after he was made blind and then went off once he got his sight back, and he just went off for years to just start over, right?
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_03:That was what that season was for me. And then as far as my relationship with Morgan, it was characterized by a fear that she was gonna leave me for who I used to be.
SPEAKER_06:Mercy.
SPEAKER_03:So I knew I couldn't convince her because she was right. I had been manipulative and a liar. Like, so what would a manipulative liar do when they get caught in a lie? They would lie and say that they're changed, they would lie and say that they're different. So I knew that there was absolutely nothing that I could say to convince her that I was different. All I could do was hope and pray that she would stick around and then she would see that I was different. Because there's no proving it, there's just living.
SPEAKER_06:Mercy.
SPEAKER_03:I'm just different. That's just how it like plain and simple. Um, and if I truly have been brought from death to life, then I'm living in life. Like, period. And so I just I was that was it. I was afraid that she was gonna leave me for who I used to be. Um our marriage slowly started getting better. I thought, you know, she's starting to see, you know, she's starting to love me. She was trying harder. There was definitely a more concerted effort, I could tell from her side, but she was still carrying a lot of pain. By February, I think she started saying she loved me again. March, she started wearing her ring. Um, and those next six months, I thought everything was really good. And and on now, on the other side of things, the the God side, I was like, I have to go, I have to tell everybody. So February, when she started saying she loved me again, that's about when you and I sat down and talked.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:And these things were really, I listened to a ton of Dan Moeller, a lot of Todd White.
SPEAKER_06:Happy Dan, happy Dan.
SPEAKER_03:Happy Dan, man. Um, as far as what love looks like in a marriage, the miracle that is my marriage today, again, go listen to Morgan's podcast too. Um, but the miracle that is my marriage today is a culmination of God living through certain people. Top of that list, Jonathan Leonardo, Eddie Cornejo, Dan Muller, and Todd White.
SPEAKER_01:Wow.
SPEAKER_03:Like the way that those four have um allowed the spirit to teach them, and then the way that they've taught others and put stuff out there has changed my life. Um, I would have screwed things up worse. Like that window of months before, actually, from that whole six months that I was afraid she'd leave me for who I was, I would have absolutely ran her out the door if old me still had um been around.
SPEAKER_01:Wow.
SPEAKER_03:But it was the way that those people discipled me, those people encouraged me. Obviously, Dan and Todd, I don't know personally, but their teachings about what love looks like, it was all in agreement with my new heart. So I was able to love my wife that way. And I was learning so much, and it was in practice, like the things I was learning weren't hard to do anymore. It was like, oh, this is who I am, this is how I live.
SPEAKER_06:What did you learn about love? What was what was the what was different about love?
SPEAKER_03:I think the biggest thing was I don't need anything from my wife to give her everything.
SPEAKER_01:Wow.
SPEAKER_03:Because I've been given everything from God who didn't need anything from me to give it to me.
SPEAKER_06:Mercy.
SPEAKER_03:That was it. So the two were inextricably linked, absolutely linked. Because God loves me like this, I love my wife like this. So, in order for me to love my wife, I had to know how God loved me. And it changed everything. So you can cuss me up and down just like I know people curse God up and down. And guess what? He still loves them. Like she could misinterpret the gifts that I was giving her as being manipulative, and I knew from the purity of my heart that they weren't anymore. Um, just the same way that I know that people have misinterpreted the gift of Jesus Christ as being uh this like God angry, and so he's got to kill somebody, and Jesus is like, no, kill me, and it's like that type of gift, and they think that it's a fear-based um tactic that God uses to bring us in. Like, I want to kill sinners, and they misunderstand his gift, right? And still it does not waver, it doesn't move him from wanting to love them and give them gifts.
SPEAKER_01:Wow.
SPEAKER_03:Um, therefore, I can keep doing things for my wife, I can keep buying her cards, even if they end up in the trash.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah, because you don't need her affirmation anymore. What you need to do is love her. Exactly. Or before you wanted to love her. I wanted to. But but but you didn't, baby. You just didn't.
SPEAKER_03:You can try really hard to love somebody. Um, but as long as there's something under the surface that is sucking all of the life out of you, you've got nothing to give. So everything you're doing is just trying to fill a void.
SPEAKER_06:Wow.
SPEAKER_03:And it's not love, it's manipulation.
