At age six, he found Jesus and porn

By Mark Ellis—

At a tender age, when most enter grade school and learn to read, two powerful opposing influences entered Trey Green’s life – Jesus and porn.

“I was molested by a neighbor, but was also exposed to pornography that led to a deep-seated sexual addiction,” Green recounts.

He says the molestation and the exposure to hardcore pornographic videos messed him up for years. “I didn’t respond well to it. There were opportunities for me to deal with it and I chose to remain in it,” he says.

About the same time as his first exposure to porn, God broke into his life with a powerful dream.

“In this dream Jesus came to me. In was standing in my room and hell was in front of me. I was standing in my bedroom and my parents’ room was around the corner, and in front of me hell was open and there was no way for me to get to them.

“I began to scream and cry and an angel came and caught me and carried me over it and delivered me to Jesus.”

When he woke up he rushed into his mother’s room and breathlessly recounted the details. “She took me to see the pastor and he shared the gospel with me and I gave my life to Jesus.”

Green describes his family at that time as “Christian in name but nominal in practice.” At church, however, he gained a deep affinity for the Word of God.

As he grew, he was pulled between opposing forces of light and darkness. “I became a leader in the youth group, the picture of everybody’s good kid, and I had this brokenness. Masturbation began to kick in at a high level and desires to stay pure. I had two worlds I lived in, this Central Texas Bible Belt world and this other world I had on the side.”

“I had a very nice exterior and a very rotten interior.”

In college, his newfound freedom did not help his spiritual maturation. “Dad was a real strict guy. I went from a regimented life to complete and total freedom with no understanding of how to deal with it.”

Green says he dated 150 different coeds over four years. Initially, he tried to maintain a semblance of purity. “There was a still some kind of line inside me that said you don’t actually have intercourse. But I crossed that line my sophomore year and that led to my downfall.”

His sexual urges got stronger and out-of-control, fueled by dark influences. “By my senior year I would demonically manifest at times. I entered some pretty rough dark places.”

As anticipation for a sexual encounter built steam, “literally my hand and face would contort, I lost muscular control in the desire to have a hookup until I picked up the phone and called somebody. It didn’t happen often, but when it did it was terrifying.

“The need was so great, if I didn’t do it there was a war within my own flesh. Because I didn’t know how to fight with Jesus, it led to these occult manifestations.”

One of the girls he dated was a Christian and introduced him to three other strong Christians, who became lifelong friends.

“They were more mature than I was,” he recalls, and they began to challenge Green about his lifestyle. “There wasn’t room for me to go off on the total deep end. It was what I could get away with. It was almost like having surrogate parents.

“I knew enough to know if I went off on my own I would probably die.”

One of the friends challenged Green to spend time in the Bible. Convicted, he spent a three-year period reading the Bible several hours a day, during which time he formed his own understanding for the first time, “instead of believing what everyone told me.”

“It didn’t change my behavior, but it started the gradual returning of my heart.”

Over the next few years he fought a war within himself over his desire to serve the Lord and inability to kick his sex addiction.

Powerful repentance

The big breakthrough moment came when he decided to enter Antioch Church’s Discipleship Training School in 1994.

In the summer prior to his entrance into the school, he had been working in the restaurant industry and began drinking heavily. “I came home after drinking with everyone at the restaurant and would lay on the floor and turn on worship music and cry.”

During his first day at the school, something unexpected happened.

“On the first day and the first strum of the worship song I fell on my face and began to repent loudly and embarrassingly,” he recounts. “I didn’t care anymore. I was in a place where I would either die or get free. I decided I didn’t care who heard me and I got free. It was the seminal moment and turning point of my life.”

After the first week of the school they had a retreat and Green sat down with two other men and the leader of the school and listed every sexual indiscretion he could think of in detail and renounced and repented of them.

He describes it as a house cleaning, rather than deliverance, because he believes God brought deliverance on his first morning at the school.

“There was life spoken into all these dead places, so I didn’t have closets that skeletons could jump out of,” he says.

Importantly, he committed to live an open life, without secrets. “That’s been the most important decision I’ve ever made, other than coming to faith and marrying my wife,” he notes.

