One of God’s Favorite Tools

Nathan Boer's testimony is that for much of his young life he lived without the Fear of the Lord. Then he passed through great fear that he had blasphemed the Spirit and was beyond forgiveness. Now that he has come into the fear of the Lord, he has a life in God and victory over sin.

Jim: I brought Nathan Boer into the Purity for Life Studio to talk about the Fear of the Lord, but also to share his story of a life lived totally without the fear of the Lord. You see, I know Nathan.

We were students in the Residential Program at the same time, back in 2015. We worked at the same job, rode in the same car, even performed the same chore. Even though I’m his father’s age, we’re close friends. I know him to be a godly young man who loves the Lord with all his heart. I know him to be a gifted Biblical Counselor who uses to Word of God to walk men into freedom from sexual sin and into a life of surrender to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. And I also know that it wasn’t always this way for him. Every staff member and every student at Pure Life were wrecks when we got here or we wouldn’t have come. We came here seeking freedom from sin that we couldn’t get on our own. So, that our lives were once wrecked and ruined by sin is a given.

We began our conversation by looking at Proverbs 14:9, where Solomon wrote that “Fools mock at sin.” One thing I found fascinating as I was looking at the meaning behind these words, was that this is describing the person who boldly pursues sin, but then loves to boast about it. This really helped to bring the verse alive to me, because I have certainly been in situations where people unashamedly told me all about their sins. The meaning there is that moral fools love to brag about their guilty exploits. I started off by asking Nathan if he was in this camp as a young man.

Nathan: Absolutely. I'm happy that you asked if that was the camp that I was in, because not only did I enjoy bragging about the sin I was in, but I was surrounded by people also lived to create crazy stories about the sin that they were in; whether it was a long weekend or a crazy music show or some ridiculous amount of travel under the influence of some substance, we always had a spirit of competition trying to outdo one another.

Jim: I asked Nathan just to tell us his story. As it began to unfold, he was describing a definite progression from one activity to another, each hinging on the next, on a downward spiral into more and more sin, more and more degradation, all in the name of achieving that next thrill. Nathan was a pleasure junky.

Nathan: The pursuit of sin came before I even really understood that it was sin. It began with self-gratification around the age of 10 or 11. After or during those changes, I was brought to a doctor who diagnosed me with ADHD. Later they diagnosed me with depression. Each time I was diagnosed with something, they gave me a medication of some sort. I was playing video games and that increased in a rapid succession as I went from the ages of 11 to 15. I played more and more video games and eventually came across pornography, which, then I understood that self-gratification was sin. Then that really lit the candle for what had already begun in me years before. I quickly realized that the medicine the doctors were giving me wasn't really helping me, and that I could abuse it to get high, so I did that. And we began stealing alcohol from our parents; Actually we even stole alcohol from random people's garages, and that presented an adrenaline high to go with all the others. And eventually I began dabbling in marijuana, which led to all kinds of other substances which I'd sworn previously that I never do

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Jim: Notice the progression of sins that Nathan just described: Fantasy/self-gratification at an early age even without pornography; Prescription stimulants – twenty percent of all boys 4 to 17 are on prescription medication for ADHD and even more for a host of other disorders. Video games came next, followed closely by pornography. Then alcohol, street drugs like marijuana, petty crime and sexual promiscuity. How many other American teens take a similar route? And how many teenagers even in the church are part of a local party scene?

Nathan: It was always from one party to the next party, “who was throwing the best party?” “which college did you go party at?” “which show did you go to?” “which music festival did you attend?” It was just one out-doing another at every opportunity, with a mixture of substance abuse, sexual encounters, music, travel, whatever you could do to outdo everyone else in your group, and make them realize that you are cool, or you're crazy, or you know, came up with a unique way of doing things that intrigued others. It seemed like we were invincible. You get into so many crazy car accidents, or you experience such an overwhelming amount of substance abuse, and you start thinking that “can I really die?” And you know, eventually a couple of friends did die, Overdose. Suicide. There is tragedy at the end of that.

Jim: Nathan may sound to you like a typical American teenager. But one thing that we haven’t yet mentioned is that throughout all this time Nathan was attending Christian school and going to church. Despite being involved in a lot of religious activities, something was missing from his life. There was no fear of God. But thankfully, Nathan began to see that his life was out of control. The deaths of some of his classmates to overdose and suicide sobered him up a little. He knew he needed to stop his runaway lifestyle. But who could help?

Nathan: I first heard about Pure Life at a men's Bible study, and as soon as I had heard of it, it was like I knew I was supposed to go, and I also knew that I didn't want to go. One of the other guys in the men's group brought up his addiction to pornography, and while I had been using pornography for years, it had never presented itself to me as a life-dominating addiction. It was picked up, it was put back down, because of a very promiscuous lifestyle that went along with all the substance abuse. I had different girlfriends and I had pornography and I had substance abuse, and it was just like this whirlwind inside of me. I never thought that sexual sin was my problem; I was thinking that drinking  an enormous amount of alcohol each day was my problem, that was going to kill me, or overdosing on some weekend binge was my fear that was going to kill me.