SPEAKER_06:So all these revelations about what love is are coming to you through the beginning of 2019, February, March. Like it's just kind of cemented in.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, and I'm feeling this shift as I'm like explaining it to people and it's making more and more sense and like it's really getting settled. Not only that, but I've seen the miracle. Like now that I knew that I was such a slave to affirmation, and I was faced with this thing that I didn't think was possible to live and At peace when the person whose affirmation I wanted most hated me. And I saw that I still had peace. I was good. I was fine. I didn't need anybody. I was a bona fide extrovert by every personality assessment, 99.8% extroverted. And yet I spent entire weekends by myself in my house, just completely full. Just worshiping, um, reading the Bible, watching sermons, watching Netflix, sports. But like, if I was ever not at peace, I didn't go to anybody. All of the things that used to numb it: sports, friends, jokes, comedies, um, porn, exercise, all of those things. Yeah, absolutely. I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I don't want any of that. There's one source of peace for my life, and it's the only one that will always be there.
SPEAKER_06:Mercy.
SPEAKER_03:I'm not interested in anything else.
SPEAKER_06:People don't believe this is real, dog. What do you mean? People don't believe.
SPEAKER_03:You mean like the way we used to?
SPEAKER_06:Yeah, people don't think you can have what you're describing. Like you have to have people owe you. Life owes you, God owes you. Until you realize that he doesn't. And if he doesn't, then nobody does. And so you're able to live in the midst of this storm.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_06:With peace that passes understanding.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, a hundred percent. And I remember that was the thing that I think I would say to you that because you were my sounding board for a lot of this. For the most of our relationship, you were the one married, you had a kid, a dog, like you were going through all the things in life before me. And you'd be like, Tyler, this this is trust me, you don't want to make the same mistakes I did. And like that was the dynamic of our relationship. Well, now I just I needed to tell everybody like Morgan doesn't need to respect me one bit. She doesn't need to take it an ounce of interest in my life or my interests. And I can still be perfectly fine. I can love her fully. Um, she can literally spit in my food, and I can make her another plate and myself another plate. Like, it's all good. I do not not that she ever did that, but like it just doesn't matter. It does not what she does for me has absolutely nothing to do with my ability to love her.
SPEAKER_01:Wow.
SPEAKER_03:And I know that because whatever I've done to God never had a single thing to do with his ability to love me. And so Yeah, dude, you're right. Um, just the same way that I didn't believe it, a lot of people don't believe it. I knew this to be absolutely true because for six months this was my life. Where every single one of my intentions was questioned or straight up uh twisted. Uh every word that I said wasn't believed or it was taken the wrong way. Most of my gifts went to the trash. Uh, I didn't get quality time to try to work anything out. Um yeah, it's just that was that was my life, and I was good. I was perfectly content and at peace in Christ. I was loved, I was not suffering, which is actually the problem for probably some listeners right now. Um I know it was the problem for Morgan.
SPEAKER_06:I couldn't believe what was going on, bro. I couldn't believe it. You were gonna you were saying when what?
SPEAKER_03:Well, I just know like when people when there is a victimizer, when there is somebody who has hurt someone else and is very obviously in the wrong, they deserve to be guilty. Not too many people knew what was going on in our lives. Morgan wanted it that way, she didn't want anybody to know our own personal business, right? So I haven't run into this until we started sharing our story, but I know that some of you guys, even listening to me tell this right now, are maybe upset or at least uncomfortable at me saying that I was perfectly at peace and content when my wife was so angry at me, because what it might sound like is that I'm now the victim of her being angry. Right? And that's not at all. I was never a victim of her being angry, but the reason that I was never a victim of her behavior towards me is not because I did wrong, and those who do wrong are incapable of being victims. So I would just the dynamic of me always listening to you about relationship advice was starting to shift because I I recognized that your advice um was no offense, whack tracks.
SPEAKER_06:Um good Adam One advice.
SPEAKER_03:Adam One advice. Yeah. Um, Adam One is basically death, by the way, in case you're wondering what death to life is. Adam one is death. So, yeah, I mean, now that I recognize because basically what I was living was by the spirit, and I saw what love looked like, I was like, oh wait, no, no, no, Richard, it's actually like this, and this dynamic started changing a little bit, and you were one of the first people that I talked to in depth about this uh in February, and we were just sitting down, and that was kind of a shift. January, February. I remember I went out and I spoke at a camp for young adults or the teenagers, and I got to flesh out a lot of these thoughts, and I was just like fired up, like I had to tell everybody because this wasn't just words on a page anymore. Like this had absolutely changed my life. I was free from affirmation. And how did I know that I was free from the thing that was actually killing me and hurting my wife? Because now I had lived without it long enough in a way that I never had before, and had peace that I knew it wasn't just a phase.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_03:Like this was my life.