“Anybody is free to know anything about me at any time. I will answer you no problem. My closest friends know if I’m hedging on anything they have the ability to push into that to make sure I’m not hiding anything.”

Green cherishes his newfound freedom in Christ. “One of the greatest lies of the enemy is to try to convince us we are not free,” he observes. “We spend all our times learning how to get free, instead of spending our time learning how to be free.

“I call it the dynamic of courtyards versus cages. A person with a “cage” mentality spends an inordinate amount of time fixated on escaping.

“In the courtyard the Lord invites you to experience and explore to understand what it means to be free.” As one learns the lessons of freedom, a door opens into a bigger courtyard, where the Lord invites further exploration and discovery.

“The two different mentalities take you two very different places,” he says.

Tempting lie, important lesson

At 25, he began to lead a small group of other men. He recalls a “funny interaction with the devil” after he began shepherding the group.

The devil whispered in his ear, You know what, you can masturbate. It would be OK. You’re free; it’s not going to affect anything.

Green fell for the devil’s ruse and later repented. “That was on a Sunday. I thought it was no big deal. On Tuesday I got a call from a guy I was raising up to be a leader. He said, ‘I don’t know what happened, but I started dating this girl and last night we almost went all the way. I have no idea where that came from.”

“Bro, you can’t do that. We are men of God and we have to live a life of purity,” he exhorted.

On Thursday he got a call from another young man in the group who said, “I don’t know what happened. I started feeling really needy. I drove into the rough part of town and hired a prostitute…”

“Bro, what are you doing?” Green asked. “You can’t serve the people of God and have this going on in your life! Let’s talk about this and work it through.

Then a few days later he got a call from the most mature guy in their group, engaged to be married. He started the conversation with the same words: “I don’t know what happened. I was driving down the road and saw this XXX place. I pulled over and bought two movies. I’ve been watching them all weekend long, masturbating.”

Green’s heart sank. After he hung up the phone the Lord spoke to his heart:

You opened the door. You are the spiritual covering for these people. When you open the door you allowed the enemy to come in and tempt them beyond what they were ready for. You can’t do that as a leader.

The lesson has stayed with Green ever since. “It is the fear of the Lord. When you strike the shepherd the sheep will scatter. It was an opportunity for me to own my sin, to talk to those guys individually and own my part without letting them off the hook for their part.”

Significance of confessing to God and another person

Green sees the importance of confession to God and others. “When you get people stuck in these cycles, people are crying out to God but don’t find the healing, because the healing comes through the body. Without confession in the presence of the people of God, the healing doesn’t come. So both have to be present.”

“When we confess it to the Lord but are unwilling to confess it to people, it remains in the dark. When it is in the dark it gets corrupted and the enemy can use it.”

“This place of sexual brokenness in my life is one of the most powerful places of ministry now. I have grace for it and I have also dealt with it ruthlessly, so I have authority to help people walk it through. The confession has to be there; it is not an option.

Walking in freedom

Green strongly believes Jesus bought our full freedom at the cross, which allows us to be the righteousness of Christ.

“Either the cross of Christ made a transaction that was enough to cover everything or it didn’t. I’m not talking about never messing up. The transaction was perfect.

“The enemy’s greatest tool is to get us to believe the thoughts he whispers in our ear come from within us. If he can say to me “you’re rebellious,” I will spend the rest of my life trying to make up for this rebellion, which the cross of Christ made up for.

“If I am never capable of being free then Jesus lied. Then Paul lied when he said, ‘the life I live now I live by faith in the Son of God. I don’t live in the body anymore. I have been crucified with him.’”

When Green takes a lustful thought captive, the very next thought often is, what is wrong with you that you have a thought like this?

“I call it a second level attack of the enemy. It goes after our identity. If we don’t take that thought captive, he stands on that stronghold and he pours in the lustful thoughts right back into our heads.

“I say, ‘I am a righteous blood-bought child of God and that thought is not mine.’ My condition is always free. How I navigate that freedom, we all have the ability to choose to sit in a cage with an open door if we want to.”

“Is it true that you are the righteousness of Christ? I’m about activating people so they can walk freely.”

 

If you want to know more about a personal relationship with God, go here

Trey Green serves with Antioch Church in Waco as church-planting school director. He is married to Leigh Anne and they have four daughters.