Jim: Nathan is a little different from many who come to Pure Life. He wasn’t forced here by his parents. He wasn’t given an ultimatum by his wife. His life was out of control, but he came here because he somehow knew that God had called him here. And his life was filled with fear. It wasn’t the fear of the Lord. There was some fear of death, but mostly it was fear that he was lost and could never be saved.

Nathan: First, I was terrified that I had grieved the Holy Spirit. I thought I had committed the unforgivable, unpardonable sin. And I was convinced that no program, no amount of Bible reading, no amount of thankfulness was going to get me out of depression, restore a right mind to me or reverse the consequences of the lifestyle. I had chosen to live in complete opposition, in rebellion to God. So I was very afraid that I would die, and I would go to hell and that there was nothing that I could do, I was doomed. I was stuck in condemnation for at least the first 3 months of the program.

Jim: One time during a teaching here at Pure Life and I asked the class of seventy men how many of them at one time had wondered or worried that they had committed the unpardonable sin of blaspheming the Holy Spirit and were in danger of forfeiting their salvation. I expected a few hands. Nearly every hand in the room went up. I’ve written a blog article on the subject of committing the unpardonable sin on the Pure Life Blog page, and we’ll include a link on this page to get to it quickly. Now, the Lord intervened in Nathan’s life to deliver him from this fear of having sinned beyond God’s forgiveness…

Nathan: There was a special service, I believe it was a Thursday night, and I had been battling this 3 or 4 months into the program and wrestling through the idea that I'm not. I can't be saved. I've committed the unforgivable sin. One of the speakers got up and said, “There's someone out there who thinks that they've committed the unforgivable sin, that you’ve blasphemed the Holy Spirit. And I just want you to know, that if you are afraid that you have committed the unpardonable sin, it is actually a great indicator that you have not, because people who have grieved the Holy Spirit do not care.” And there was something that broke in me at that point. There was hope where there was hopelessness. And I still share that with many people today because it really helps me.

<pull-quote>There was something that broke in me at that point. There was hope where there was hopelessness. And I still share that with many people today because it really helps me.<pull-quote><tweet-link>Tweet This<tweet-link>

Jim: We turned to Proverbs 8.13. “The fear of the Lord is to hate evil.” It is five years since Nathan arrived as a student at Pure Life. He has come into the Fear of the Lord, and into a sincere hatred of sin. There are still struggles with temptation. We don’t hate every sin every time. But God does a real work of deliverance in our lives as we walk with Him.

Nathan: I find myself hating some sin more than other sin, where God hates all sin! So as I continue to spend time with Him and to learn what He's really like, He continues to help me to hate all sin the way that He does. But the sin that I'm dealing with now, five years later, is much different than the sin I showed up to Pure Life Ministries Residential Program with.

Jim: You heard the testimony of what Nathan’s life was like right up until the day he arrived at our doorstep. He is no longer the same person. The Lord has done a work in his life, and everything is different for him now.

Nathan: I have been set free. The life-dominating sins that were driving me to an early grave no longer control my thought patterns. They’re not the things that motivate me to get out of bed in the morning. They're not directing me to the store or to the local drug dealer or to any other avenue that I used to utilize

Jim: Nathan described the fear of the Lord as one of His useful tools in our sanctification. It’s helpful to think of it that way. God uses our attitude of awestruck wonder and our healthy fear of His discipline to work real change in our lives and make us more like Christ.

Nathan: The fear of the Lord is one of, I believe, His favorite tools to change us into more of His image. You know sin corrupted us, but when we get stopped in our tracks, by being afraid, it's very sobering. It's very alarming, it's very scary. But then to come to the understanding that the Creator of heaven and earth, Who spoke everything into existence with a word, wants a personal relationship with you, and has created you for a purpose, and His purpose is the only one that will satisfy, it really undoes someone. It really undoes me. It really overwhelms me that He knows exactly what we can handle even when we don’t.

Jim: God took a young man whose life was dominated by alcohol, drugs, sexual promiscuity and relentless thrill-seeking, and turned him into a biblical counselor who uses the Word of God to bring freedom and healing into the lives of sex addicts. How does God do that? Well, that what Pure Life Ministries is all about. That’s what God did first in Steve Gallagher. In his 20 Truths series and here on Purity for Life we are describing the tools that God used and that He still uses. The Truth, Scripture, Repentance, Regeneration, Prayer, and the fear of the Lord: useful tools in the hands of the Lord to set a man free.