SPEAKER_06:So you're going into the summer and you're starting to preach hot gospel fire to whoever you come in contact with. Some people are receiving it. You run into Drew, he's receiving it. Um, some people aren't. How did and then what's going on with Morgan at this time? You know, we're almost a year out from this revelation that you were still dealing with porn. What is going on with her at this point? Um or how is she treating you? Well, ask her what was going on with her. How was she treating you?
SPEAKER_03:As far as our relationship go, that that spring, January to May, we're back to normal um with each other. But I was talking about Jesus like all the time. I wouldn't say I was preaching hot gospel fire. Uh, I would say it was a jumbled up mess of good things, like it wasn't super clear. Um, but luckily there were people in my life that were patient and actually really wanting. They could see that I was different and wanted what I was living with. Um, so they were willing to like it was like a dull knife, like that. I was just like trying to whittle this masterpiece with, and they were very patient with me in trying to understand and giving me extra chances to explain, which was helpful for me to sharpen what I believed, right? Um that was what that season was like.
SPEAKER_06:And you know what? I think this is kind of a great place to kind of end your portion of the story. But I want to ask you this. You had gotten this understanding it had changed your life. All the struggles were coming in. Yet you still look at that time where you understood on your phone call with Jonathan as the moment that you went from death to life. That leads me to believe you don't have to understand everything to have made that move. And even since then, you had maybe made some mistakes, or maybe you had fallen back into a former pattern. How did you know? Because it's all hindsight now, we're looking back to this summer 2018. How did you know? Yes, I am alive.
SPEAKER_03:It's a miracle. It is a hundred percent a miracle. And I don't mean it's a miracle that I came to know, I mean the literal act of knowing it is a miracle. Um everything that we know, like beyond a shadow of a doubt, is something that we've experienced. Right? So, like, I know that there's a wall here because I can like reach out and I can feel it. I can experience so like I might not know that if my eyes are closed until I reach out and I feel in e.l.f. Will Farrell comes to New York and he walks past this coffee shop and he sees in the window best cup of coffee in the world. And he opens the door and he goes, Congratulations! You've done it!
SPEAKER_05:Best cup of coffee in the world.
SPEAKER_03:And like, here's the deal you could tell me you've made me the best cup of coffee in the world, I'm not gonna believe you. And even if I believe you, I don't know that it's the best cup of coffee in the world unless I've tasted it and I'm like, that is at least the best cup of coffee I've ever had. So once I tasted it and experienced it, I know that it is in fact true. This is how it is, as far as I know, with anything that we know. And there's a uh few things that led me to this point, but all I can say is that if there's a a teaching that I would leave people with, it's this repentance is not something that you perform. You can't perform repentance, it's not groveling and feeling horrible. That's not the part of my story that brought me from death to life. Repentance itself, the Greek word for it, actually means a change of mind, a change of thinking, and it's a gift received, not an act that's performed. So repentance for me was having my mind exchanged, my mind, it's like a paradigm shift, and it was a gift given to me by God. That when I came to the end of myself and I saw the emptiness of the death that I was living in, God came in and said, like Jesus said to the adulterous woman in John chapter 8, neither do I condemn you. God came in right there, and that was the gift of repentance, him saying, I don't condemn you, I see you as righteous. And it was when I believed what he said that I knew, like if you tell me that you made me the best cup of coffee and I've ever had, the only reason I would take that, I believe that you maybe actually did make me the best cup of coffee, and I take that cup to my lips and I sip that coffee, and as I taste it, I know when God told me I don't condemn you, I believed him, and I just said I confessed, not groveling confession, I just confessed. I agree with you, I believe you when you say that you love me, that you don't condemn me, that I'm righteous. And as I said that I believed him, as I believed the truth, it was like tasting the best cup of coffee in the world. I knew that he had brought me from death to life, and I would never be the same. It's a miracle.
SPEAKER_06:Here's my follow-up final question, then as Jesus explains this whole miracle to Nicodemus and the Garden in John chapter 3. Um we see that story and so many of us that were born into Christianity maybe have not had that experience that Jesus was talking about. Does everybody have to have this experience?
SPEAKER_03:Jesus said, unless a man is born again, he will not see the kingdom of heaven. Yeah. You gotta come to the end of yourself. Um confession and repentance is still preached by the apostles after Jesus died. Like 1 John 1 8 says, if anybody says that they're without sin, that person is a liar and the truth is not in them. They're not saying if a person says that they are now righteous, the Bible tells us that we're righteous, so that can't be what that verse is saying. What that verse is saying is that if anybody thinks that they're good apart from Christ, it doesn't feel like they actually need a savior. And they've never needed one. Like, for example, I heard in an interview, Donald Trump actually said that he doesn't, he was like, What would I ever need to ask God forgiveness for? That's first John 1.8. That's when you hear Morgan's testimony, she'll tell you when she hears her story. That's where she was at. Um every single person, I don't care if you were born into a Christian or religion. In fact, what I would say is if what I've said about if actually that that is this is how I would say it, Richard. The question you you just asked. Everybody needs to be born again, and if you've been made uncomfortable by the way that I've talked about having peace and knowing that I'm free, I'm not condemned, and I'm whole, and that I was completely content in Christ while my wife rightfully hated me for what I did. If that made you uncomfortable, then you're probably addicted to religion and very, very comfortable being unborn again. Maybe that's too strong. Is that too strong?
SPEAKER_06:Okay, so I'm I'm here and I got to the end of this this podcast, and I'm I'm hanging, it's like miracle after miracle. And now you're saying I have to have an experience like this, and I'm saying I want it. How do I get it?
SPEAKER_03:I don't know. I just got nervous about that last thing I said. Maybe you don't put it in. So it's staying. Ask that question again.
SPEAKER_06:I want what you have, but I don't know how to get it, bro. What do I do?
SPEAKER_03:Oh, confess with your mouth and believe with your heart that Jesus is Lord. It's yours. Like the thing is remember at the beginning I said that I thought that God couldn't forgive me unless I asked for forgiveness with a little bit of Jesus' blood. Like and that was the only way. Yeah, no, it was done at the cross that God forgave. Um actually, God didn't never mind.
SPEAKER_06:You had it the whole time is what you're trying to say.
SPEAKER_03:You've had it the whole time. You've had it the whole time. So what you need to die to is unbelief. Like there even though we've had this the whole time, we have not been believing it. And uh that old body, that old self that believed all the lies needs to go ahead and die. So just believe.
SPEAKER_06:All right, man. Well, thanks for coming on the Death to Life podcast from real quick.
SPEAKER_03:Can I end it with the cliffhanger though? Yeah, man. Shoot. Because the cliffhanger's the miracle of my testimony is the cliffhanger. Because remember, I said the the six months I was afraid Morgan would leave me for who I was. Then I started going hard and I started telling everybody this. Morgan was the type of person who was uncomfortable with me being guilt-free, content, and at peace in Christ because she knew intimately my mistakes, who I used to be. Um so as I started going harder, she started having more and more resentment that was building up from her pain. And I faced the new crossroads. And I remember specifically preaching at my dad's church for a week and um noticing Morgan growing colder and colder to me. And I was praying one night, uh, asked Morgan what was wrong, she wouldn't tell me, and I realized that she wanted, she did not want to be married to me anymore. And I asked her, and she was quiet, didn't say anything. And I was I felt fear set in again, right? It was trying to it was trying to find a spot in my heart. And God just said, Even if your wife leaves you, are you willing to still give me your whole life? Are you still willing to obey? And now I had the whole last year, and I was like, Okay. So it used to be I was afraid she would leave me for who I used to be. Now I realize she wanted to leave me for who I was, and the miracle took place that night. That now, even when the gospel and this new life was going to cost me the thing I wanted most in this world, I still wasn't willing to give it up. And not only that, but it peace came back. I was good. I knew that she could leave, I could have a bad reputation, it could be a young failed marriage, in quotes, you know. And it didn't matter, had nothing to do with who I was in Christ, and that was the miracle for me. Obviously, you're gonna get more about this from Morgan's side, but um, yeah, I just want when we're talking death to life, all of my attempts to hold on to my marriage and make it better when I was living in death led to worse and worse and worse marriage. In life, when God is the only thing that I need and that I know that I already have, now I'm able to love. And because I don't need my wife to stick around, I can love her no matter what she does to me. Um and I just yeah, man, if if the gospel doesn't make you more loving, it's not the gospel. It's all about love.
SPEAKER_06:That was the first episode of From Death to Life with Richard Young. On our next episode, we get to hear from Morgan and the deception that she was living under and uh the truth, how she received the truth, and how the truth set her free. Love you guys, and we'll talk to you again real soon.